Hello everyone

Welcome to Level One!  At last, a NWOC orienteering event happening in a forest near you!  Mark Sunday 05 July in your calendars now as our return to world class orienteering terrain in Woodhill Forest. Whites Line is a classic Woodhill Forest map – mature forest, fast running with areas of detailed contours – the perfect map to find your orienteering feet again!
Pre-entry via Enter-O will be available for this event - more details below and on our website. Course planning is under way and we’d love lots of volunteers to help out on the day.

 If you are happy to travel a bit to get your orienteering fix, our friends at Whangarei Orienteering Club (WHO) are holding an event NW of Whangarei on 21 June – all welcome, but please let them know by  17 June if you plan to attend, to help with their planning.

Most events previously planned for June to November will go ahead but there are a few date changes and we hope to re-schedule some of the events that were cancelled, so keep a close eye on our club website for event listings.

 Steve Pyatt has been a club member for a number of years and some of you may have seen him in forest rogaines chasing after two very large and boisterous red setters! Check out the interview below…

Please help us maintain and preserve our strong relationships with forest and terrain landowners – without them, we would have no access to the sport we all love.

See you all in the forest soon

Lisa Mead
NWOC Acting club president and news hound

1. Events.
2. Interview with Steve Pyatt
3. Forest access – no trespassing please
4. Training
5. Membership, helpers wanted

Events
June      Sat 20  AOC Short O (3 – 4.30pm starts) Haydyn Ave , by Cornwall Park/One Tree Hill
               Sun 21  Whangarei O Club- Lovells Farm map – see  further information and pre-entry   https://www.facebook.com/northwestorienteering/posts/1229830043853906
               Sat 27 AOC Sprint  4.00pm, Epsom Campus          

July       Sun 05 NWOC AOS2 (was AOS6) Whites Line, Woodhill Forest.   Entrance from Rimmers Road.
              Start times 10-00am – 12.30pm.

Whites Line is a classic Woodhill Forest map – mature forest, fast running with areas of detailed contours – the perfect map to find your orienteering feet again!
Check out the photos and map snippet below. Courses for all abilities.
Approximate course lengths for Whites Line AOS6:

White: ~2.5km                 Very Easy – suitable for beginners

Yellow: ~3km                   Easy

Orange Short~3.5km      Intermediate difficulty

Orange Long~6.5km       Intermediate difficulty

Red 5: ~3.5km                 Hard orienteering– but less physical than longer red courses, suitable 70 years +

Red 4: ~5km      Hard 

Red 3:~6.5km    Hard

Red 2:~9km        Hard

Red 1:~12.5km  Hardest with challenging navigation  (Men’s Elite 21 recommended)

Club members:  Adult $20      Junior $10    Family maximum $40   Under 10 years  Free

Non-members:  Adult $30      Junior $15    Family maximum $60   Under 10 years  Free

Pre-entry is available for this event here.  Please pre-enter to help with planning and contact tracing details in Level One.

 
Sun 12 Waikato 2 or 4-hour rogaine – Kallarney Lake (Te Aroha). Pre-entry event: entry form here  
Sun 19 AOS3 AOC Forest event – details to come
Sat 26 Orienteering Bay of Plenty: Great Forest rogaine, Rotorua     Pre-entry here.  Info: http://www.obop.org.nz/great-forest-rogaine.html

August  Sun 02 AOC AOS4 Woodhill Forest – Upper Temu Road
              Sun 16  AOS5  NWOC Forest event – venue to be confirmed
              Sun 23  CMOC  AOS6 – Waiuku Forest North

September  02 AOC Spring park event
              Sun 06 AOC AOS7 Woodhill Forest (Mushroom Road)
              Tue 08 CMOC – AKSS Rogaine- Totara Park
              Wed 9 AOC Spring park event
              Wed 16 AOC Spring park event
              Sun 20  NWOC 8 Urban middle distance (Albany)
             Wed 23 AOC Spring park event
              26-28 Sep North Island Secondary Schools Champs (CMOC)

October 8-10 NZ Secondary Schools Champs (Hawkes Bay)
              Sun 18 AOS9 NWOC Forest event – details to be confirmed
              23-26  Labour Weekend – awaiting confirmation of NZ National Champs
              Thu 29 AOC Summernav

Nov       Wed 04  AOC Summernav
              Sat 07    CMOC Auckland Champs- Sprint & Middle
              Sun 08   CMOC  Auckland Champs -Long
              Wed 11  AOC Summernav
              Sun 15    AOC Relays
              Tue 17   AOC Summernav
              Wed 25 AOC Summernav
              Sun 29   NWOC Rogaine – to be confirmed.

