Hobie sailors Saipan ‘Athletes of the Month’

by Shan Seman, Saipan Tribune on 6 Oct 2006 Tony Stearns and Janet McCullough were selected as male and female athletes of the month by the Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association.

Stearns and McCullough earned their awards after an impressive performance in yachting. The two placed fifth overall in the 2nd Annual Hobie Asian Championships held in Hong Kong from 30 September to 02 October.

The two were up against stiff competition as 35 teams from 10 countries, including the best Hobie sailors from Asia, Australia, and Fiji were vying for supremacy.

In all, Stearns and McCullough sailed well in 11 races, with weather conditions varying from very light winds to very heavy winds. What made the experience memorable also was that the two defeated all but one team at least once.

According to Stearns, the four teams that finished ahead of them were from Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea. The Thailand, Singapore, and South Korea teams are the top Hobie national teams for their countries and are all full-time professional sailors with full-time coaches. The team from Australia is the reigning Hobie 16 Grandmasters World Champion.

Other teams included the best sailors from Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Fiji, and Guam.

‘In terms of how we did, we did very well,’ Stearns said during an interview yesterday. ‘We've done really well in Asia the last few years, in the Philippines and up in Japan, but this was a much more competitive fleet and it's a different kind of race than we've done in the Philippines.

The racing in Hong Kong was typical round the buoy races, and for us, we tend to do better in the long distance races in the Philippines just because of the racing format, but we felt really god about how we did in Hong Kong and just the competition that was there, there were some really good sailors,’ Stearns said.

Stearns indicated that the team was actually expecting to finish at least in the Top 15.

‘We were actually hoping to be in the top 15, and we'd thought we'd be doing well to be in the Top 10, so to come out fifth, we felt really good,’ he said.

With many other commitments, Stearns and McCullough are not able to sail too often, and compete in only three or four regattas each year.

‘These days, most of our sailing is actually off-island competitions because we're so busy with other stuff. We try to get off-island three or four times a year and do races either in Japan or the Philippines or the World Championships. Unfortunately we haven't done a lot of sailing the past six months or so, so we were feeling a little rusty, but usually when we get out on the boat, it's like riding a bike. You kind a feel pretty good pretty quickly,’ he said.