awards night

Melissa Yeomans

Our Aussie Sailing Community

Last night I attended the Australian Sailing Awards. I was able to take our DeckHardware Ambassador Lauren Gallaway as a thank you for all that she does. Lauren not only supports us in return for our support.  During the school holidays in the lead up to the Sydney Sailboat Expo she came into the office to assist in some of the work that needed doing.  Then on the weekend of the Sydney Sailboat Expo she assisted us with taking care of Instagram as well as doing interviews. It was nice to be able to say thank you.

The awards are a wonderful moment of celebrating sailing as well as catching up with friends old and new. It was wonderful to hear that the decision has been made to introduce an Australian Sailing Hall of Fame. I can think of so many names to be included in this list from the racing, cruising and exploring side of sailing.

It was incredible to see Liesl Tesch almost speechless as she received the President’s Award. So well deserved! Liesl is such an inspiration for so many of us. From her Charity work, who she is as a person, her competitive nature, I could go on.

One of the highlights though was seeing Alistair Murray take out the Lifetime achievement award. Alistair organises the International Sailing Summit which is I believe a fantastic chance for our sport and industry to discuss what matters.  Though a competitor in business through his role at Ronstan I am pleased to say we get on very well and I was so pleased to see him recognised for all he has done for Sailing and the Industry.

Male and Female Sailors of the Year Lisa Darmanin and Tom Burton are incredible role models for Sailing. They simply love being on the water no matter the type of boat and talk of how our sport means you can sail with family, friends, girlfriends and our sailing community. Tom’s speech in particular, was a highlight! To see Tom grow in the role of Olympic Gold Medallist and hear him express how he feels is fantastic. Knowing that when he gets the chance he will be able to inspire so many. Now he just has to figure out what he is sailing next!

Melissa Yeomans

Yachting Awards and Sailing Chix

On Friday night the Sailing Chix and I headed to the Australian Yachting Awards!  For all the winners check out the link.  It is always a great night getting to see Australian Sailors celebrated.  There were more than 230 guests attended the event at the Byron Kennedy Hall in the Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park, Sydney.  The three of us managed to catch up with friends along with spreading the word on our new Radio Show.  The feedback we had on the show was fantastic!  Thanks so much everyone for the support.  As a sponsor of the Australian Sailing Team the Yachting Awards is certainly a highlight.

Nina Curtis and Liesl Tesch certainly are two of our biggest advocates!  Love them so much!  Good to know we have some other awesome sailing chix wanting to see our new venture succeed.

Saturday morning we then woke up early to be on air!  We kicked off a little early and still did not manage to cover everything!  We will be backing it up in the next show.   Here is our show update from Yesterday:

Jam packed champion chat!

Well what a show we had for you this morning! So much went on last night at the Yachting Australia awards that we will just have to roll over the after party to cover more interviews for you next week!

Today we did chat to Cam Williams from Channel 9, Mark Spearman who took out the Youth Sailor of the Year award, and of course our great interview with one of the Volunteers of the Year, John Middleton and Mike “Fletch” Fletcher who was honoured with the Yachting Australia Lifetime Achievement award.

We did get to meet the Minister for Sport, it was great to hear about how her son fell in love with sailing at the launch of Discover Sailing at the Canberra Yacht Club last week. We are hoping to have her on the show in the next few weeks!

The Honourable Kate Lundy, Minister for Sport presenting the Sport Promotion Award last night

On top of all of this (yes it was busy here in the studio!), we chatted live to one of the winners of Yachtswoman of the Year, Nina Curtis of ONLY Racing and of course Randy from Bangin’ the Corners! Fantastic to have them both on the show! Beau of Bangin’ the Corners is of course “Nathan’s brother” – one of the recipients of the Yachtsman of the Year award last night, along with his crew Iain Jensen, as well as Malcolm Page and Mat Belcher, and Tom Slingsby. Yes a three-way tie!

It was great to see so many of our past guests up there taking out awards last night! Of course Liesl Tesch and Dan Fitzgibbon took out the Sailor of the Year with a Disability! What an awesome year for our Sailing Chix with Nix advocate! Matt Allen also presented the SOLAS trusts award, a great cause that we all need to support as sailors.

If you missed the action today, or want to catch up on what we have been getting up to over the past few weeks check out our Past Shows page. Today’s show should be up in the next few days!

As for next week, well we have interviews with Phil Jones, CEO of Yachting Australia, and we were also lucky enough to catch up with Victor Kovalenko the medal-maker himself! These interviews and more from the 16 footer States, the Farr 40′s and a number of development programs are all happening next week!

Massive thanks to those who chatted with us last night and today! Until next Saturday, enjoy the southerly stream this weekend, and look forward to talking sailing with you next Saturday from 8am EST!

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