Winter Women's Squad - Warming up for Spring
Steven London
Winter Women's Squad - Warming up for Spring
If you’ve been down at the club over winter, you may have seen the ‘Winter Women’s Squad’, with five of our female sailors taking part in a six-session coaching programme led by youth coaches Paige Caldecoat and Dan Costandi. The coaching was funded by SheSails through its ‘Sail Our Way’ grant - a grassroots initiative supporting the goals of Australian Sailing’s SAILING 2032. This is their strategic plan that includes a commitment to achieving 50% female participation across all aspects of the sport by 2032.
Pia and Tory were joined by new members Megan Ross, Gosia Dziedzic and Amy Hargrave, keeping the momentum going through the chilly months and building the squad’s ‘match fitness’ for the spring and summer season. We did a ton of drills, honing our boat-handling skills, with the six weeks serving up the perfect mix of wind to learn in a variety of conditions.
Huge thanks to Paige and Dan. The programme struck the perfect balance between solid foundational skills and confidence-building challenges - including sailing with our eyes closed in the final session. It was about getting ‘outside your head’ and learning to feel, rather than overthink, how the boat responds. Several of the squad went back-to-back, training on Saturday and club racing on Sunday, so watch out for a few dark horses from the Women’s Squad when racing kicks off again in September.
Thanks also to the DBSC Committee for its unwavering support of women sailors. That goes back to 2018 and the founding of The Women’s Regatta, which has since become a regular fixture on the Sydney racing calendar, and to our REACH youth programme under James Tudball, where girls now make up 50% of the cohort. Perhaps even more telling are the long-term pathways DBSC has created for women and other new sailors to keep progressing. There’s Learn to Race coaching with Martin White and the team, as well as Thursday twilight coaching kicking off again soon.
It’s great to hear that hum of camaraderie in the women’s change room after racing - here’s to that buzz getting even louder in 2026/27!
- Tory Epworth