Twenty years after yachting legend Chris Dickson won his first national match-racing championship, he collected the title again on his home waters of the Waitemata Harbour.

The former America’s Cup skipper won 19 of 21 races over four days with a new young crew.

His only losses were on the first day of round-robin racing in the Lindauer championships.

The crew — Jeremy Lomas, Craig Smith, Craig Satterthwaite and Stu Clark — beat youth skipper Ryan Parkin in the semifinals 2-0. In the final, Dickson beat Phil Douglas 3-0 to earn automatic entry into next year’s Steinlager-Line 7 regatta, one of the world’s premier match-racing events.

Dickson, who has a Tornado campaign for the Sydney Olympics, said it was an important regatta to keep his sailing hand in, but also for sentimental reasons.

“It’s been 20 years since I won my first title, when I was tactician for my father. “I mustn’t have even been a teenager then,” he joked.

Ironically, Dickson was winning the title as his old cup nemesis Dennis Conner passed by, towing his broken boat home from the Louis Vuitton Cup series on the Hauraki Gulf.