Bay crews take on world
HOBART’S Sandy Bay Sailing Club has a remarkable record of producing Australian and world champions in various off-the-beach racing dinghies, and this week another team of talented and dedicated young sailors is heading overseas for another world championship.
Four crews of International Cadet Dinghy sailors from Sandy Bay, a small club in the sand dunes behind Nutgrove Beach, will join four crews from Victorian clubs in representing Australia at the World Championships in Germany later this month.
The International Cadet is sailed by a crew of two young people, with the lightweight crew often as young as nine or 10. The small 3.2m LOA dinghy carries a Bermuda rigged mainsail, jib and spinnaker.
Heading the Tasmanian (and Australian) team is Hurricane, helmed by 16-year-old Jacob McConaghy with Sam Hooper, 9, as crew. Hurricane is the top-ranked Australian boat and McConaghy is the team captain.
Other Sandy Bay sailors in the team are Little Devil (Archer Ibbott, 15, and James Gough, 12), Schmoken (Jack Allison, 15, and Luca Groves, 11) and Ikon 10 (Hugo Allison, 13, and Grace Hooper, 12).
Sam and Grace Hooper are brother and sister while Jack and Hugo Allison are brothers. Hugo is already a world champion, having crewed for another Sandy Bay sailor, Sam Abel, in winning the Cadet title in 2015.
Coached by Geelong sailmaker Tony Bull, who has secured two world titles in the past six years, the Australian crews are undergoing intensive training in preparation for this year’s event, which is expected to attract more than 80 teams from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
A full-on training camp at the regatta venue at Bodstedt, Germany, runs from July 19 to 25 in the week leading up to the championships, which are from July 29 to August 3.
In addition to the national training camps, the four dedicated Hobart crews have continued training on the River Derwent until last weekend.
The training camps, their ongoing sailing at Sandy Bay Sailing Club and the final preevent training will concentrate on boat handling and teamwork, boat set-up, theory, strategy, tactics and rules.