My favourite female sailor #3
December 22nd 2006 18:14
Natasza’s aim is to be the first Polish woman to sail solo around the world. She was training herself and was picking the brains of every solo skipper she could find. Eventually she travelled several times across the Pacific through the Panama canal and worked in the Caribean as a skipper on a 20 metre racing yacht. She sailed her Sydney Hobart and raced in several trans Pacific races and joined in two handed mini trans Atlantic races and solo 7.5 metre races to build up experience for a solo trans Atlantic race. At this juncture I must appologise if I have the sequence of events wrong or some of the subject matter. Whenever Natasza spoke to me it was quickly in heavily accented English of which I understood about 70% in her emails to me she writes phonetic English which sometimes stumps me. So if I make mistakes it is probably erring on the side of caution. She is in my mind a bigger heroine than I make her out to be.
Currently I believe she is sailing her solo voyage in a 7.5 metre yacht and is being financed at least in part by the Polish government and she is being monitored by school children in her progress. I have been to her website, which I searched and found via Google copying in Natasza Caban. It is written in Polish, which is not one of my languages. I have lost touch with her, as she became more involved in raising funds and training for her event.
Here is a woman whose beauty was enough to have two men fight over her with knives on a square-rigger in the Thames near London. She hitchhiked all across the length and breadth of Europe chasing her lover and sailing instructor as well as the opportunity to sail on boats. Her first paid job on a boat was for an obscure European prince who insisted on her climbing both masts of his 75 foot ketch twice a day. In the morning she would run a wet cloth over the masts then climb up again to rub them with a dry cloth then the same again in the evening. This anal retentive behaviour I think was his way of getting his rocks off, watching a beautiful woman climbing for him. I make a lot of her looks but I should not let you think that she is some bimbo. When she turns thirty she is booked into uni to do law and prior to that she wants to get as much sailing adventure done in her life as she can. There are a lot of female sailors out there who have the determination, grit and skills to do as she does. Some have eclipsed her dream in their endeavours but I don’t know them.
| 43 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
