General Update 

What an incredible Olympics Australia has had with Matt Wearn winning Gold in the ILCA7’s and Grae Morris winning Silver in the IQ Foil. The new format for the IQ foil has certainly had an impact and is a hot topic of conversation. Brei Whitehead from Townsville Yacht Club finished her Olympic debut in 9th position which is an incredible achievement. Bring on LA 2028. 

Nominations have now closed for the Queensland Sailing Awards.  While the judges deliberate on our finalists, why not book your tickets to the gala event held at Southport Yacht Club on Thursday 26th September from 6:30pm.  It’s always a fun night celebrating our sailing community. https://www.sailing.org.au/events/242739  

During June, I attended the Sport Integrity roadshow that went through National Integrity Framework and Safeguarding Children and Young People Policy. They have some great resources for you club that include e-learning courses, fact sheets and a handy book that you can use for the Do’s and Don’ts for safe practices. https://www.sportintegrity.gov.au/  

 Grant has been supporting Queensland events over the past two months.  The Clermont Outback Regatta, the Frostbite regatta, Youth Week and North Sail in Townsville.  He loves being around our sailing community and helping the clubs get the most out of their regatta’s.  The brand new Townsville Sailing Club's youth regatta and coaching clinic in the June/July school holidays was a great event and I hope that all the NQ junior and youth sailors will make sure they put this annual event into their sailing calendar for 2025. Dates are still to be confirmed but we will be sending some excellent coaches for the clinic! 

Zhik Youth Sail 2024 is now only 5 weeks away and thank you to all the Queensland Clubs for your support of this event, and I'm sure you can't wait to see the new Keppel Bay Sailing Club building!  Yes, the bottom floor will be open! As I write this, we have over 100 entries already, and with it being an Olympic year, we might have a few surprises for our participants. Please encourage all your juniors and youth to attend this event regardless of their experience. Can your club consider how it can support their families/members in attending? Youth Sail Queensland is THE youth event on the calendar and not to be missed. You can read all about it here: https://www.sailingyouth.org.au/statechamps/queensland  

Both the Sailing Summit and Training in Focus Live events were well attended and if you didn’t have a representative of your club at either event, you missed a great opportunity to network with your community and to learn something new.  Make sure you allocate some budget to attend next year.  All four of our presenters at the Summit told stories of success and the workshop on how to increase female membership created some wonderful conversations. You can see all of the presentations here:  https://www.sailingresources.org.au/2024-summit-archive/  

The training in Focus Live event was centered around what good and bad looks like and how each has an impact on the experiences of a participant.  A big thank you to our Senior Instructors who played the difficult role of being bad instructors!  This twist of thinking from a different perspective caused a bit of chaos at the beginning, but the learnings were well worth it and everyone had a great day. 

If you are thinking of making a career change or looking for a way to be part of the sporting industry, there are two amazing jobs in sailing open at the moment at Keppel Bay Sailing Club and Whitsunday Sailing Club.  Check out the details here: https://www.sailing.org.au/about/careeropportunities