A broken wrist while wakeboarding in 2015 turned out to be a pivotal moment for Kelsy. Despite the setback, it led to her first opportunity to helm a boat, as it was the only task she could perform with a cast. This experience opened doors for her and accelerated her career as a professional sailor.

As I write, Cole Brauer should just be finishing the Global Solo Challenge having just spent four months at sea, to becoming the first American woman to race non-stop around the world alone. She took her 457,000 instagram followers with on the journey, allowing them to experience her emotional highs and lows, vicariously through their screens. However on International Women’s Day we thought it would be poignant to jump back 250 years to when the first women ever, encircled the globe, without even a facebook page.

Members with “boat names that denigrate a person, or group of people based on gender, age, ability, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity”, will be asked to rename their vessels or leave the club

Balancing the much needed removal of offensive behaviour from sailing, with not caving in to the “fun police”, is something that we all need to think about whether we sail wooden, plastic, Port Kembla pine or concrete boats.

The child of Cambodian refugees Rita found her way to boats via a ‘curiosity of floating’. This led her to questioning, how do boats work? Having just completed a three month introduction to boatbuilding, this young shipwright is looking for an apprenticeship. Can you help her?

“I have always been a bit eccentric and done my own thing. My mother thought it would ruin my skin and make me unladylike, which it did, and I wasn’t encouraged. So that for me was a great challenge, I did it in spite of everybody.” From teaching sailing during WW2, to commissioning her own boats and founding a magazine - Sheila’s story remains an inspiration.

From dancing at Governors' balls in distant colonies, to evading pirates and meeting armed Indigenous warriors on remote Australian shores, to surviving shipwreck in the wintry Falkland Islands, Rose used her quick pen to record her daily experiences

“But sailing is a pursuit most fascinating, varied, and exciting, in which women can become absolutely proficient, requiring no particular muscular effort or physical strength, only quickness of judgment, and a knowledge, which can be acquired by practice and the opportunity. So any woman wishing to shine in a delightful little world of her own would do well to emulate Miss Pritchard.”

We memorize the rising and setting points of stars and use those to orient ourselves in our physical space so that we can navigate from place to place. I used to think that we would go to things. But that island out there was always there and all you’re doing in your place is you’re making it come to you.

With a couple of recent “barn finds” of Tums with excellent provenance and the legendary YVONNE due to emerge out of the shed after an exhaustive restoration, the class is ready for another growth spurt.

Ginny Gerlach and I share a core passion - to see more women on water. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. The passion certainly comes out in this interview.

Karen Batson is the mistress of reinvention! In this interview we chat balancing work and boats, what it means to take on the job of custodian and, we attempt to answer the question, why don’t more women sail?