Volvo Ocean Race- Kiwi and Pacific women sailors meet with Team SCA

by Murrays Bay SC Coaches on 13 Mar 2015 Last year, young women coaches at Murrays Bay Sailing Club decided they had a chance to meet Team SCA ocean racers. When Team SCA agreed to a Forum event planning roared ahead.

Coaches followed the boat down from Sanya via social media, researched SCA, crew details and drafted sailing related questions. We reflected on how this is one of the few times when women are competing against men in the same event.
When the invitation was issued more women sailors RSVP’ed than places available.

Auckland sailing men helped at all planning stages, their encouragement was hugely motivational but space constraints focused coaches on who needed to attend.

Team SCA endorsed the idea of bringing in a remote audience from the Pacific Islands. Kiwi women sailors share cultural heritage, ocean, weather and remoteness with southern Pacific Islands and Team SCA agreed to mitigate distance by using technology to spread knowledge.

Ocean racers Stacey Jackson , Sarah Hastreiter and Sophie Ciszek, described their lives as part of Team SCA’s racing crew.

They talked about their non-sailing and sailing background, pre-requisite sailing experience, the application and recruitment process. They described the importance of their long build-up as a team and preparation for ocean racing.

The audience asked about sail performance, how to make speed improvements. One person commented: 'I loved the way Stacey answered my question about race margins - the 1.45% calculation - about their continual improvements throughout the race and being only half way, with plenty of opportunity left to go to whittle away at it and bring themselves towards the front of the fleet. Also, how she related it to the young girls in the Optimist fleet and how that endeavour for improved performance is the same for any sailing class'.

We asked how they maintain strength and physical fitness, on-board and on-shore nutrition, how they keep warm, sanitation, whether they get along with each other in a confined space, how sailors take 'time out', on-board jobs, boat maintenance and social media.

Yes, they receive and they love our social media messages.

Bringing their local weather into the Forum young Samoan sailors, Maria and Diane, focused on their computer screen and listened with hands over earplugs as those of us in the Auckland audience watched a storm bash Samoa. This is hopefully the first of many more Pacifica womens’ online race chats.

What came through repeatedly was Team SCA’s performance as professional endurance ocean athletes. They stressed team work, confidence and trust as being paramount.

Sometimes when you’re face to face with your mentor you turn silent in awe. We wanted to observe and listen.
As professional real-time coaches they wanted us to ask questions so we could learn what was most relevant for our stage of progression.

As one of the audience reflected afterwards: 'The SCA women are just like any other Volvo team, other than having an extra 3 crew. Their approach to the race appears to be the same as the men’s teams. Tactically they have taken some risk, as shown in the previous leg by taking the northern option to Taiwan. So they are as much ‘in’ this race as any other team (refer Stacey’s answer to reducing that 1.45%). From meeting with them and the dialogue that we had, without burying deeper I would say that their obvious and only difference is that they are women.

Without going into detail we saw a possible edge of strength that Team SCA may have on their leg to Brazil. Let’s hope it plays out that way for them.

It was a great privilege to host Team SCA in Auckland. It would be great to see more women taking part, not just one boat.

Thank you SCA Stockholm, Team SCA, Murrays Bay Sailing Club, Auckland and Pacific Island participants.