“If you’d told me a month ago that we’d place fourth overall at the Australian Women’s Keelboat Regatta racing FAIR WINDS I’d have said you were dreaming. Perhaps I still am.”

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?

‘Women Should Own Boats. Women are very enthusiastic about sailing, but comparatively few of them own and sail their own boats. If a few more women owned boats they would be placed on the same footing as men in yacht clubs, as are the women in England and the United States’. So wrote the inspirational Shelia Patrick and first female member of CYCA - Charlie Salter takes us inside her story.

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.