AOS = Auckland Orienteering Series – events have 9 courses of varying lengths and difficulty.
AKSS = Auckland Secondary Schools

 A printable calendar of events for the remainder of 2020 can be found here.

Interview with NWOC club member Steve Pyatt
Steve was course planner for the first of the 2020 rogaines before Covid 19 changed life for most of us.  He says: I was due to start a new job as Race Officer with the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron on 6th April (running the Youth America’s Cup and the Super Yacht regatta during the Cup itself) but that job evaporated in the lockdown so Defence kept me on. Lucky really as they were so busy with the Covid response and a cyclone in the middle of it all so just as well the sailing job fell over.

Q. Number of years orienteering?
A. I started proper orienteering on maps as we know them now in 1979 but did some navigation events around controls on 1:50k Topo maps 1973-6.

Q. How were you introduced to orienteering?
A. It was compulsory in the British Army officer training!

Q. Key orienteering achievements to date?
A. Winning the North Island, Auckland and Club Champs age group with one good race. The events were all combined that year and I was lying 4th after the first two days and hoped to catch Michael Wood in 3rd but the top three all blew up e.g. leader Geoff Mead running off the map which he would never normally do! Oh and of course standing on the relay podium with Lisa Mead at the nationals.

Q. Current orienteering project or goal?
A. As I orienteer for fun and fitness, I have no results or performance goals. I am, however, just getting into the organisation of events so the success of the Hidden Valley Rogaine is my immediate goal, whenever it happens!

Q. Favourite map and why?
A. The Flugplatz Achmer/Halerfeld map in Germany (see attached). It was a WW2 Luftwaffe airfield that the RAF hammered so it comprises hundreds of ‘pits’ and ‘ponds’ (bomb craters), half dry, half wet. My favourite MTBO map is Chatto Creek as it’s like Dartmoor where I started and you can ride anywhere!

Q. Map you have yet to experience but aspire to orienteer on?
A. The Worlds Masters ones that I missed as I did sailing for the Games. I have managed some but missed others again since.

Q. Orienteering hero?
A. Marquita Gelderman, as she is not only incredibly skilled but keeps going and winning in younger categories. She has a consistency, reliability and ability to concentrate that I’d love to be able to emulate in both orienteering and my main competitive sport of sailing.

Q. Day job?
A. Defence mapping/geospatial and imagery on the policy and planning side.

Q. Other interests?
A. My main sport has always been sailing (IK National Champ and Olympic trialist 1992) but also windfoiling, kayaking, MTB, skiing, adventure racing and fishing.

That was a control on the Chatto Creek (model) map mentioned above, front door of the pub so my timed trial blew out!             Flugplatz Achmer/Halerfeld map in Germany.

Forest Access: Important -please stick to the rules
Recently a North West club member was found to have accessed Woodhill Forest and a neighbouring farm without permission. The farmer reported this to Police and forest owners, Nga Maunga Whakahii o Kaipara Ngahere Limited (“Ngahere Ltd”) who, after consulting with the club, decided to ban the club member from the forest for the remainder of 2020.

Ngahere have written: “ … I can express to you how disappointing this is. We include our Orienteering groups as part of our Woodhill team, and I had rightly believed that we had the support of the club and its members as it pertains to our management of Woodhill Forest.
It's fair to say that what we'd really like to do is to formally trespass the club member (which normally lasts for a couple of years)…… 

It's only out of respect for your club, (the member’s) association with it, and the relationship we have with it, that we will take a softer stance on this.”

To be clear: the Orienteering community is 100% reliant on landowners sharing their terrain with us. Permission to enter someone else’s land is reliant on a relationship of trust and respect between landowner and an Orienteering club. Clubs work hard to be good guests, in the hope of being invited back. If club members later trespass on that land, our relationship with the owner is undermined and our future access is put in danger. We do not support orienteers entering someone else’s land without permission.

We all understand that Woodhill Forest is an area of world-class Orienteering terrain - miles and miles of intricate contour detail covered in mature pine forest, albeit less covered than it was a few years ago. The ongoing harvesting of trees means every area of standing forest is all the more precious for orienteering.
 

