Vale Sally Louise Gordon

by Lisa Ratcliff on 16 Oct 2009 Sally Louise Gordon, 15 March 1962 – 10 October 2009

Sally Louise Gordon was born in Malvern in Melbourne on 15 March 1962, the younger of Bill and Mary Rose Gordon’s two daughters. The family moved from Victoria to Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 1963 where she and older sister Anne enjoyed a happy childhood moving around but never far away from the harbour foreshore suburbs.

Both girls followed in their mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps, studying at Ascham where Sally showed plenty of sporting flair. But it wasn’t until she reached 30 that she discovered and ultimately grabbed sailing with both hands.

Fresh out of an EastSail learn to sail course in 1992 Sally embarked on a long and colourful sailing career that would eventually take her around the world and to dizzy heights, including the pinnacle, a Rolex Sydney Hobart overall win in 2000 on Kevan Pearce’s SAP Ausmaid, contesting numerous Farr 40 World Championships in the Bahamas and Europe as well as the CYCA hosted Worlds in 2005, and delivering boats across the Mediterranean, Tasman Sea, North Sea and the notorious Bay of Biscay.

In 2000 Sally was named the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s Ocean Racing Crew Person of the Year and she was part of Matt Allen’s top Ichi Ban crew when they were crowned CYCA Blue Water Champions for the 2004-05 series.

Sally’s first Sydney Hobart was in 1994 as the cook aboard Martin James’s Farr 65 Infinity III. Each Christmas for the next 14 years she contested Australia’s most coveted yacht race, putting her equal second as far as the most number of Sydney Hobart races contested by a woman and elevating her to leading offshore sailor. Her list of Rolex Sydney Hobart rides is impressive; Infinity III, Atara, Ausmaid, Ichi Ban, Wild Rose, Flirt and last year on the brand new Limit.

Sally in fact mastered many sports. She excelled at tennis at school and played at state level for the NSW women’s cricket side in the late 1980s, her library full of books on The Ashes and biographies on all the Aussie cricket greats. At the end of the cricket season her devotion switched to AFL and the Sydney Swans, rarely missing a home game. Recently she took up competitive golf, scoring a Royal Sydney Golf Club championship win and playing off a handicap in the low twenties.

Following school Sally travelled overseas and was employed as a nanny and later as a personal assistant at Colliers International and Touche Ross & Co. During the six years preceding the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games she worked for good friend Mike Collins organising the land and transport surrounding the event, only leaving full time employment once her yacht racing schedule became too demanding.

Sally then realised she could carve a lifestyle out of the waterfront. She was a sail maker for a time before putting her superior organisational and clerical skills to use assisting boat owners to complete their paperwork and get to the start line, then stepping aboard as crew.

For past year Sally was the personal assistant to Tim Sheehy, chief executive of the Chartered Secretaries Australia Ltd, where she made many new friends and where a candle burns on her desk in memory.

More recently Sally complemented her offshore sailing with dinghies, her first big step into the Laser Radial Olympic class taken at last year’s World Championship at Terrigal.

She told friends she was eagerly awaiting Sunday night’s World Masters Games Opening Ceremony and yesterday’s opening day of competition. As a mark of respect competitors yesterday displayed black ribbons at Woollahra Sailing Club, where a minute’s silence was held as part of the briefing, and her name will remain on the Laser Radial entry list for the duration of the Games.

Away from sailing Sally enjoyed spending any spare weekend time with family at Avoca Beach or in the swimming pool with Anne and her nieces Lucy and Phoebe. Sally and Anne’s mother Mary Rose passed away last December.

While diminutive in size, ‘Sal’s’ strength of character and serious attitude towards the sport made her a valuable asset to the many owners and crew she sailed with. She kept her fellow crew motivated and performing at their best during the long races with plenty of encouraging words.

She loved to celebrate post-race and, says long-time friend Roger Hickman, when her favourite band, The Wolverines, played ‘Mustang Sally’ at the CYCA or Airlie Beach Race Week, she was about as happy as she could be.

Friendly, reliable, effervescent and happy-go-lucky is how Sally will be remembered by family and her many friends at the CYCA, which she joined in 1993 as a fresh-faced rookie, and the Double Bay Sailing Club, which cancelled racing on Saturday in her honour. The CYCA also cancelled Saturday’s Ocean Pointscore and Short Haul races as a mark of respect.

Andrew Short and Sally were friends for many years but last Friday’s Flinders Islet Race was their first time racing together. The pair had spoken about Sally joining Shorty’s crew on the 80 footer PriceWaterhouseCoopers (Shockwave 5) for this year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, which would have been their sixteenth Bass Strait crossing as part of the great ocean classic.

A friend to all who knew her, the sailing community is grieving the tragic loss of Sally Gordon.