Local pride
Newcastle has kicked off their Sailing League, with the region’s best sailors going head to head on Elliott 6s.
15 October 2019
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Monday night was the first night of League Sailing at Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club. It is a concept that is very popular in Europe and America, and is just starting in Australia. The Sailing League conducts fleet racing in identical Elliott 6s. Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club will conduct Youth racing on Monday, with Open age racing on Tuesday and Womens racing on Thursday evenings in the harbours western basin.
“This is a milestone event for sailing in the hunter,” say NCYC CEO Paul O’Rourke. “There will be great viewing along Honeysuckle foreshore.”
The Sailing League features some of the Hunters best skippers, including Joe DeKocke, Richard Howard, Glen Collum, Janease Graham and, Harry Miller racing in a 6 week point score series. The winners will go on and represent Newcastle in the Australian National Sailing League early next year. This feeds to the International Series final in Europe.
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Chelsea Williams is one of the youth sailors sailing with Harry Miller. Chelsea raced in the opening of NCYC’s opening Sailing League regatta having just flown in from winning the Women’s Match Racing Championship up in Mooloolaba.
Currently there is a three way tie on overall points with Harry Miller (Youth), Andrew Miller (Open), and Darby Jones (youth) sitting on top.
All of the youth sailors have been a part of the club’s youth performance program.
Also mixing it with the region’s top sailors are brothers Christian and Sebastian Spencer, who learnt to sail at the NCYC Tackers program. They have since gone on to start racing Flying Elevens at Belmont 16s and training with the club’s youth performance program.
They are now racing among other talented youth sailors. They are a part of Craig Wright’s Team. Craig is a talented young sailor from Teralba Sailing Club who is now involved with the youth squad to gain access to coaches and higher performance fleet of Elliott’s.
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Crowning achievement