“Our team is just one chapter in a much bigger YD story, built by the generations of sailors who came before me. It’s been a real privilege to represent the club, and now Australia, and to speak tonight on behalf of the current YD group.”
At the 2026 Annual Yachting presentation, Daniel Kemp shared a few words about the RPAYC’s Youth Development Program.
It is a privilege to be asked to share some reflections with you tonight on the Youth Development Program, or “YD” as it is known on the streets. This year’s program started 3 weeks ago, and it is my fifth and final year of participation.
Unlike many of my YD teammates, I came to the program with a uniquely abysmal sailing resume.
In March 2018, when I was 14, my sailing journey appeared to be all but finished. After scoring three lasts in the Laser Metro Championships on Day 1 at Drummoyne Sailing Club, I decided that perhaps my attention was better served focused on my school studies. Or on my fledgling cricket career, where I was described as the team all-rounder, but was – uncharacteristically for that position – neither good at batting nor bowling.
So it was that, aside from the odd Twilight race on a Friday afternoon on Sydney Harbour, I did not compete in a competitive sailing race for four years.
Around March 2022, my brother D’Arcy asked if I wanted to join YD. He was taking on a skippering role that year and wanted me on his crew. Although he was too polite to say it, I am convinced that the sole reason he asked me was to find someone who could make his otherwise light team close to the weight limit.
I initially declined his offer, worried that giving up my Saturdays for training and Friday nights for the gym might burden my social life. However, in a moment of introspection, I realised that one of the products of attending an all-boys High School was that my social circle was…. Limited. On balance, this is probably the reason I agreed to join YD.
To this day, it is one of the best decisions I have made.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with YD, it was founded in 1993 and is built around keelboat training and match racing, with teams competing across Australia and New Zealand – and, of course, the Harken International here at the club each November.
On paper, the results speak for themselves. The program has produced America’s Cup winners, Olympic medallists, and sailors on the World Match Racing Tour.
But while the program is ostensibly focused on sail training, at least from what I have found, the benefits extend far beyond that.
It gives you structure and discipline – especially at a time when life can be pretty unstructured. It introduces you to friendships and communities you wouldn’t otherwise find. And it gives you the chance to compete at a really high level, without having to put everything else in your life on hold.
In May 2022, I attended my first YD Saturday morning training session, which commenced at 7:30 am. D’Arcy had told me that tradition holds that the door to the Jack Gale Centre closes at 7:31, and should you be so unfortunate as to meet a closed door, you would be under an obligation to swim from the Centreboard lawn out and around the moorings and back. While I have never done the swim, I am reliably informed that the cool July water does a sufficient job in snapping you out of whatever you got up to the night before! Thank you for that advice, Charlie Verity!
On that same training day, I met our YD coach, Rob Brewer. I had heard of Rob from my days sailing optimists, where he was a quasi-mystical figure who held the elusive title of Australian Worlds Team coach.
What a grim moment for him, I thought, when I asked on day one what a spinnaker was. Jokes aside, Rob, who is now Head Coach here, has been a monumental force in driving the YD program in recent years and a source of wisdom in sailing and life.
Before too long, D’Arcy and his team, which somehow included me as the mainsheet trimmer, were headed off to New Caledonia for our first international event.
Now equipped with the knowledge that a spinnaker was a type of sail, I thought that we were destined for success. However, it became apparent – for reasons that may or may not have involved eating some diesel-covered apples that had been maliciously handed to us by some supporters of the local teams – that we would have to wait a little longer for any match racing success.
At the end of 2022, for reasons still unclear to me, I was selected to steer a YD team at the club’s Harken International Regatta. It was a regatta that remains etched in my memory for two reasons.
First, it was the one and only occasion I have received a sportsmanship warning, which, for context, occurred following the so-called Kemp v Kemp race. Apparently, the Umpires did not like the way D’Arcy and I conversed about the rules with each other at the start.
Second, and more importantly, it was the first time I sailed with Charlie Verity and Lachie Wallace. Soon, D’Arcy became too old and too boring and got a job working as an Engineer. With Charlie, Lachie, and newcomers Belle Holdsworth and Louis Tilly, we started training regularly together and developing our skills as a team.
