Teen team goes full tilt for titles
A CREW of three talented teenage schoolgirls, plus one in her early 20s, this weekend will challenge champion adult male and female sailors in the SB20 sports boat Australia championships.
Friends School student Issi DeClerk, 17, will helm Power of Athena in the four-day championship that starts on the River Derwent tomorrow.
A fleet of 36 boats, most from the Hobart fleet, will contest the championship as a lead-up to the SB20 Worlds being sailed here early next month.
DeClerk’s crew is Amy Potter, 15, Meg Goodfellow, 17, and Amelia Catt, 24.
DeClerk co-captained the Friends School team that won the Tasmanian, Australian and InterDominion schools team racing championship this year.
She sailed in International Cadet dinghies out of Sandy Bay Sailing Club, twice representing Australia at the Cadet Worlds, as crew and once as a skipper at the championships held in Argentina.
Potter is also a Cadet sailor and will sail in the 2017-18 Australian championships at Metung, Victoria.
She is a student at Fahan School, as is Goodfellow, who has been crewing on Athena Sailing’s SB20s last season and this season, and represented Fahan school in team sailing and is a Tackers instructor at Sandy Bay Sailing Club.
Catt is a widely experienced international sailor, this year competing in the Olympic women’s 470 class at the European and World championships in Greece.
“We were offered the chance by the Athena Sailing women’s sailing group to race one of their four SB20s and jumped at the chance to compete in the Australian and World championships here on the Derwent,” DeClerk said yesterday.
“We’ve been racing together, and in such a high performance yacht, for only the past few months, but we’ve had a sixth place in fleet and two wins on handicap.”
DeClerk and her crew on Power of Athena is one of five women’s crews entered for the SB20 Australian championships.
The others are Essence of Athena (skipper Claire Dabner), Fire of Athena (Clare Brown), Pride of Athena (Colleen Darcey), Big Ted (Alice Grubb) and Cook Your Own Dinner (Felicity Allison).