The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia is pleased to announce that Finn Tapper, George Richardson, Jessica Grimes, James Pagett and Jake Liddell have been selected to compete at Darwin Sailing Club’s Australian Maid Youth Match Racing Championship early next month. It will be only the second time the new trophy will be contested, with Tapper looking to defend the CYCA’s title when Tom Grimes won the inaugural event in 2017.
Having purchased a fleet of Elliott 7s in early 2017, Darwin Sailing Club ran the inaugural event in July last year with six teams from Sydney and Darwin competing. This year, Darwin Sailing Club is expecting a full line-up of 10 teams from across Australia and New Zealand to compete from Wednesday 4 July to Saturday 7 July 2018.
Finn Tapper, who is currently ranked 53rd in the world, will lead the 2018 CYCA entry. Tapper has made a strong start to 2018, stringing multiple third place finishes together at the Nespresso International and CentrePort International earlier this year and will be looking to book his first finals appearance since 2016, when he won the CentrePort Wellington International.
Tapper’s new team line up includes George Richardson on the mainsail who joined the Advanced Squad in 2018. Richardson comes from a strong dinghy background and also competed for the CYCA in the Hardy Cup 2018, where he crewed for Tom Grimes, finishing third in his first match race regatta.
Jess Grimes will bring the most experience to the team having now participated in the CYCA Advanced Squad for three seasons. Jess is the current Australian Youth Match Racing Champion and was also part of the teams at the Hardy Cup and two New Zealand regattas at the beginning of the year. Later next month, Jess will also compete in her first offshore event – the Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race, on-board Espresso Forte.
Bowman, James Pagett returns to the CYCA Advanced Squad after taking a year off to concentrate on studies. His welcome return to the program will see James participate in his first match racing regatta.
Completing the team line-up is Jake Liddell who also returns to the CYCA in 2018 after a year off to compete in the Nacra 15 class. Liddell is a current member of the NSWIS and looking to build off a strong start to his 2018 Nacra campaign earlier this year by complimenting his fleet racing with the CYCA Advanced match racing program. This will also be Jake’s first match racing regatta as part of the Advanced Squad.
Racing will be conducted over four race days with a round robin, quarter finals, semi-finals and finals scheduled for the competition. Racing can be followed live via results on matchracingresults.com
