The 2023 Oceania & Australian Open and Youth Championships will be held at Georges River Sailing Club on Botany Bay 1-8 January 2023. Sailors refer to this event as ‘The Nationals.
Participating in this regatta is significant for me because it gives me experience in bigger fleets and the opportunity to sail with sailors I haven’t competed against before. This type of experience is not possible sailing here locally in Western Australia. And it gives me more exposure to other people in the sailing world in Australia that can see what I am capable of doing.
What I mean by that is, this is an opportunity where I can demonstrate my skills and improve on these to help me use this as a platform to move onto the world stage. I haven’t any experience yet on the world stage yet such as competing at a world regatta because I missed out on events like this in the Optimist class boat due to COVID.
I’ve got everything I think I need and have covered in training but I’ve never had the opportunity to put into practice in a fleet bigger than 20 boats. Because that’s how it is here locally.
It’s exciting to now finally have the opportunity to get over there and see how I compare to the rest of the country and then potentially the rest of the world.
Charles Allen Toyn 