Rob Lowndes has put together a collection of Laser newsletters “Lasernews” starting with the first in September 1974 through to the last in 2007. This gives a superb account of the history of the class in Australia and especially in the NSW/ACT District.

As a Laser 50^th anniversary project Rob has had the Lasernews scanned and now posted on the NSW & ACT Laser web site at http://laser.asn.au/?page_id=4946. There is some background Here.

Rob has included a handy headline guide for each edition so you can browse though Laser history by subject as well as timeline.

In compiling this collection and the guide I suspect that Rob has spent many hours combing the newsletters so, if he wasn’t before, he is by now the foremost source of factual Laser legend in the land.

Thanks to Rob for his work on this project and even greater applause for the authors and editors who compiled the newsletters over the years. Also thanks to Paul and Yoko Hargan who managed to collect and collate these pieces of history.

The Australian Sailing Team made changes to their coaching line up for the Paris 2024 campaign.

The team is under recently appointed High Performance Director Iain Brambell OLY.

Carolijn Brouwer and Ben Walkemeyer will join forces to coach the ILCA 6 squad.

Brouwer, the new National ILCA 6 coach, represented the Netherlands and Belgium at three Olympic Games in three different classes. Most recently she has been coaching the Australian Sailing Futures Program Nacra 17 squad.

Brouwer said “I feel really strongly about developing a strong squad culture that not only helps the girls advance their skills on the water, but also helps them grow as people off the water.”

WAIS coach Walkemeyer has been appointed as the Assistant National ILCA 6 coach. He was one of four sailing coaches included in the most recent AIS Elevate Athlete2Coach program, in-part for his work with the Australian Sailing Futures Program ILCA 6 squad.

Spaniard Rafa Trujillo who coached Jake Lilley to a 7^th place finish in the Finn class at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is the new National ILCA 7 coach. The role was vacated after three-time Olympic gold medal winning coach Michael Blackburn was appointed as Australian Sailing Technical Director last year.

The full Olympic class coaching line up is Here.