KEY POINTS:
On a Monday evening when traffic dawdles home over the Auckland Harbour Bridge, below a fleet of rambunctious little yachts are going at it, hammer and tong. Unattractive, but nippy and sturdy, the Stewart 34s have the Waitemata Harbour to themselves, making a spectacle with their red and white spinnakers in full bloom.
The Stewart 34s were once the royalty of the Waitemata, sailed in the Citizen Cup matchracing series by the Dicksons and Russell Coutts, and international America's Cup legends Ted Turner, Harold Cudmore and Bruno Trouble.
But in recent years, their racing numbers have dwindled - to the point where there were often only six boats battling it out on a race-day Sunday.
The class, created by Auckland boat designer Bob Stewart 48 years ago, was in danger of dying. But when the stalwarts of the Stewart 34s suggested changing their race schedule to a weekday after work, the class resurged. Now it's not unusual to see 26 Stewarts, all with names that start with "P", scrummaging off Westhaven Marina at 6pm on a wintry Monday.
This is the changing face of the City of Sails. While Auckland has more boats than ever - more than 80,000 privately owned craft - and marinas are jam-packed, fewer boats are turning up at yacht clubs.
A quick look around the New Zealand Boat Show this weekend reveals the commercial boating market is less about sailing and more about speed-boats and fishing.
While the Stewart 34s, racing their windward-leeward courses under the bridge are going from strength to strength, other classes and yacht clubs aren't faring so well. Traditionalists sticking to weekend racing calendars are feeling the financial pinch of shrinking fleets.
There are calls for the smaller clubs to amalgamate, or for Auckland's racing calendar to be rewritten, featuring major collaborative events - harking back to the 1940s when more than 200 craft would move from club to club each weekend.
On sailing website crew.org.nz, editor Zoe Hawkins-Wilde argues Auckland yachties have too many races to choose from, "but our already diluted fleet doesn't stretch far enough.
"The fact that each club competes with each other club for a share of an ever-decreasing pie is ridiculous. We all have the same interests at heart and pride needs to be put aside," she writes.
Hawkins-Wilde calls for smaller clubs to merge, but it's not on any of their agendas.
Those clubs that haven't sailed with the changing tide are struggling, says Ralph Roberts, a former Olympic sailor and Yachting New Zealand board member.
"Clubs that have gone to after-work racing are doing okay. If you look down the harbour any night from Monday to Friday, you'll see it's full of yachts from 5pm onwards," he says.
"The weekends are becoming cruising time. Sunday is now often the only time for families, and the only time that Dad can go out on the boat, so there's not much chance of racing. It's selfish if he says, 'I want to go racing this weekend', and the family say 'aren't we going sailing?' "
The queen of Auckland's yacht clubs, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron - once home of the America's Cup - has felt the squeeze, too.
Its weekend fleets dropped away three or four years ago, and now remain static, but the midweek fleets in winter and summer are stronger than ever. The club still runs races 225 days of the year - at least 1000 races.
Squadron commodore John Crawford says the club is changing the way it runs weekend racing.
"We're working hard now to provide short and sharp racing over the weekends. And we're making them more concentrated, so we're running a couple of events on a weekend, with a rest on the weekends either side. We've given away sailing on long weekends because people want to spend them with their families," he says.
"Young married sailors can say to mother, 'I'll be sailing all next weekend, but I won't be sailing for a couple weekends after that'. It seems to work out better."
Last month, the squadron was forced to cancel one of its main winter regattas - the Trifecta teams event - through a lack of entries. Crawford says he "accepts culpability" for that, blaming a failure to promote the event properly.
"We didn't do a big enough sell on it this year, and people need a while to get teams together. We had five entries - which was 15 boats - but it's nothing compared to the 100-odd boats we get on a Wednesday night in summer," he says.
The squadron is also talking to Bucklands Beach Yacht Club about developing an Auckland Race Week, similar to the successful Bay of Islands Sailing Week held every January, involving keelboats, Flying Fifteens and sports boats.
Other Auckland clubs would be invited to help to organise it, Crawford says. "Auckland should have one; we need one," he says.
Mike Adeane, a Stewart 34-owner who lives on Herald Island, sails on Monday nights and Saturday afternoons in the Squadron's winter series, but it has taken him a few years to round-up fellow sailors who can make it on weekends.
"Half the battle is organising a crew," he says. "But it's worth it. I've been sailing a Stewart 34 for five years and I'm absolutely converted - I was strictly a cruiser before that. I didn't understand how to really sail a boat until I started racing."
Ralph Roberts, president of the Takapuna Boating Club, says Auckland keelboat clubs should be doing more to encourage casual sailors on to crews.
"We should be doing what overseas clubs do, getting people to put their names on a board at the yacht club to jump on a crew for a night's racing," he says.
The Takapuna club is growing. It has more than 600 members, but not all are dyed-in-the-wool yachties. As a boat club, it has embraced sea kayakers into the fold, Olympic silver medallist Ben Fouhy among them.
Roberts admits one of the big dilemmas of the modern club is finding space for the boats. "One of the big problems is giving people somewhere to park their boats. You need a small corral area or a marina. If you live in an apartment complex, with no room to park it anywhere, you're snookered again. We have that problem at Takapuna, but we have smaller classes of boat."
Takapuna specialises in fostering the Olympic classes and will next year host three world championships - in the Olympic RS:X boards, the Tornadoes and Laser Radials - all the final national qualifiers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Royal Akarana Yacht Club's problems have eased significantly since the 172-berth Orakei Marina opened in December last year after 50 years of negotiations. But it's not a cheap option - the berths range in price from $100,000 to $750,000 for a 35-year lease.
Another of the problems sailing clubs face to keep afloat is one confronting sports the length and breadth of the country - finding volunteers to help to run the races.
"A lot of clubs haven't got the adults standing around on an official basis," says Roberts. "One of the prerequisites of being a member of Takapuna is you have to give two days a year to help to run the races.
"It's not easy finding volunteers these days, and for those people who run the races, their blood should be bottled. They are the most important people in the club."
At the other end of the scale, there is no dearth of young sailors. Roughly 4500 junior and youth sailors are in clubs around the country and the numbers are growing steadily.
School sailing programmes Waterwise and Sailing Have A Go are bringing yachting - a sport once branded as only for rich kids - to children who have never been on a boat.
Professional sailing schools, like the one at the Ponsonby CC, are having to extend their classes to cope with mushrooming numbers. There's a waiting list to get into the Squadron's Lion Foundation youth training programme, teaching 16- to 20-year-olds to sail keelboats - 26 graduates are sailing in the current America's Cup.
They are the next generation, dreaming of one day sailing in the America's Cup. And the clubs, too, long for the Auld Mug. They want it back again - not only for the kudos, but for the boost to club coffers.
"We've lost some of our 'knife and forkers' we gained in the halcyon days of the America's Cup," says squadron commodore John Crawford.
"But when we win it back, they will come back, too."
