Rattler Sailing

Thanks to everyone who has reached out in support this past week. The long wait for some kind of resolution, first from the commodore of the NZ Multihull Yacht Club (3 months), then from Yachting New Zealand (6 months), and now from Sport New Zealand (15 months), all while multihull club committee members have verbally and sexually harassed me at regattas that had nothing to do with multihulls, has been draining and led to my departure from any serious yachting in Auckland (which I've been told was the end game of the problem people at the NZMYC, so, yay, you won? Lol).

Glad to have found a place elsewhere on the water. Endlessly annoyed at the toxic boys' club behaviour that killed my passion for racing multis in Auckland. Deeply disappointed in the weak, incompetent leadership that enabled a bad apple to spread rot among the bunch.

‘I feel let down’: Complainants to sport integrity agency wait 15 months for resolution Delays in high-profile investigations are fuelling concerns about the watchdog agency's ability to deliver timely outcomes - with some athletes walking away from their sports.

Motutapu was awesome and I've got lots of editing to do, but first: I went for my second solo harbour mission tonight.

Here's a story of some very silly progress towards the 10,000 hours 🙃

A 10-15kt easterly has come in and it will be seriously blowing from tomorrow until the weekend, and I wanted to go for a burn. The harbour right by my house looked great, and I decided to try launching from the dinghy dock at St Mary's Bay.

My plan was to tack to the Westhaven exit then reach across the harbour and back (purple line in the first map pic) so I didn't battle too much upwind on my return.

Anyway... The green area in that pic covers as far as I got 😂 I launched all right (green circle). The breeze (white arrow) was between 0 and 8kts, with big gusts and shifts, plus the tides are massive right now so I couldn't have my daggerboard down in either of the blue areas.

There were two 18-person dragonboats and their chase RIB following the orange path and avoiding the paddlers added a few tacks. The wind was higher in the harbour (solidly 12 gusting 16) but getting steadier. I started being able to use the harness.

Then I fell in, by the superyachts. Which was refreshing, because I was pretty warm in my wetsuit. I got up and got going and made good headway until I fell in again around the docks south of the car ferry (yellow circle). Then, I heard three sharp blasts from them. I think they were waiting for me to exit before they departed, until they realized I might take a while 😂 I let them leave and get a good head start before I continued my battle, but I was aware that I was pretty fatigued and hadn't actually gotten into the challenging stuff yet.

I was around the green X when I fell in again, and I knew I was beat, so I turned around and boosted downwind back to the dock 😂

Had a good chuckle about how successfully I had failed and went to Swashbucklers for a beer and hot chips 🍻🍟 where I ran into some legends fresh off the Round North Island race: Andrew and Nick from Akonga. Nice to catch up with you both and hear some solid salty sea stories from your adventures! 🥳

The Windsurfer LT Waiheke Interdominions was very, very, very rad (even considering I was coming off of a very, very, very awful cold 🤧). We raced from Auckland to Waiheke on day 1, spent 3 days racing in light breeze on the north side of the island, and when the wind finally joined the party on Tuesday, a handful of us chose to sail back to Bucklands Beach as well (with a cheeky Browns Island volcano summit stopover).

I sailed over 70km/35NM across the 5 days, with the longest race being 22km/11NM in under 10kts of wind. Lots of time to practice my pumping skills... 🥵

Spending time with an awesome bunch of folks who travelled from as close as Auckland Central to as far as Wellington, Australia, and Japan was a huge highlight! The energy across the fleet was next-level: all positivity and competition and working to be better and uplifting each other.

I won First Lady (a relatively easy feat, being the only woman who sailed the qualifying races for a trophy haha) and had such an awesome time hanging out at the back of the fleet.
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The main reason I've chosen to pursue the Windsurfer LT is that the Auckland race series is destination-based, giving me access to local islands that I lost when I sold the Wolf (well, unless I pay for a ferry ticket, lol, ew 😜).

The resounding feedback from our out-of-towners was that we'd taken them to a very special place unlike anywhere else they'd been before, which really drove home how important these waters are to me. Being able to share the wonder of some of my favourite spots in our big blue backyard was an unforgettable part of this regatta and I'm so grateful to have been part of it.

This weekend we are off to Motutapu for another adventure, and I cannot wait.

Huge thanks as always to the organisers and our chase boat team and our shore support champions. You all knocked this event out of the park!!!

Went to a music festival, found a boat. What a rad time at this past weekend!

