Sixt team leads 18ft Skiff Spring series
by Frank Quealey 28 Oct 2025 22:30 PDT
Pre-season preparation has played a big part in the early season success of the young Sixt 18ft skiff team in the Australian 18 Footers League's 2025 Spring Championship, sponsored by Sixt, currently being contested on Sydney Harbour.
18-year-old skipper Jacob Marks, team manager and sheet hand Alex Marinelli and Swedish sailor Rasmus Rosengren, who is standing in for the team's regular bowman Matt Doyle, lead the six-race series with a total of four points following their narrow victory over Kirk Mitchell's Vaikobi in last Sunday's Race 3 of the Spring Championship.
After Race 1 had to be abandoned when 30-knot westerly winds battered the fleet, Sixt has shown consistency in the two races completed so far and holds a five-point lead over the Lazarus Capital Partners team of Tom Cunich, Marc Chapon and Tim Westwood.
Club Marine (Emma Rankin, Brandon Buyink and Jed Cruikshank) was one of only five teams to complete the course in Race 2's strong wind and repeated the result in the lighter winds of Race 3 with the bigger #1 rig. The team is just one point behind Lazarus in third place.
The team has a bonus coming soon as the crew will be using the 2022-23 Australian champion hull, which formerly raced as Finport Finance, when it returns from a recent international championship regatta in Italy.
Progress points table: (three races still to be sailed and NO discard to apply)
- Sixt Jacob Marks 4 pts
- Lazarus Capital Partners Tom Cunich, 9 pts
- Club Marine Emma Rankin, 10 pts
- Yandoo Tom Needham, 13 pts
- Fisher & Paykel Brett Van Munster, 13 pts
- Vaikobi Kirk Mitchell, 20 pts
- Smeg Ash Rooklyn, 21 pts
- Rag & Famish Hotel Ben Crafoord, 22 pts
- Sotheby's Ballard Property Bec Hancock, 24 pts
- Balmain Henry Larkings, 25 pts
- The Kitchen Maker Lachlan Steel, 28 pts
All other teams have a total of 36 pts
In complete contrast to last season when the Sixt team took delivery of the boat just at the start of the season, Alex and the team made sure that the ground work was put in place throughout the off-season so they would begin the 2025-26 season in a positive mode.
"We performed well at times last season and were determined to achieve more consistently better results in the 2025-26 season."
"As well as receiving the boat later than would have been more beneficial, Jacob was also in the middle of doing his HSC at school. This year he is free of that and has put in a lot of time getting the boat in such good shape."
"We've also done some practice pre-season sailing this year which has allowed us to get a much better start to the season. We now need to keep the momentum going and stay ahead of the curve as we progress through the season, leading up to the Giltinan Championship in March."
"We were delighted to give the Sixt sponsorship its first victory in the 18s last Sunday, now our next team incentive is a determination to win our second Spring Championship (the first was in 2023-24, sailing Royal Oak Double Bay-4 Pines) since we teamed up in the 2023-24 season."
With Sixt's regular bowman Matt Doyle missing for the early races, Alex was looking for someone to fill in for the past two weeks, and it was Emma Rankin, the skipper of the rival Club Marine team, who came up with the man, Sweden's Rasmus Rosengren, who has helped put the team at the head of the points table.
According to Emma, "It's fantastic to see Sixt over the line on scratch for the first time and a testament to the work put in by the regular crew in the lead up to the start of the season."
"They were searching for a fill-in bowman and luckily I happened to know a very good replacement - Rasmus Rosengren, who I met when I sailed the Stockholm archipelago raid in Sweden in July this year."
"Rasmus has represented Sweden in the Nacra 17 and IQ foiling windsurfer, and was part of the crew aboard Artemis Youth Racing in the 2017 Youth America's Cup. He regularly sails the Formula 18 Catamaran and his next adventure is the Cata Cup in St Barths in the next few weeks."
"He mentioned to me at the raid that he was coming to Sydney in October to visit his sister, who has just had a baby, and he mentioned that he wanted to have a go on the 18ft skiffs."
"I said yes and he sailed with me three or four times prior to the start of the season, before my regular crew stepped in. When Beau White and I participated in the raid we learnt a lot from the Swedish sailors so it's been nice to return the favour and the experience we received in Sweden."
An interesting new combination has been assembled for the long running Fisher & Paykel partnership at the Australian 18 Footers League. Led by the class boat builder Brett Van Munster, who has come back to competition to skipper a young, enthusiastic crew of Tom Quigley (son of 1996 Giltinan world champion Steve Quigley) and 18 footer 'rookie' Logan Radford, who is a former champion 29er competitor.
The Fisher & Paykel team is presently in equal fourth place, with the current Giltinan world champion Yandoo team, on 13 points.
Hopefully, the difficult wind conditions of the first two race days will improve in the coming weeks to give the young and new 18 footer competitors an opportunity to show the talent they have shown in other classes on the way to the 18s.
Another highlight of the racing so far has been the 'cameo' skippering appearances of SailGP's Tash Bryant on Yandoo and Australian 16 footer champion Joel Beashel on Rag & Famish Hotel.
Next Sunday's Race 4 (2 November) of the SIXT Spring Championship will be sailed in conjunction with Race 2 of the Club Championship. If early weather predictions of a 15-knot North East winds come true, the race should produce an interesting battle for both line honours as well as the handicap section of the contest.
Tom Needham will be out to consolidate Yandoo's victory in Race 1, but the Yandoo team won't have it all their own way as pressure is sure to come from Lazarus Capital Partners, Sixt, Balmain and Vaikobi.
Sunday should also see the first hit out for the brand new Shaw and Partners skiff, which will be skippered by the 2022-23 Australian champion and 2025 Giltinan worlds runner-up Keagan York.
The League's spectator ferry will follow the race, leaving Double Bay Wharf at 2pm, and SailMedia's video team will live stream all the action, with expert commentary from the course.