Whitsunday Sailing Club, Airlie Beach, Queensland

Whitsunday Sailing Club

Whitsunday Sailing Club, situated in Airlie Beach, North Queensland, is the home of Airlie Beach Race Week and at present the most northern Optimist-supporting sailing club. The club supports offshore as well as off-beach sailing, and has a very active programme for junior sailors, with events hosted at Airlie Beach and Bowen.

Our Optimist sailors, “The Whitsunday Optimist Sailing Team” (OptiSquad), sails 4 times a week, with training on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays after school and on Sunday mornings, with club racing in the afternoon.

The OptiSquad is small…. we have 8 Optis, and is growing steadily (two years ago it was 1!). Our sailors are: 

Klaus Lorenz (coach), Eva Lorenz, Brendan Hoffman, Hamish Swain, Cedar White, Aidan and Ty Gummow, and Mack and Elliarna Mitchell. Klaus is now sailing a 420 with Ollie Annear, Eva has competed in one green fleet and one open nationals, and Hamish in one green fleet nationals.

The whole team, excluding Mack and Elliarna, the newest members, will be competing in the Nationals in January.

We have a fantastic place to train, and can sail every day after school. For most of the sailors, the school buses go past the club. We do have one disadvantage though, and that is competition. We have to travel to Mackay (150km), Townsville (300kn) or even further to find more boats (Sabots) to race. We are working on converting the Sabots into Optimists!

The club is very supportive of junior sailors, and always helps us with uniforms and travel to the nationals.

 Whitsunday Sailing Club is very excited to be able to hold an Optimist Regatta as part of Airlie Beach race week this year. We are hoping for a good contingent of sailors from the South to make this a great event. Full details will be posted on the QIODA site later.

 Our motto is:

training harder… sailing faster… having more fun

Have a look at our club at <www.whitsundaysailingclub.com.au>