Our Youth Development team headed over to Travemunde, Germany to compete in the Sailing Champions League Final. This post event report has been provided by Hugo Butterworth.
Event title: Sailing Champions League Final
Dates: 22nd-25th of July
Location: Travemunde, Germany
Lead-up training for the event
The lead-up to the event was tight as we only had 1 month to prepare for the event and raise the money to travel to Germany. Even against this constraint, we managed to train together a couple of times and get comfortable with boat handling and procedures, but this would all change in Germany as we would discover due to the differences between Elliott 7s and J70s. It was also helpful that Josh, Annabelle and I were already good with sailing together from our experience and training within the Youth Development Program; Rob being the coach of the YD program made him perfectly integrate into our team and was the tactical mind we needed to face some of the world’s best sailors.
Goals for the event
To learn as much as we could in the little time that we were there and improve as sailors, but also see a couple of good results and get among some of the world champions and ex-Olympians.
Highlights
We ended up exceeding our goals and the improvement to us as youth sailors is noticeable. We are super keen to come back and race back in Australia and apply some of the skills we learned in Germany! Even after a shaky start with our results, we managed to get into a rhythm by the final day and pull off a couple of 3rds and almost a 2nd.
We met so many amazing people from all over the world. A key memory we will have is collaborating with the South Australian team as they helped us get a handle of the boats as they had sailed them before.
What’s next?
We are planning to continue as a team and race in many different youth development events. We are currently getting ready for the David Lukins Match Racing Regatta and the NSW Youth Match Racing Championship which are both in September. Looking into the team Hugo and Josh are doing lots of yacht racing and started getting into offshore racing. They have both just completed the Sydney to Southport yacht race. Annabelle is looking to improve her keel boat sailing after just joining Youth Development this year at a young age after just coming out of 29ers. Rob is continuing to coach us in Youth Development and helping the whole squad to improve our sailing. Overall, we are all very excited for what’s to come in the 12 months and hope that we will be able to see this event in our calendars again next year.
Overall
At the end of the day we are all so thankful for the opportunity and the support the club gave to us for this event. We had an incredible time and learnt so much about sailing and ourselves this truly was an experience we will never forget. Just one final thank you to our families and everyone who supported us in our journey we truly couldn’t have done it without all the amazing support we had.
Thank you from Hugo Butterworth, Josh Paulson, Annabelle Sapmson and Rob Brewer to Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, ShoreSide Clothing, Vaikobi, Vicsail Yachting, Vacuwash Australia, North Sails, Doyle Sails Australia and our amazing families the Butterworth’s, Paulson’s, Sapsons and Brewer’s for all the support.
View official images from the event here and the full results here