Recap: Lady Skippers Day 2024

Recap: Lady Skippers Day – Saturday 3 February 2024
By Sally Law

For those who don’t know me, I’m Sally Law: kiteboarder, sailor, owner of Couta Boat Duchess and passionate about women’s participation in the sports I love. This passion for inclusivity and participation is shared by many members across the club and is overseen by the She Sails Taskforce – Emma Phillips, Kate Hannah, Grace Cockman, Maddie Collett, Deb Kwasnicki, Jack Lewis and Elle Sankey.

Since its inception in 2021, the Taskforce has created a series of training programs, including:

• Introduction to race management
• She Drives Ducks
• She Sails Jubilees
• She Sails Couta Boats

Our aim is to provide women with fun and interactive training in their area of interest, with a focus on increasing female participation in all areas across the club. This programme and the encouragement of all the SSCBC sailing community has seen a significant increase in female crew, skippers, and volunteers over recent years. The success of our program is the envy of sailing clubs around Australia and could not have been achieved without the drive of Ben Fels and Julia Mackinnon and support of the General Committee.

The biggest event of our calendar was last weekend’s Lady Skippers Day. Sponsored by Raw Materials, Zhik and Pommery, together with Jos Law providing the best trophies and tee shirt design on offer throughout the season.

Not a pink shirt or cup-cake in sight, Friday night saw female participants and supporters join together for a glass of Pommery champagne for in-depth discussions about the potential wind conditions for Saturday’s racing. The wind forecasts were not looking kind and with warm weather forecast it had the potential for floating rather than sailing.

This year we had 42 boats participate in the Lady Skippers event. This is second only to the Portsea Cup and shows how important this race is in the annual calendar. Saturday morning saw a north-easterly slowly dropping out, however by utilising local knowledge and previous lessons learnt, our Race Officer, Julia, found the perfect conditions to get us away. It was a beautiful sight for the lucky spectator boats. We finished under a shortened course as the wind dropped out and the heat built onshore.

I would like to thank all the Couta Boat owners for their wonderful support and encouragement, including the owners of Southerly, who I skippered. The atmosphere over the weekend was one of joys in doing something we love and sharing our passion with new participants. We have a truly wonderful community of sailors and volunteers that are the heart and soul of why I love the club.