TARANAKI REGATTA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 292, 19 January 1910, Page 4

TARANAKI REGATTA.

The balamt'-sheet in >conection with the Waitara regatta is described bv tlie local paper as a sorrv one, showing a considerable deficit." This is indeed unfortunate. and shows that there'.? a strew loose somewhere. In the llrst place, is it not possible to form a regatta club? The committee ill charge of the regatta arrangements now is supposed to be representative of the people, and perhaps it is. lint if there's a deficit there's only the committee bound to bear the burden, which is quite unfair. The principal gainers v.v the regatta are the Waitara peopi'o themselves, and they should be prepared to form a club, so as to guarantee the club's finance. It would be a gvon.t pity to allow Taranaki's one aqiutic feature to become defunct, but there seems some danger of it. The programme needs rc-mo'dclling. The fetish of tho outrigger seems to have cast a rtlight rtver everything else. The regatta is losing that old-time sentimental interest, and its picnic aspect. This is per naps inevitable, for the district is progressing, and the bush picnickers

■hold their revels miles and miles away. Waitara 110 longer sits at the gateway of the bush—the gate is farther removed from us. What to do is to revi»e interest in the regatta is somewhat of a puzzle, but the fact remains that miles there is some bigger attraction put on the affair must Jose its popularity. Were New Plymouth able to send crews to compete, the regatta would be more interesting* to the public here, but whaleboat racing is voted out-of-date bv local oarsmen, and outrigger rowing has been tried in ou r harbor and found want ins. We llope the committee, si.t its meeting to-morrow night, will dcvisu some means of putting the regatta on something like its old popular footing.