Show Notes
It’s fair to say Erica Dawson has had a big year in 2021 for a number of different reasons. She broke her leg in a training accident only five weeks before the Tokyo Olympics, but made a speedy recovery to take her place alongside Micah Wilkinson in the Nacra 17. She also joined the New Zealand SailGP Team and made history when she became the first Kiwi woman to compete in the high-octane sailing circuit.
Erica reflects on the last 18 months, the highs and the lows. She talks about what it was like to be selected for the Olympics only to go through the uncertainty of not knowing if she’d actually get to go and compete, how she coped with breaking her leg in the leadup to the Games and what her experience was actually like in Japan. She also delves into life on the SailGP tour and what it’s like sail on the foiling catamarans.
Erica is also an advocate for women’s sailing and played a leading hand in the development of Yachting New Zealand’s Women and Girls in Sailing Strategy and talks in this podcast about what she’d like to see over the next few years.
More from Broad Reach Radio - The Yachting New Zealand Podcast
The number 202.9 might not mean a lot to most but is a figure Glenn Ashby has become obsessed about. The two-time America’s Cup winner is now leading a group from Emirates Team New Zealand trying to break the wind powered land speed record. They need to go faster than 202.9km/h on the salt flats of Lake Gairdner in South Australia to do it.
New Zealand has a proud tradition in the round the world race and a lot of that started with Ceramco New Zealand in the early 1980s – the first New Zealand-flagged boat to compete in the gruelling event. It was a campaign headed up by Sir Peter Blake and something that captured the imagination of Kiwis everywhere. But disaster struck on the first leg of the race when the boat’s mast came down in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as the team were vying for the lead. It was a devastating blow for the crew, including Simon Gundry who is today’s guest on Broad Reach Radio.
Karl Budge doesn’t purport to be much of a sailor, but he is one of this country’s leading event organisers having previously turned the ASB Classic into one of the world’s best tennis tournaments. He consistently attracted some of the world’s top tennis players to this country and now he’s looking to sprinkle his magic dust on the New Zealand leg of SailGP.
Karl Budge doesn’t purport to be much of a sailor, but he is one of this country’s leading event organisers having previously turned the ASB Classic into one of the world’s best tennis tournaments. He consistently attracted some of the world’s top tennis players to this country and now he’s looking to sprinkle his magic dust on the New Zealand leg of SailGP.
Mike Sanderson is one of the most successful sailors of his generation. He’s a former World Sailor of the Year, two-time winner of the round the world race including when he skippered ABN Amro to victory in the 2005/06 Volvo Ocean Race, been involved in multiple America’s Cup campaigns, a record breaker, a successful maxi yacht skipper and now co-owner and CEO of Doyle Sails.