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2011 SA SAiling Youth Championships

This annual regatta was hosted by Hermanus Yacht Club. A bumper entry resulted in an excellent event. Stofvlei was filled wall to wall with dinghies and catamarans! Strong wind caused some racing to be cancelled - the whole of Wednesday and Tuesday afternoon was lost. But big fleets of Optimists, Dabchicks and Teras showed that there is a growth in sailing.

The SAS Northern region showed its strength by winning in the Laser Radial (Stefano Marcia), Laser 4.7 (Marcello Marcia), Hobie 16 (Simon Bonarius & Charlie Hammick), Hobie Dragoon (Kevin Fourie & Stephanie Goodyear), Hobie 14 (Douglas White) and Mirror classes (Ryan Robinson & Jaco Bester).

The SAS W. Cape region still has overwhelming strength in the Optimist and Dabchick fleets, with Dabchicks being won by Jeremy Foreman and Optimist won by Daniel Spratley.

The Tera class still has its strength in the S. Cape, with the George Lakes sailors James Hellstrom and Nathan Page taking the top spots.

Go to the Results link above for the detailed results.

SAS Northern Region October Newsletter

The October is availabe for download here

This issue has reports on a tornado hitting TCC, Mountain YC and Komati YC news, hectic Middle of Dam racing in October, NSRI rescues on Vaal Dam, Mistral Nationals, Hobie 14 SAS NR Championships, Radio Laser News and more. Also how to get your SAS membership card via the SAS website.

SAS Northern Region September Newsletter

The September issue is available for download here

This issue has coverage on the 2011 All African Games Sailing from Maputo, the NKA Big Boat Regatta, Radio Laser news, MO Summer series and ISAF accredited coaching and safety boat courses.

SAS Northern Region August Newsletter

The August issue is available for download here

This newsy 9 pager is crammed with articles ranging from the NKA Provincial Championships, the ISAF Youth Worlds, Lipton Cup, Coaching news and lots more.

Lake Deneys August Newsletter

This issue contains news of the upgrade / refurbishment of the Ladies Ablutions, the LDYC team to the Lipton Cup, the Texwise Brass Monkey series, a COF weekend in November and an island shaped Super Yacht!

Download and read it here

2011 Northern Region Laser Masters Regatta

It was a great week end at Witbank Yacht Club, 18 Lasers in total, all sorts of wind from 12 knots down to 2 knots. As well as the familiar names, the event attracted several newcomers to the ranks.

Colin the Race Officer managed to get 7 races in - 4 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

Well Done to Leon De Raay, the new (old) Masters Champion, de-throning Martin Jackson (last years Champion). Leon scored 5 firsts, allowing just one to go to another stalwart, Clive Whitburn (2nd) and one to Phil Bennett (3rd).

The South African Team at the 2011 ISAF Youth World Championships

France has maintained its firm grip on the ISAF Nations Trophy, after winning it for the 3rd time in succession, with Spain coming in second and Poland taking third place. Team RSA was 23rd in the list of nations.

The star performer for South Africa at this event was Stefano Marcia, who ended up in 6th place in a fleet of 49 Laser Radials. He was challenging for a place in the medals at several stages during the regatta.

In the Girls Laser Radials, Jessica Deary was 34th, in the Girls 420 class, Rosey Finn & Heidi Burger were 27th. In the 420 Boys fleet, Edu Lehtinen and Joshua Rubinstein started off well, but then fell back in the scores. They ended up in 21st place.

In the 29er fleet, Alex Burger & Alex Lehtinen finished in 21st place. In the SL16 (catamaran), the team of Matthew Whitehead & Calene Loubser ended up in 9th place (fleet of 14).

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Radio Controlled Laser
May 2011
Northern Region News Letter

Once in a while the weather Gods smile on the RCL sailors, as they did for our National Championships, and so they did for the last meet 25th April. The wind in the most perfect direction with some very tricky shifts to keep everybody on their toes, smooth water and a perfectly laid course (guess who laid it) and we were off to a wonderful days racing, unfortunately yours truly had to leave to collect our absent bridge officer from O.R.Tambo. Liz Tough very kindly stepped in to fill this spot. Not being there makes it difficult to report on the whole event.

The results are attached that can tell part of the story.

It was great to have Uncle Reg with us sailing RCL50, he keeps threatening to retire but we won't let him as he is too much fun to have around. Stuart Tough RCL97 certainly left his mark by beating Andrew Fletcher RCL34 and giving Wali RCL75 a good run for his money. Val Beaumont RCL116 showing steady improvement but was upset the "Toy Boy" I had promised her didn't pitch up (private joke).  A late arrival but good to see back on the scene was Reinette Fourie RCL131 who would certainly have been with the boys in the results had he sailed all races. All in all a splendid day out.

