This past weekend (15-16th June) saw Keppel Bay Sailing Club host their second Women’s and Girl’s Regatta. This regatta came about as Keppel Bay believed it to be important to increase the participation of Women racing, as part of Australian Sailings initiative to promote and celebrate all women and girls involved in this amazing sport. 

KBSC were once again excited to host this regatta, particularly after the success of the 2023 inaugural event. Our amazing sponsors, Crave Surf Yeppoon, and the Queensland Government made this year’s event possible, by allowing us to fly Nina Curtis up to be apart of the event. 

For those that aren’t aware of Nina’s history in sailing, she has grown up sailing, having sailed 29ers, F11’s, Hobie 16’s, 49erFX, and Nacra 17 and Elliot 6m’s. Along with representing Australia at the 2012 Olympics winning Silver in London. Nina is currently representing Australia apart of the Australian Sail GP team as the Strategist. Nina has also been named the Australian Female Sailor of the Year in 2009, 2012 and 2022.

Nina was also involved in racing with some of the sailors during Saturday’s racing. This was the highlight to everyone’s day out on the water. 

Nina Curtis provided an amazing presentation at the Saturday Night Social on her sailing career and how she ended up competing in the Volvo Ocean Race, Sail GP and now apart of the Australian Women’s America’s Cup team. 

Sunday morning saw Nina come down bright and early to provide a workshop with all of our Junior and Youth sailors. Nina’s workshop consisted of discussing the importance of Pre-start routines. It’s safe to say the sailors took all of her information on board and put their pre-start routines into place on racing that day. 
Overall, the whole weekend saw light conditions of westerly’s and shifty conditions. The breeze started to kick in by the end of racing each day, which made for some interesting racing. It was amazing to see father daughter duos, mother son duos, husband wife duos and even those that have recently completed start sailing course race. This is an amazing regatta for KBSC and we look forward to 2025, where we will be sailing from our new Clubhouse.  The overall results saw:

Division 1 - Open Monohulls:
1st Place – Polar Bear Express (Shelby Newton, Myfina Healy, Fraser Platts)
2nd Place – Serentiy Now (Lucia Fee, Andrew Fee)
3rd Place – Water You Looking At (Sophie Baynton)

Division 2 – Open Multihulls:
1st Place – Hobie-1-Kenobie (Christine Newton, Bevan Newton)
2nd Place – Hobie 16 (Karryn Johnson, Anne-Marie Newton, Jared Newton)

Division 3 - Intermediate:
1st Place – Pigs in Space Too Again (Eliza Mann, Peter Mann)
2nd Place – Sea Eagle (Camille Gallais, Stella Kenney, Diane Gallais, Indi Wolf)
3rd Place – Feva 14 (Nora Leon Hernandez, Tommy Crone)

Division 4 - Juniors:
1st Place – Impulsive 2 (Verity Scott)

Division 6 – Green Fleet (participation): Ella Swadling and Eryn Hinton