Dozen reasons to want not-a-tickets to the prize-giving dance

J Barry Ferguson Fund to the Rescue: For reasons too tedious to reiterate here, the 2021 Mahurangi Regatta had to be rescued when increased costs clashed with less than anticipated funding. Fortunately, the Mahurangi has superb friends, with one underwriting the shortfall and another donating the balance of his lifetime’s botanical art collection to the cause. artist Gunvor Bull-Teilman | Art+Object

Dozens of reasons exist for not selling tickets to the prize-giving dance. Tickets were sold to the first, revived, regatta dance, which was styled the Mahurangi Regatta Ball, complete with all-singing-all-dancing World War II harmony tribute troupe, and dance floor.

The ball was planned as the grand finale of a calendar of events celebrating Warkworth’s 150th, and the default assumption was that was that tickets would be in the ballpark of $100. Retiring from a career as florist and event planner to New York’s rich and famous, then-new Mahurangi West resident J Barry Ferguson was urging $1000-ticket thinking, including trailered, flower-festooned bathrooms for the ladies.

In the event, at $65 each, the tickets sold well, but not until the last minute. With the early 2000s recession having sufficiently receded, $130 per couple proved to be surmountable. There had, however, been a mean side to the concept. Visiting yacht and boating club members who hadn’t received the memo, were turned away—albeit courteously, by the World War II-re-enactment personal who’d spontaneously volunteered as bouncers. With literally no room to seat one extra person in the marquee, even a handful of last-minute guests—including, indelibly, the diminutive local member of Parliament and opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and trade—were initially made to eat perched immediately outside the entrance, at the mercy of the cool southwesterly.

Mellow Mahurangi Regatta After-Match: In the years that followed the 2004 Mahurangi Regatta Ball, Mahurangi Action lived dangerously to maintain the momentum it provided, mostly on cash-bar-and-burgers proceeds. In 2013, Steven Garner, who’d sailed a centreboarder from Scotts Landing to join a 1970s Mahurangi Regatta, prevailed on his fellow local board members to begin what is now nine unbroken years of Auckland Council support. Pictured in 2008, the mellow post-racing beginning to what, later every regatta evening, becomes an unbridled crush of riotous dancing, by all wildly enthusiastic ages, to the perennial jazz orchestra that has played the gig going-on 18 years. image Sarah Ransom

The perennial response from those newly learning about the challenge of funding the Mahurangi Regatta after-match function, is to suggest the obvious: Charge for admission. There are, however, a raft of reasons why that option is neither practicable nor desirable. The reasons are repeated ad nauseum in the pages of the Mahurangi Magazine, but short answer is that, were the organisers to charge for admission, the venue would be charged for. Back at financial square one, the more powerful reason is that charging admission goes against both the ethos of the regional parks of Tāmaki Makaurau and the philosophy of the 1977 revivers of the Mahurangi Regatta—most of the latter had witnessed the privations of the Great Depression, and the cruel inequalities that that event exposed. The sublime unintended consequence of all this staunchly pre-Rogernomic egalitarianism is that at the Mahurangi Regatta, rich and poor can live for a day as Utopians.

Having said that, prize-giving-dance attendees, typically, are desirous of contributing. Which is why, tickets that are not tickets—not-a-tickets?—are being explored as a way of building fiscal sustainability. Principal regatta sponsor Teak Construction director Stuart Charlton has begun sounding out regatta-related spot prizes, to bait the not-a-ticket hook. Prize-giving dance-goers, whether through learning of the spot prizes or altruism, could purchase $25 digital not-a-tickets on the spot. They would also be automatically assigned their not-a-ticket when opting to do that, at a reduced rate, as part of their Mahurangi Action or participating yacht and boating club membership.

Instant Not-a-Ticket Success with Stunning Two-Birds-One-Stone Offer: No sooner was the ink dry on the email canvassing the not-a-ticket concept, than one magnificent supporter of the Mahurangi Regatta had offered the first spot prize, being a limited-edition print of A.D. Blake’s depiction of a-class yachts Thelma, Waitangi, and Rainbow racing past North Head. The canvas prints, produced to raise funds to repair the Thelma’s broken mast, and fund other work while she is hauled out, had all-but sold out, at $750 apiece. artist A.D. Blake

Fifteen participating yacht and boating organisations routinely kick in between $1000 and $200 each, towards the after-match function. At this year’s officers and commodores meeting, hosted by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, it will be proposed that the visiting organisations be pro-forma invoiced $500 each, to bump-up the median contribution from the current $200. Not only would that bring in a total of $8000—the hosting Mahurangi Cruising Club has long since stumped up $1000—but it would greatly improve the odds of Mahurangi Action’s success with its annual, 14-page funding application to the Auckland Council’s regional events fund, for $4000… 

Disclosure The author of this article is the secretary of both Mahurangi Action Incorporated and the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Trust. The account published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine. 

This article is a work in progress; please bear with…