Early sailing years and beyond...

I grew up in Grafton, Northern NSW. The greatest asset the town has is the mighty Clarence River, the largest eastern flowing river in Australia. My father Malcolm Eggins had started sailing when he was about 18 years old in a Vaucluse Senior (VS). He then started building his own boats and boats for his brothers and other club members. The river was a good training ground with light to moderate, gusty, shifting wind conditions.

SABOTS

I started sailing at the Clarence River Sailing Club when I was 8 years old. My first experience was crewing in Sabots, I then went on to skipper 'South Ex' one of 4 club boats my family built under our house. Andrew Landenberger, Atlanta Olympic Silver Medalist (Tornado Cats), was my crew back in those days!!



THE VAUCLUSE JUNIOR

After way too many years in Sabots I moved on to Vaucluse Juniors (VJs) - one of the best training boats for teenagers on the planet! They are an 11 foot long, flat bottomed planing machine designed for 2 kids. The crew sit on wooden planks with their feet on the side of the boat. They are extremely challenging to sail well, they teach all you need to know about trim and balance. My first VJ was a 24 year old cedar ply boat that dad had built for my Uncle Kel. We rebuilt it and had a couple of good seasons on it learning the ropes. My sister Lynette crewed for me, which was a lot of fun. My second VJ was a second hand boat from Belmont 16ft Skiff Club, named Rob III. I renamed the boat Rapture (after one of my favourite Blondie songs).


Rapture competing in the annual Clarence River Bridge to Bridge Classic

It was a fantastically fast VJ. I had a couple of great little forward hands over the years. Andrew Blakey and Scotty Marsh were excellent light weight crews with great balance and skills. Unfortunately my fathers Title commitments meant I wasn't able to sail in State or National Titles, I think we would have acquitted ourselves extremely well.



SAILBOARDS

We used to sail for high school sport on Wednesday afternoons and afterward I'd organise sailboard races for the club members. That was back in the day when just about everyone who sailed boats also owned a windsurfer. We used to get regular fleets of up to 25 boards! Not bad for a small country town. I sailed a Dufour Wing which was a pretty fast board at the time. A group of us also took up wave sailing which was pretty radical and extreme in those days. We'd have been right at the cutting edge of a new type of sailing without really knowing it. I later bought a couple of Division 2 boards and raced them for a couple of seasons, although they never gave the same satisfaction as racing in boats.

RAAF SAILING TEAM

After some of the best sailing years of my life I then joined the RAAF and had to take an enforced break from the sailing for a short while. I managed to get myself on the RAAF sailing team in 1985, sailing Tasars in team racing events against Navy and Army. We usually held selection trials for a week on either Sydney Harbour, sailing out of RANSA in Rushcutters Bay, or from the Navy College on the shores of Jervius Bay. Both excellent sailing venues. I had 3 years of sailing with the Team, being Team Captain for 3 years (running selection trials and doing some coaching and Team Racing instruction & strategy sessions) and was Team Manager in 1987. We finally won the Interservice trophy from Navy in 1987 after an 11 year undefeated record by Navy. The 1987 RAAF Team had two NS14 sailors, a 16ft Skiff skipper and a very skillful 505 skipper, so we were able to sail a good series against some very talented Navy opposition (including one ex Tasar World Champ!). The teams were always fun people and great to be around.



16 FOOTERS & OTHERS

During this time I sailed on many different types of boat, including Flying Fifteens, J24s, a few assorted yachts all out of Lake Macquarie Yacht Club at Belmont near Newcastle. I was also invited to skipper a 16ft skiff sailing out of Stockton Sailing Club on the Hunter River. It was an extremely old boat and we were in the water more than we were on top of it, but it was a fun season.



NORTHY YEARS

I moved on to 'Northies' - Northbridge Seniors (NS14s) in 1990 when I had the opportunity to buy Dad's last NS he ever designed & built called 'Tornado'. She was a beautiful flying machine with a foam fibreglass sandwich hull painted metallic blue and white with Red Cedar ply decks and laminated timberwork everywhere. There followed 2 great years of competing (broken by the demands of RAAF service).


We won the Clarence River Sailing Club NS14 Championship and later went on to a 9th place at the NSW State Titles on Tuggerah Lake. There were over 100 boats in that title, those were the days! Andrew 'Shrimp' Forman was my crew on the northy, he kept me honest and we worked together well on the boat, hardly had to say a word, we just clicked as a crew. The B&W photo below was taken at a heat of the NSW Traveller's Trophy held on the river at Port Macquarie in a howling nor'easter. The next day was another heat on the Manning River at Taree over a marathon course around the islands. A pretty good weekend with conditions that suited us for 2 back to back wins. We were both extremly fit and the boat handled well and we always had stacks of boatspeed to burn in most conditions. Tornado was an absolute dream to sail.




Unfortunately I had to sell Tornado when posted to the United States at the end of 1992 for 3 years flying with the US Navy. I sold the boat to Ian Ward, ex Moth World Champ. The family will one day buy it back to keep as a tribute to Dad's skills. It should really be in a maritime museum.

US NAVY

While in the US I raced 420s and Lasers on Wednesday afternoons on the Chesapeake Bay sailing from the Norfolk Navy Base. My USN mate Les 'Spanky' Spanheimer crewede for me when we could both manage to get away from the flight schedule. Chesapeake Bay has an amazing maritime heritage. The various maritime museums are a must see for the boating nut. The Eastern Shore has regular races for Skipjacks and Chesapeake Bay Log Canoes - a radical boat!!



INTO THE VOID...

I returned to Oz in Dec of 1995 to a posting in Canberra. I just wasn't keen to sail on Lake Burley Griffin and NS14s didn't hold much interest for me. I was caught up in a heavy work load and was then posted to RAAF Tindal in the Northern Territory. The closest sailing water to there is 3 hours drive north in Darwin. Once again workload kept me from the water. I also contracted encephalitis from a mosquito which damn near killed me and has left me with a post viral fatigue/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) illness. So I faced a few years of no sailing... Life is just not the same without sailing and being around boats.

PORT STEPHENS

I was posted to RAAF Williamtown in mid 2000 after completing Navy Staff College in Sydney. To get myself back into sailing to help with my health situation I joined the local Port Stephens Sailing & Aquatic Club (PSSAC) in 2004. I bought a Maricat for ease of sailing and to just enjoy being out on our beautiful waterway. It was the only cat in the club! The old thirst for competition motivated me to buy a Laser Radial from Michael Mills of Nelson Bay Laser Sales so I could race against the other guys in the club. It must have been a moment of complete madness! I raced for a couple of seasons on and off depending on the CFS. I enjoying being back into the competitive side of sailing again, even though these days I'm just not as physically able or mentally sharp as before the illness.


The Laser is a challenge to sail well, very physically demanding and unforgiving in a breeze. I guess that's why they make a good Olympic Class, you need to be in training and extremely fit to be competitive at the top level of the sport. I enjoyed the challenge of it and there are a great bunch of people at PSSAC. There is a link to the club website to the right. They run a couple of excellent regattas every year. Port Stephens is one of the best locations in the World for sailing! I'm just amazed that there aren't more people involved in the sport here - but thats another topic for another post...