The Sixt 18ft Skiff Team 2025
by Frank Quealey 29 Aug 22:40 PDT
The young Sixt 18ft skiff team is hopeful a more settled start to the 2025-26 season at the Australian 18 Footers League, compared to the last-minute rush in 2024, and a third season together as a happy combination, will bring even better results than they have already achieved over the past two seasons.
Since the beginning of the 2023-24 season on Sydney Harbour, Jacob Marks (skipper), Alex Marinelli (sheet) and Matt Doyle (bow) have formed a competitive team which has seen it win the 2023 Spring Championship series and finish 12th in each of the 2024 and 2025 JJ Giltinan World championships.
The combination's first season was in The Oak Double Bay-4 Pines skiff. Alex and Matt had both sailed for a few seasons in the 18s, including Alex as skipper of Appliancesonline and The Oak Double Bay-4 Pines, before Jacob joined them in 2023.
At the time, Jacob was a 16-year-old student at The Scots College who, along with his school mate Ben Crafoord, had just been to Weymouth (UK) and contested the 29er World Championship, finishing seventh overall in the gold fleet, after winning five of the seven races in the International 29er Q Series prior to the worlds.
Alex was aware of Jacob's talent, as he had previously coached him in The Scots College sailing program, and encouraged him to move into the 18s in 2023-24, and decided to move himself onto the sheet and install Jacob as skipper for their initial season together on The Oak.
The team's success led to it being moved by the Australian 18 Footers League onto the Sixt skiff for the 2024-25 season as part of the club's progressive program to encourage talented young sailors in the class.
The Sixt skiff had contested the 2024 18 footer event on Lake Garda and, due to shipping difficulties, was late returning to Australia for the 2024-25 season, which meant that Jacob, Alex and Matt were always 'playing catch up' as they tried to set the boat up to their style.
When they finally took control of the boat there was absolutely no time before the first race of the season and it took a while, plus a lot of long hours, to get the sails to fit properly for racing. There was no time for any practice; that had to be done in each week's race.
Adding to the pressure, Jacob was in his final school year and had to miss a couple of the early season races to study for, then take, the final HSC exams.
According to Alex, who manages the team, "It was extremely difficult but we came through it and recorded some good performances. This year we've had time to prepare the boat and make the rigs faster, and we've also had time to do some practice sails."
"We are very determined to more consistently at the top of the fleet. We proved we could do it last year: it was just the consistency and lack of time which we feel was the problem."
First race of the 2025-26 Australian 18 Footers League season, Race 1 of the Spring Championship will be sailed on Sydney Harbour on Sunday, October 12.