Next Meet: P.S.C. 14th May 14:00 for 14:30

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South African Sailing (SAS) has become the third International Sailing Federation Member National Authority to receive ISAF Recognized Training status for their National Training Programme (NTP).

ISAF Training and Development Manager Dan Jaspers and ISAF Inspector Richard Percy visited four selected national training programme centres in Cape Town, Pretoria, Durban and Mossel Bay during their six day inspection, as well as a number of other centres along the route of their 4,000 km road trip.

ISAF Inspector Richard Percy said of the Inspection and visit to South Africa, "The South African Sailing National Training Programme has proved itself to be robust and worthy of ISAF Recognized Training status.

"It is clear that the legacy of the SAS Programme will enable greater numbers of children and adults to participate in the sport of sailing.

"SAS and the South African Olympic Committee (SASCOC) made a long term commitment to the development of sail training and over the last two years have set an example to many other sailing federations worldwide by their hard work and dedication to this process."

Rob Holden, ISAF Training Scholarship graduate and National Training Manager for South African Sailing explained what the Accreditation means and how it came to be, "After eight months of aligning all sail training in South Africa to the National Training Programme, we came to the Inspection date with apprehension towards the process.

"After six days of inspecting the four selected training centres as well as a variety of others along the way, it has become clear that the process of gaining recognition by ISAF is only the beginning of a long process of maintaining and improving our National Learn to Sail Training Programme.

"I was impressed by the attention to detail and thoroughness of the inspection process, which showed us areas where we can improve. The actual inspection was not as daunting a task as it was initially perceived to be when we first set out on this journey."

During a visit to the Headquarters of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee it became clear that the support of the SAS Programme linked very well with the work of the International Council for Coach Education (ICCE) and their drive to have a International Qualifications Framework for all sports coaches.

South Africa has identified 14 International Sports Federations to trial their Long Term Tutor Development Programme alongside their existing Athlete and Participant Development Programmes and Sailing is one of them. This identification of the requirement for long term mentoring across Tutors, Coaches, Athletes and Participants ties in with the Development of a National Sports Structure document that ISAF is working on and the recent inclusion of ISAF in the ICCE working party on the mapping of national qualifications frameworks to the International guidelines.

Of the coaches he had seen in South Africa, Richard Percy said, "I have been very impressed with the standard of coaching that I have seen here. The structure in which these coaches are now trained will help SAS to link an increase in participation to those who's talent is identified at and early age and then guided by professional coaches to a world class performance pathway.

"Once the sailors have been retained and have decided that competition is the direction in which they wish to go, trained coaches will help make this transition a more signposted process. We look forward to seeing the results over the coming years."

Rob Holden finished off by outlining his thoughts on the transferability of international coaching qualifications, "Now that SAS has ISAF Recognized Training status we welcome coaches from any other 'Recognized' ISAF MNA to come and work in SA. If a country has undergone the inspection and the coaches are from the national training programme then we are happy to recognize their competencies and qualifications."

A full report of the inspection will be available on the Training pages of the sailing.org website soon. For more information on how your MNA can have its National Sail Training Programme recognized by ISAF then get in contact with the Training and Development Department here.

For a look at all pictures of the inspection go and visit our Connect to Sailing Facebook page gallery here.

For more information on Sail Training in South Africa and on all other aspects of South African Sailing, have a look at the SAS website here.
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W. Cape Point Series  - Hermanus

A well attended regatta in pleasant sailing conditions hosted by Hermanus Yacht Club - 131 boats in eleven class fleets. Six races were sailed.

The largest class (by one boat) was the Optimist A fleet (18 boats sailing), won by Dawid Wilson of ZVYC.  There were 8 boats in the Optimist B fleet, won by Alec Webb of MAC. Sonnets, Laser and Dabchicks each had 17 boats. In Dabchicks, first was Jonathan Kukard from Jason Gray (both MAC). The Lasers were won on tiebreak by Peter Shaw from Alastair Keytel. Sonnets were won by Andreas Giovannini & Charmaine from Keith & Genevieve Morris (both ZVYC). The 13 boat Laser Radial fleet was won by Matt Shaw from Philip Bendon (both ZVYC). The 420's had 12 boats - won by Edu Lehtinen & Josh Rubinstein (ZVYC) from Sibusiso and Simthembile of Izivungu.

Full Results - here