The fact that they had a couple P Classes rigged up for anyone to take out was a delightful surprise (shoutout Ivan!), as I was more than a little itchy knowing the forecast back in Auckland was perfect-perfect-perfect for training.

Thanks to Liv for going for a wander around the lake with me to investigate, taking the pics, and most of all for being willing to jump in and take the silliest sailing lesson 😂😍 love a good sidequest 🗺️🏴‍☠️🦜⚓ arrr

Really good after-work session at Point Chevalier today.

Shiftier winds than I expected by the shoreline; you'd think I'd have understood that after one or two crash tacks, but... I did not.

Wasn't the strongest breeze to start but it picked up to double digits/low teens about 20min in and after about 15 minutes in that I really felt like I was finding my groove. Had a good downwind run practicing gybes before heading back into wind and tide towards the boat ramp. I really wanted one last send, but I went swimming during that tack and realized my daggerboard was very close to touching the bottom (Pt Chev is very tidal), so I called it a day.

(Note to self: study the damn charts in that area, dude)

I'm in an interesting place in my learning right now where the day-to-day gains are very tiny, but I know they're creating massive growth.

That said, ugh, learning is hard.

Joined the crew on Bizzarre for my first Wednesday night race in a few months last night. Was a bit rusty on the bow and it has certainly been a minute since I was last on a big boat, but man, I think we did okay 😁

Lovely warm seabreezes and a reachy course home saw us hoisting the masthead spinnaker 🍌 peeling to the A5, and a final peel to the A2 🍌 was a fun tight finish, with owner Barry saying we wrangled some of the best sail changes he'd seen on the boat (loved that!)

Thanks for having me along, team! Look forward to doing it again 🥳

✅ first solo open water session.

Done. And. Dusted. 👏
Sailed from Hamilton Rd Beach to Chelsea Buoy in Auckland Harbour. Beautiful conditions, with the perfect amount of seastate for me to practice on.

I knew I'd done it properly when I got back to shore and an older couple from one of the houses overlooking the beach came out to tell me they'd been watching me and it was "impressive." They were both past retirement age and the woman said she'd been windsurfing this morning but not gone nearly as far as I had. I was like, ummmm, YOU are the impressive one! What a goal to hope that I am still doing this in 40 years 🙏

Final race of the SSANZ - The Official Group of the Short Handed Sailing Association of NZ triple series tomorrow and it's not too clear what we're in for beyond a rainy start 😅 I've been watching my barometer bounce like it's on a trampoline all week and have pretty much given up on planning for anything except us having a fun time in *some amount* of breeze *generally from the SW* 👍

Keep ya fingers crossed that Pete and I make good choices and score well! 🤞🏁

Had one of the best dolphin experiences of my sailing life today during the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron (RNZYS) women's day out today.

Also probably a couple of my top 10 "overheard VHF radio conversations" when men (boats were allowed to have 50% or fewer male crew) radioed the committee to either argue that they were not over the line early (they were, actually, and everyone saw, because we were also on the start line when the race committee radioed a recall for them), or (curiously) to confirm that they had finished first (they had, but also, um, did you need to broadcast that?)...


**kup

Got sick twice in two weeks 👎
Basically haven't moved more than a couple 15 minute walks every 2 or 3 days 🫩

Pete and I have a 100NM SSANZ 2-handed race next weekend, and I missed our training window due to being couch-locked 🤧😷
Racing fully crewed both days this weekend (that's soorrrt of like 2-handed practice, right?), and my whole body feels like it's turned to jelly from lack of movement...

Which is all to say: THIS LUNCH RIDE FELT SO GOOD!!! All I had to do was go to the bank but man it was delightful. The sun is out and warm today, the jade is blooming, my lungs feel clear-ish and my throat mostly doesn't hurt, and I even managed to hold back from sprinting (okay, except for that one stretch... 😏)

I'm so ready to be healthy again 😂 let's hope the weekend (and the 3 weekends of racing that follow) doesn't kick my arse back down the hill 😅🤞

Roll on winter sendy sends!!! ⛵💨

The Windsurfer winter series has been so rad. I've got a long way to go before I'm racing hard but joining in for the starts and then tootling off to go train on the side of the course has been great for my skills.

I finally started learning how to use my harness today! Definitely going to be a game changer once it starts to click 😀🧠

Thanks to Antoinette from Captain Darwin for these pics at our first series a couple weeks ago 😁 getting close to confident enough to bring the GoPro out soon too 😊