This season seven youth members of BYS have started up a BYS Youth Sports Boat squad, making use of the club J70 to train and race in. Over the Australia day weekend, four of our members, Ethan O’Brien, Hannah Danks, Hayden Harding and Alex Bolton raced in the Sailing Champions League Asia Pacific Qualifiers, and came fifth overall. This qualified the team for the Sailing Champions League Open Finals, which will be held at Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron in the beginning of April.
Matt Hunter-Scott, Ethan O’Brien, Alex Bolton, Ed Warner and Harriette Singh will also be competing in the J70 Nationals which will be held in Blairgowrie over the Easter long weekend in April, and Zoe Blochlinger, Hayden Harding, Ethan O’Brien and Harriette Singh will be racing in the Sailing Champions League Youth Final in Newcastle the week after. The club has been kind enough to support us in all these endeavours, and we are very grateful for their help so far.
Looking forward, we want to be able to share our passion for sailing with more youth members of BYS. We hope that next season we will be able to create a bigger program where we will be able to incorporate multiple types of racing, including fleet racing, teams racing and match racing. The team also wants to foster a closer relationship with youth members of our neighbouring club, Sorrento, as a few of our members recently went to Tasmania with Sorrento to participate in 2K racing at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania. We look forward to representing BYS at many more regattas around Victoria and Australia!
To keep updated on our progress at all these regattas, keep an eye on the newsletter and also follow us on Instagram @bysyouthsquad. If you’re interested in the program please don’t hesitate to come and have a chat to any of us, we would love to get as many people involved next season as possible!
