Morning-after no-dogs breakfast

Cleaning Up: After two clubs cleaned up 12 kilograms of bacon in 2017, Lidgard Sails will be arriving this year with 16. Not featuring in the branding here is the principal Mahurangi Regatta sponsor, Teak Construction, provider of a row of signs ensuring that there is no ambiguity surrounding the condition, and necessary provision, for booked events in this regional park to be dog-free. In 2017, for the first time in a long time, the massed pre-morning-after-breakfast cleanup failed to occur, leaving a solitary organiser all day to cope with the——dog’s breakfast. image Sarah Ransom

Incredibly, only two do it: Panmure Yacht and Boating Club, and Richmond. Even the race organiser, the Mahurangi Cruising Club, misses out on the best thing after the Mahurangi Regatta.

It started small, with the organising clubs sharing the chore of struggling a full-sized barbecue ashore at Scotts Landing, on the morning after the regatta, and setting up under the macrocarpas at the southern end of the beach.

And helping themselves to some of the chairs hired for the orchestra, not yet collected. Opportunism being Mahurangi Action’s byword, the clubs were offered rubbish bags in return for tidying up after more than their own good selves, and returning the chairs to the marquee, at the end of festivities.

From that impromptu contact, communication and cooperation has steadily built, and now the clubs can avail themselves of a brace of barbecues, and any number chairs, and end-to-end tables forming a breakfast production line that would be the envy of Henry Ford hisself. And leaving a particularly savoury taste in the mouth, Lidgard Sails has taken to supplying the makings, and not by halves—last year 12 kilograms of bacon was fried and eaten; this year the legendary sailmaker is sending 16.

At the mid-year Mahurangi Regatta commodores meeting, all participating clubs were invited to add the morning-after breakfast to their Auckland Anniversary weekend programme, but none appear to have done so. Good things do take time, and if all the dozen participated yacht and boating club were to come ashore suddenly come ashore, catering corps could struggle and bring-your-own would have to prevail. But nor is there any danger, this year, of the institution being overwhelmed, with a 10.42 am low tide—a rude reminder that the extension of longitudinally-challenged Scotts Landing wharf is long overdue.

Last year, through a cascading comedy of errors and omissions, the clean-up of the entire Scott Homestead area was left to one person, and took all of one very long day. This year, the Richmond Yacht Club is planning to storm ashore mob-handed for a 15-minute assault on the task, which, thanks to principal regatta sponsor Teak Construction providing ‘10 number 240-litre wheelie bins’, is a fraction of the chore it once was.

By indulging in serial risk-taking since and including organising the 2004 Mahurangi Regatta Ball, Mahurangi Action might have crashed and burned, such as hit by one too many anthropogenic-global-warming induced extreme weather event, or simply burnt out. But there was always the possibility that the Mahurangi Regatta would turn a corner and find itself on a sustainable course.

Three years into a three-by-three-by-three-year commitment by Teak Construction, that course is looking more and more sustainable, and it is the fierce resolve of the commodore the Mahurangi Cruising Club and secretary of Mahurangi Action to not squander this opportunity.

But aside from being an invitation to the morning-after breakfast—not to mention the pre-breakfast clean-up—to all enthusiasts of the Mahurangi Regatta, there are still significant gaps, with, for example, only one-free-regatta-shuttlebus driver rostered on, on Saturday, between midday and midnight.

Meanwhile, all-comers will be embraced on Sunday morning, with the able-bodied roped in by the respective, after-breakfast, tug o’ war teams, competing for the Richmond cup.

Buon Mahurangi Regatta morning-after breakfast!