We have an excellent relationship with Ngahere Ltd, who own and operate Woodhill Forest. Having taken ownership of the forest in their Treaty of Waitangi settlement, Ngati Whatua ki Kaipara established Ngahere Ltd to manage the forestry operation. The Ngahere Ltd team were unfamiliar with Orienteering at first and, to be fair, we are smaller and quite different in nature to most other forest users, moving around as we do. World Masters Games 2017 allowed us to work closely with the Ngahere Ltd team on a major event, and showcase our sport in a wonderful way. Since then, through respectful cooperation and professionalism, our developing relationship with Malcolm, Tania, Wiki and their team has been one of real trust and cooperation. For example, we suggested a new arrangement for training access in 2020. Ngahere Ltd were receptive and agreed to give it a try at a reasonable price. This was great because it showed we have a genuine good faith relationship. Details on the new monthly training access will be provided soon.

It is a question of integrity. If Malcolm, Tania and Wiki will make an effort to understand and accommodate Orienteering, it is our responsibility to try to understand and accommodate them in return. Ask yourself this: have I ever bothered to think about forest access from their perspective?

Woodhill is a working commercial forest. Forestry operations are ongoing and the location of operations changes frequently. Tree felling and extraction is extremely dangerous work and neither harvest teams nor Ngahere Ltd can afford to risk orienteers randomly appearing in their work area.

In addition to harvest gangs and logging trucks, the forest is busy with other commercial and recreational activities, most of which are incompatible. Ngahere Ltd permits some forest users to be in a specific area, and other forest users to be in different parts of the forest at different times. Film crews, hunters, motorsport events, equestrian or adventure events... you name it. Only Ngahere Ltd (and Tania in particular) knows who is supposed where on any given day, and whether it is safe for orienteers to be in the forest.

Malcolm Tania and Wiki take their H&S responsibility seriously. If we are on their land, our safety is their liability. They have a system for managing our safety: it’s called a permit. It’s not that hard to arrange.
 

You can enter Woodhill Forest with a permit. Do not enter Woodhill Forest without a permit. Trespassing endangers the club's access to the forest for events, and erodes the relationship of trust we have been developing over many years. This is completely unacceptable. Your training run is not worth losing the whole forest. Please, just get a permit.

MapRunF Courses at Browns Bay, Torbay and Rothesay Bay
AOC has been created some training runs for people to get out and do. There are now maps in the Browns Bay, Torbay and Rothesay Bay areas so NW folk might like to give it a go. The map can be found on the Auckalnd club website or here:
http://www.orienteeringauckland.org.nz/assets/Uploads/AOCStreets-Browns-Bay-May2020-6.All.pdf
The instructions of how to get MapRunF on your phone and the maps are all on  the AOC web page or here:  Anyone can do them - there is no charge.

Helpers wanted Sunday 05 July
Nick Harris and Dave Middleton have planning underway for our first forest event of the year on Sunday 5 July. Annemarie and Jan will be looking after the Sport Ident side of things but we would love lots of volunteers to help the day run smoothly. No experience is required to help with erecting club tents and putting up toilet tents, manning the registration desk and handing out hired SI cards (the event is pre-entry, so this will not be a busy job), helping at the start. Also, offers to assist/ coach newcomers.

We would also love some volunteers to help pack up when courses close around 2.00pm and to collect controls – a great opportunity for more training!

If you can help in any way please contact Lisa Mead on mead10b@gmail.com or Mobile 021 1359631.

Do you have graphics and design skills?
We are looking for a club member(s) with graphics and design skills interested in becoming involved with designing materials (flyers, certificates) and helping with the look of the website for a major event. This could be a perfect project for a student. Contact Annemarie for more information: northwestorienteering@gmail.com

Membership
Many thanks to all those of you who have already paid your 2020 membership – we think that the busy calendar of events for the second half of this year will help make up for the events cancelled or postponed due to Covd19.
We encourage everyone to renew their membership as this will entitle you to members’ rates at the upcoming AOS series events, free entry to the Auckland club relays and eligibility for the 2020 National Champs which are likely to be held at Labour Weekend. In addition, we support club members with travel grants – this year the Junior Camp will be held in December in Nelson.
Details of the membership rates and the club bank account can be found here– no need for existing members to log i n or re-register.

 Stay safe and see you in the forest soon!