Our first regatta together was in Wellington, New Zealand. Because of our very limited university student budgets, we decided to stay at the cheapest accommodation we could find. All appeared in order until on the first day of the event, while trying to unlock a lock-box to access our room’s key, a man with long dreadlocks, deep face scars, and partially masked with an unbranded hoodie approached me and, leaning down, whispered in my ear:
“Welcome to the jungle, kiddo.”
Rob, who had made the pivotal mistake of booking accommodation at the same place as us, has never allowed me to book accommodation again.
But on almost every subsequent trip we have done, we have not needed to find accommodation. One of the unique aspects of the youth match racing circuit is that many host clubs provide billeting, in which club members host you in their homes for the week.
Whenever I explain this to non-sailing friends, they seem to think this is an incredibly foreign concept. But if anything, I think it is demonstrative of the level of community that exists in sailing.
There are three families I would like to briefly mention tonight who we have had the distinct privilege of staying with three times – Marty & Martina Jurat from Royal Freshwater Yacht Club in Perth, Daniel & Kelly Fong from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, and Dave & Julie Hirz from Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Beach, California.
Each of these families have provided nothing short of extreme kindness and hospitality. On reflection, when I look back at the past few years, it is the time off the water developing friendships with these families that I will really miss when I age out of youth regattas at the end of this year.
We’ll be back at Dave and Julie’s place in Newport Harbour for the Governor’s Cup later this year. The scenery on the Harbour is quite something. Every jetty there has a flagpole, and every flagpole has an American flag – each one bigger than the last. But among all that, Dave and Julie still fly the RPA burgee we gave them on our first visit.
Of course, it isn’t always wholesome family dinners and early nights. Anyone who has travelled on the youth match racing circuit knows that the real cultural exchange often happens after racing. Perhaps I won’t share certain stories – what happens on tour stays on tour – but one particular moment does stick in my mind.
It involved about 40 sailors jumping from Pete Farrugia’s back veranda into his swimming pool at about 1:00AM on a Monday morning after the Harken regatta last year following a somewhat strange game of blindfolded lifejacket inflation.
Anyway, on perhaps a more serious note, YD has also taught us the basics of how to campaign and what sets apart simply attending a regatta as opposed to being in it to win.
If I reflect for instance on our campaigns for the national championships, in 2024 we arrived without much intention and with a bit of a rogue mindset. The lack of discipline quickly becomes evident in the way we sailed. While we still managed to finish 2nd, it was a far cry from the high quality of sailing that we produced when we won the regatta last year following a deliberate and organised training campaign.
Turning then to the future, in 3 weeks from now, our team, consisting of Belle, Hayley, Louis, Lachie, and I will travel to Denmark for our second stint at the Youth Match Racing World Championship. The regatta will be in Blu 26 sport boats, similar to the Elliot 7s.
We are the sole Australian representative team and will be lining up against a field of the best youth teams in the world, including the current reigning world champions from France. Over the past few months, we have been training hard. The competition will be fierce, but we are determined to put up a strong fight for the trophy. We are incredibly grateful for the Club’s support, our training through YD, and also the help of other sponsors including Vaikobi and Red Pumps Concreting in supporting us.
After the Worlds, we will have a quick break before Charlie, Louis, and I head over to California for my final Governor’s Cup in late July.
I am acutely aware of how lucky we are to go to these events and to represent Australia and RPA. To do so with my closest friends is an opportunity which, as I’ve hopefully illustrated tonight, had its genesis in the YD program and the doors it opens – whether that’s youth match racing or, for some of us, the chance to step into offshore campaigns with members like Richard Hudson, whose support of graduating YD sailors has been extraordinary.
Our team is just one chapter in a much bigger YD story, built by the generations of sailors who came before me. It’s been a real privilege to represent the club, and now Australia, and to speak tonight on behalf of the current YD group.
With any luck, our trajectory over the next few regattas will look markedly different to my performance at the 2018 Laser Metro Championships… or, for that matter, my cricket career.