People often ask me how I got into sailing.
The funny thing is that sailing was never part of the plan.
I didn’t grow up around boats. I didn’t come from a sailing family. I never spent summers racing dinghies or dreamed of crossing oceans as a kid. In fact, before I moved away from home, the farthest I had really traveled was a family trip a couple of hours to the beach. I didn’t get my passport until I was eighteen, and growing up, sailing wasn’t something I viewed as a possibility for someone like me.
Looking back, there was nothing particularly adventurous about my childhood. I was a normal girl who felt stuck. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about seeing more of the world, but I had no idea how I would actually make that happen.
What I did have was creativity.
Both of my parents were photographers, and they encouraged me to document everything. They were always taking photos, making videos, and capturing memories. Long before social media became a career, I carried a camera everywhere. Storytelling became second nature to me, and over time I developed a love for preserving moments and experiences.
At twenty years old, I moved to Hawaiʻi looking for something different. I wasn’t chasing sailing. I was simply looking for a new chapter.
At first, things didn’t go according to plan. I found myself in a live-in nanny situation that quickly became a nightmare. I knew I needed to leave, but affordable housing in Hawaiʻi is incredibly difficult to find, especially as a broke twenty-year-old trying to figure life out on her own. I also felt conflicted about contributing to an already strained housing market when so many local families were struggling to find housing themselves.
Then, by complete chance, I met a group of people living on sailboats.
