The Devonport Flagstaff Page 19
June 2, 2017 Tuesday morning, we were reaching along at 26, 27 knots and as we bore away a gust hit us and we had 34 knots through the bear away. You are hanging on and the whole boat is shaking and vibrating and the rudder comes in and out of the water. It’s pretty cool,” he says. The sailors wear helmets, and pads on their legs and tailbones. “And you really need them because you nosedive all the time and hit the waves really hard. Especially the guys at the front. Their heads and bodies get slammed around a bit,” Dunning Beck says. He controls the foil rake on the reach and downwind legs of the race. “I have two buttons where I sit to control the windward and leeward board rakes. I am constantly adjusting the angle of the rake as the boat changes speed. I am on and off the button the whole time, solely focused on boat speed. It requires a lot of concentration because as soon as you are not doing it you are a lot slower.” The skipper has no time to look where he is going downwind. “I am solely relying on the bowman and offside technician to feed me the right information to not hit anyone and go the right way,” he says. “Once we go around the bottom mark, it’s a lot easier. Then we can start to look around the race properly which is pretty exciting.” Less exciting is the financial side of racing. With no corporate sponsorship, the team had to work hard to find the $200,000 it needed. A quarter of that goes towards a new set of sails. The rest is for flights, accommodation and food. “Bermuda is very, very expensive,” Dunning Beck says. “When we went to the supermarket in April, the apples were US$1.69 per apple.” The team is renting a house for their base. “It’s completely unfurnished and we had to buy a whole lot of appliances and stuff. But it was still cheaper than any of the other accommodation and is really near the dockyard, which is fantastic.” As part of the deal, the team will have to repaint the house interior before they leave. A T HE EM
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After Bermuda, Dunning Beck wants to get straight back into 49er sailing with new crew Oscar Gunn (18), a young sailor from Murray’s Bay Sailing Club. Until recently, Dunning Beck sailed with Devonport local Jack Simpson. The pair won gold at last year’s Sailing World Cup Weymouth and Portland, but went their separate ways this year. Simpson has since teamed up with another Devonport sailor, Marcus Somerville. “It’s just a little change-up – two fresh teams,” says Dunning Beck.
“With this kind of racing on the AC45Fs there is simply no time to panic. A lot of mistakes get made around the course by everyone, so you just try to minimise the size and number of yours.” He is a well-rounded sailor. The twotime national Optimist champ and one-time national Starling champ has also won the famous P-Class Tanner Cup and subsequently competed in the 420, Laser Radial and 29er classes before switching to the 49er in 2012. He left Takapuna Grammar five years ago and is close to finishing a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Auckland, with a couple of engineering management papers to go. It’s been tricky to fit those into his sailing schedule. “Large group projects with required attendance don’t really go that well with travelling a lot,” he says. Dunning Beck doesn’t leave the water often. For fun, he likes to surf or fish wherever he can. “Luca and I even managed to get in a surf in Bermuda one day, when we couldn’t sail. Some of the Japanese team were headed out. We hopped on their boat, borrowed a
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couple of surfboards and went surfing on the edge of the coral. It was quite surreal, the water was so clear and we were so far from land.” Dunning Beck was taught to fish by his mother Anthea Dunning and he still likes to take the family’s 3.2 metre inflatable out into the harbour with her. They catch mostly snapper and the odd kingfish or kahawai. “If you catch the fish you have to fillet it. Mum mostly cooks them, but I can cook as well. Or I’d like to think I can.” Dunning Beck admits that fishing is on his mind a lot. “It’s hard not to think about when you are out sailing and you see the anchovy schools coming in and boiling up on the surface and the birds go crazy. On a good day, you can see them like a big cloud come under the boat as you go past, with fish and dolphins going through them,” he says. Anthea Dunning taught Logan and younger brother Hamish to sail as well, because the boys’ father, Grant Beck, an Olympic windsurfing coach and Team New Zealand member, spent a lot of time overseas working. “She used to take us down to Wakatere and to most of the regattas. And it always seemed that dad was away when we went overseas on trips too. She was the one who got us there and kept us calm,” he says. How will Dunning Beck keep calm in Bermuda? “With this kind of racing on the AC45Fs there is simply no time to panic. A lot of mistakes get made around the course by everyone, so you just try to minimise the size and number of yours. And if you make one, you don’t worry about it and keep on blasting around the course.” His parents have been very involved in the campaign. “Dad’s come out with us and coached us a bit. And he and Mum have been helping a lot with the fundraising and logistics side,” he says. But they won’t be in Bermuda. “It’s expensive, only a few people are allowed to be with us, and the racing is much better to watch on TV,” he says. Family conversations around the dinner table have tended to gravitate towards sailing – until Dunning gives a certain kind of look. “Then we realise we should be talking about something else and talk about sailing later.”
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