olympic sailors

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!

Listen to the Show:

Melissa Yeomans

A big night in Sailing

The Australian Sailing Team last night proved they are well on their way to Gold at London 2012.  4 Golds, 1 Silver and a Bronze in Weymouth!  What a fantastic effort by the team!   Check out who they are on the Australian Sailing Team website.

A huge thanks and congratulations to the folks on Sail For Gold Radio who did a fantastic job on the Commentary!   Following it on Twitter whilst listening to their great commentary was almost as good as watching live video!

Sponsoring the Australian Sailing Team with our Liros Rope has been a huge commitment by us at DeckHardware.   It is great to see them getting such fantastic results and it makes the hard work to be able to afford to sponsor them more worth while.  We are also extremely thankful to Pietro from PROtect Tapes who has also been supplying members of the team with what they need.  It truly has been such a fantastic support of not only us but the Australian Sailing Team.  Thank you Pietro!   For those who have not seen it yet check out the PROtect Tapes 49er Kit put together by the PROtect Tapes team and Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen.

As the London Olympics get closer I realise I will need a lot of coffee to join the online twitter cheer squad each night.  A huge shout out to @mainsheetmeda, @nic_douglass, @soueaster on a fantastic effort last night!  #goaussies #AussieSailorsRock

Join us on twitter!  @deckhardware

Also a big thanks to @craigheydon and @AusSailingTeam

I have some big days and nights in my future with the Sydney International Boat Show happening at the same time as the London Olympics.   I hope you will join me in the late nights cheering on our Olympic Sailors in their quests for Gold!  We all should be so proud of the efforts and sacrifices that they, their coaches, managers, physios, sponsors, family, friends and all who support them in their quest to do the best they can.

I hope the Australian Media realise how big this could be for Australian Sailing and that they show more support for our fantastic sport and our amazing representatives.   They do us proud and deserve more recognition.

I don’t want a repeat of last time.  Being promised by the networks that the medal race would be shown live only to have to find a way to watch it online whilst several news crews watched the family and friends of Nathan Wilmot cram around a laptop to enjoy the moment that they too were all a part of.

It takes many people to climb a mountain.   It truly is a team effort so thank you to those sailors who have also recognised our contribution to their goals.  We are just a small company trying to do what we can for people we believe in.   A special thanks to Nath and Goobs for keeping us all hanging in the Medal race.   I could not ask for more from two people we sponsor.  You always do your best to ensure your sponsors are acknowledged so thank you.   It makes a big difference.

#goaussies   #AussieSailorsRock