First Friday in September will be the prelude to the club opening day the next day and the perfect time for cruisers to plan a night on their boat after First Friday to participate in the club activities on opening day including the traditional sail past. I encourage as many cruisers as possible to join in the aquatic spectacle. At end of day the cruising division will head the short distance to Towlers Bay for the evening and next day join in a sail together to Patonga. If the weather is kind, we will embark on an adventure up Patonga Creek in our tenders or kayaks to a walk through the national park to a local waterfall.
At First Friday (6 September) we will be privileged to have with us Matt Hayes who is a former Olympic sailor in the Soling class and a round the world Yachtsman.
Matt Hayes has been sailing since he was a child, amassed a number of Australian Championships in various classes and competed in many world championships in the soling class, finishing on the podium on many occasions. Matt represented Australia at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. In the 1996 Olympics the Daily Telegraph reported:
Hayes’s boat was disqualified by officials for allegedly jumping the race start.
But he said it was impossible to detect with the eye if it was the stern of the Australian boat carrying the letters AUS or the Russian yacht marked RUS, which had broken early.
“After the race I protested and said this was unfair,” Hayes said.
Although officials later sympathised with him they said they could not reinstate the points.
“If we did get reinstated we would have come forth of fifth, ” he said.
He has also been a regular skipper in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race, and has competed in the Admirals Cup and Kenwood Cup
More recently Matt has completed a life goal of his, circumnavigating the world on SV Influencer over 2 years from 2018 – 2020 via the Cape of Good Hope South Africa and is now half-way through his second round the world voyage in his new catamaran via the Suez Canal.
He is back in Australia recuperating from ligament damage in a boating mishap in Egypt. Whilst his catamaran awaits in Cyrus for his return, Matt is available during this brief interlude to bring his story to our next First Friday of his competitive sailing achievements, his controversial Olympic race disqualification and more recently his journey from Malaysia to the Mediterranean via the Indian Ocean and through the Suez Canal.
He will recount the sailing conditions and how he often had to travel in ‘stealth mode’ with a former SAS soldier as one of his crew, his experiences at sea with the French and US navies and managing the threat of pirates together with negotiating with the Saudis for the right of passage to Suez through their territorial waters.
The presentation will be in the form of a fireside chat with Q&A session at the end, time permitting.