ILCA NSW & ACT

The Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club is seeking  a highly motivated Assistant Coach to assist the Head Coach with the Club’s extensive yacht racing, youth development, sail training and cruising programs.

Interested? For more information click here, contact RPAYC’s Sailing Administrator Jenna Walters on 02 9997 1022 or send your résumé to jobs@rpayc.com.au

All Laser sailors are invited to compete in the NB SailSports Winter Sprint Series. This is a series of short races, 3 per day, held at 4 venues Woollahra Sailing Club, Middle Harbour Amateur Sailing Club, Gosford Sailing Club and Double Bay Sailing Club.

This series has been scheduled to coincide with pre-season events already planned at these clubs together with a new one at Middle Harbour.

The format is designed to give everyone the opportunity to get some pre-season racing in a variety of conditions at several venues. The earlier starts at some of the venues is an attempt to catch the best of the winter winds. There will be three races each day total 12 with 9 to count towards the series result. This means you can sail in three of the four events and still get a decent score.

NB SailSports are the sponsor of the series and will provide some great prizes.

As well as providing prizes NB SailSports will have their van at the venues to assist sailors to upgrade their gear. New ropes sails spars and repair kits will be available with Mitch Buckingham able to give advice and provide assistance. They can also arrange bookings for hull touch-ups and repairs and of course take orders for new boats if your old one is not up to scratch.

The Notice of Race is here.

This year Double Bay Sailing Club are running a season kick off regatta on 7th and 8th September.

The Regatta will comprise three races each day with the Saturday start at 12.00noon and Sunday 11.00am. Entry which can be placed at the Club is $40 or $20 for sailors under 21.

DBSC  have an arrangement with Double Bay Public School for trailer and car parking. This arrangement and race details are in the Notice of Race here.

Sad news dual British Olympic Medalist Andrew “Bart” Simpson drowned when trapped under Swedish AC72 Artemis after it broke a main beam when sail training in San Francisco on Thursday 9th May.

More information is in the New York Times here and here.

Photo from AAP.

The RPAYC is hosting its annual Ice Breaker Series this winter starting on the
19^th of May 2013.

You can see the Notice of Race here or contact Sailing Administrator Jenna Walters by phone on 02 9998 3762 or email jennaw@rpayc.com.au.

On 23rd April  the International Laser Class Association ILCA issued a statement covering the ongoing dispute over Laser licensing. The statement outlines actions taken by ILCA and the International Sailing Federation ISAF to ensure the continued supply of Laser boats and equipment and retention of the Laser as an international and Olympic class. You can see the ILCA statement in full here.

Co-incident with the ILCA statement ISAF issued its own complimentary statement which you can see here.

The following message is from James Stewart from Lane Cove 12′ Laser Fleet

“I just wanted to get a handle on how our Arnold Metcalf stacks up against other laser sailors in NSW/ACT or even Australia, He just completed another season with us here in a Radial at Lane Cove & started in 18 races & completed 13 of them.
He was out quite a few times in winds of 20 knots + and finished 3rd in the Radial club Championship.
Not so remarkable you might say, but Arnold is 84 years old being born on 12/12/28. He started sailing at Lane Cove in a Laser around 1975-76, so he was a late starter at about age 48.
It would be good to find out if there are any others of his age sailing.  Maybe he is the eldest ?”

One guy who might qualify except he is a Yank is Harry Heckel who completed his second circumnavigation at age 89.

Then there is the “Cheat the nursing home die on your Laser” man. A mere pup at 64 you can see his blog here and his 50 rules of Laser sailing here.

Woollahra Sailing Club has purchased Laser 4.7 rigs for youth sailors for use on club boats or for loan to members who have a Laser in the family. Jakub, the new Club Coach, is leading youth training with an active youth classes after school and weekends to fit youth availability. Youth members are encouraged to join the youth group in the programs.

The Club will;

• Run a weekday after school coaching and race Sunday program starting in May and running for 8 weeks.
• Have two school holidays 4 day camps which are now fully booked.
• Run winter sailing on Sunday at 10.00am starting on 16th June.
• Run morning (light weather) practice races on Sundays a.m.

Contact Woollahra Sailing Club if you are interested.

Telephone 9371 9805
Email sail@woollahrasailingclub.com.au

The dates and venues for next season’s events are set. You can lock these into your own and your club’s calendars. There is a print friendly version of the event list which includes national and international events here.

Online entries for these events are now open. Just click the Enter or Join tab and select the event.

We are always looking out for good venues for these events so if your club would is interested to host a regatta in the future please let us know.

The South Pacific Masters event is coming on 12th to 15th July at Royal Queensland Yachts Squadron.

This is a great winter event.

The Notice of Race, which includes accommodation information, is linked in our Events Page and you can see it here.

The NoR says that there is limited camping available on the RQYS site. We are assured by Kerry Waraker that this is still the case though you will need to book through the RQYS on 07 3396 8666.

There are lots of accommodation options convenient to RQYS and there are some charter boats available for sailors who want to fly in and fly out for the four day event.

Winter sailing is on at Woollahra from 16th June to 4th August.

• All classed supported
• Development Laser 4.7 fleet
• Sunday 10 a.m. Start
• Rigging area available on foreshore park
• Prizes sponsored by NBLaser

Woollahra Sailing Club
Phone: 9371 9805
Email: sail@woollahrasailingclub.com.au

Tom Burton holds his number one world ranking and won the Mussanah Race Week in Oman.

The event between 10-16 March was sailed in 8-10 knot breezes.

Tom won by six points from Kiwi Andy Maloney with Paul Goodison third.

You can see the results here and the final series wrap here.

The latest edition of the quarterly ILCA publication Laser World is now available for viewing online or to download on the ILCA web site here.

This issue features an interview with the great Brazilian Laser sailor Robert Scheidt.

Also on the ILCA web site here is an update on the attempt by Bruce Kirby to resolve the long running (four year) dispute with European Laser builder LaserPerformance.

If you are interested to know more about this dispute and the legal action instituted by Bruce Kirby to attempt to resolve it then Sail World has a useful summary here.

Thanks to the great organisation at the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club and all who competed we had a terrific Metro Championship last weekend.

Colin Cheng Winning Metropolitan Championship

The weather was kind with excellent breeze on Saturday and a bit less on Sunday to let us recover.

Our PRO Col Chidgey and the start finish crew appreciated the luxury of the Afreds start boat and set a tough assignment with a couple of O3 and I3 courses and one hour long races on Saturday. With just under 3 hours of race time most sailors had a good workout on the water and slept soundly on Saturday night.

Congratulations to Colin Cheng (Standard pictured left), Christopher Anderson (Radial) and Finnian Alexander (4.7) for their convincing wins. Each had all firsts in the six race series after a drop and Colin and Finnian won every race.

Dianne Sissingh braved an injury after being attacked by the boom vang the previous week. She sailed very well to win the Womens. Of the Masters Sean Feeney (Standard Master) and Martin White (Radial GM) did very well to finish second and third respectively in the open fleet. In the youth divisions Christopher Anderson naturally was best in the Radial and Colin Suvak who was 4th overall was best in the Standards.

You can see all the results on the links below.

Standard Rig

Radial Rig

4.7 Rig

There are photos taken by Warrick Crossman on the Dingy Fever Website here.

There are a number of snaps taken around the course on both days which you can view on the links below.

Saturday Photos

Sunday Photos