Bees buzzing for worlds after late start to sailing

Not long after Sandra Bees took up competitive sailing at the age of 52, her doctor asked her a question that completely floored her.
“At the end of my check-up, he said ‘Is everything okay at home?’” Bees recalls. “I was like, ‘Yeah, why do you ask?’
“The doctor said, ‘Well, you do have a lot of bruises’.”
She then had to explain that learning to race yachts meant a fair few knocks and collisions with boat paraphernalia, often at speed. “Even now I’m covered in bruises,” Bees laughs.
That’s not surprising, considering the 59-year-old has been on a crash course in learning to race a 10m yacht with her more experienced partner, Andrew Hall, before they contest the world two-handed offshore sailing championships in Lorient, France, later this month.
“If someone had told me 10 years ago that I’d be off to France to compete in a world championship sailing event, I would have said, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous’,” Bees says.
“I didn’t think that when I was a couple of months off turning 60, I’d be doing this. I have little bits of arthritis here and there, but thankfully I’m still physically fit.
“I just hope I can show that women shouldn’t let age or even a lack of experience stop them. If you really want to do something, just give it a crack.”
Bees and Hall are a couple on and off the water, having met on a yacht in a Friday night rum race on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour six years ago.
Now the pair will fly the Richmond Yacht Club burgee off the coast of Brittany, lining up with 22 mixed-gender crews from 16 countries, racing for the world double-handed title on identical Jeanneau Sun Fast 30s.
Without a Sun Fast 30 to train on, the couple have borrowed five different boats to sail on the Hauraki Gulf – sometimes for 30 hours at a stretch – allowing Bees to get to grips with short-handed sailing. Hall says she’s been a fast learner.
“We’ve had a little team of guys who’ve been helping to lift Sandy’s skill level. And everyone’s saying she’s improved drastically in the last three months,” Hall says. “Sure, we’ve had our share of little mishaps – nothing’s ever easy.”
Like the time they were sailing off the Coromandel at 2am, and the boat did an “unplanned crash gybe”.  Bees was hit on the head by the boom, but Hall had managed to push her away so she didn’t suffer the full impact. He then fell onto the boat’s coaming (the raised edge that stops water running inside the boat) and injured his ribs.
“Although Andrew hurt himself, he probably saved my life,” Bees says. “If that boom had hit me full force, it would have done some serious damage. But I just had a headache, and he was in agony for a couple of weeks.”
But Bees admits she has suffered from imposter syndrome.
“Andrew’s been sailing all his life, and while I’ve picked up racing quite quickly, this is stepping up another level. It makes me a bit nervous,” she says. “I wish I’d learned 40 years ago. But it’s better late than never.”
Bees grew up on a dairy farm near Te Aroha in the Waikato, riding horses, playing netball and swimming competitively. When she moved to coastal Whangamata, she learned to sail in dinghies for fun.
As an adult, she had a partner whose father owned a yacht, and so she did a lot of cruising around the Gulf, and offshore as far as Tahiti.  
“I don’t know if I was blind, or maybe happy in my own bubble, but it never occurred to me that a woman could race yachts,” Bees says.
“I loved watching the round-the-world race fleet sail into Auckland, and I was absolutely inspired by the women’s crew on Maiden. Yet I never thought it was something I could achieve – but now I know it’s possible, regardless of age.”
Seven years ago, Bees (who’s a product manager for insurer NZI) was chatting to a former colleague, Andrew Aitken – who also happens to be the immediate past commodore of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.
“I’d just been through a lot of changes, and Andrew asked me ‘What are you doing with your life?’ I’d been doing a lot of skiing and playing a lot of netball, and my knees were getting a bit sore,” Bees says. “I told him I needed to find a different sport I could do into old age, and he invited me to come sailing.”
She joined the weekly rum race crew on Aitken’s Ross 10.66 yacht, Margaritaville, and loved it.
“But what I really loved was the women on board on the boat. They just adopted me straight away. They hugged me and shared all their knowledge readily with me,” Bees says.
She also met Hall, 56, on board Margaritaville, which became nicknamed ‘The Love Boat’ (they weren’t the first love match on the yacht).
Hall is a sailmaker who owns bespoke Auckland sail loft Sail IQ, and already has an impressive offshore sailing resume – including the Sydney-Hobart Race, and the Round North Island and Round Three Kings two-handed races with Andrew Aitken.  And he was a willing and patient coach for Bees, who wanted to sail further.
“We’re quite lucky that once we step off the boat, any words said in the heat of the moment, or out of frustration, stay on the boat,” Bees says.
“And our communication with each other has improved. It’s been good for our relationship, seeing each other in a different light.
“We’ve also come to recognise when one of us needs to rest, and trust in each other that they can do what they need to do while you’re sleeping. It’s really about working as a team – and with our third mate, the auto helm.”

Bees has become used to the solo night shifts at the helm, especially when dolphins swim alongside the boat. “They’re my companions at night; I have little conversations with them. They look incredible swimming through the phosphorescence,” she says.
She also loves sailing at speed, and has been guilty of going off in search of a nice offshore breeze, while taking the boat off-course.
“There have been times when I’ve finished the manoeuvres and gone downstairs and I can’t stop my legs from shaking, with the adrenaline going through my body,” she says.
Bees and Hall have self-funded their campaign to get to the world champs at a cost of $40,000. They’re grateful to the Auckland sailing community who’ve lent the couple their boats to train on, and Kiwi company Back Country Cuisine, who’ve donated freeze dried meals to keep up the sailors’ sustenance when they head offshore.
Once they arrive in Lorient next week, Hall and Bees will spend three days finally sailing on a Sun Fast 30. Then they’ll line-up in a 12-hour overnight race, where the top five finishers go through to the 48-hour final a few days later.
They will be one of two Yachting New Zealand-sanctioned crews in the regatta – alongside Auckland couple Anna Merchant and Aaron Hume-Merry, who took top spot in the mixed two-handed division of last year’s Round North Island race.
The mixed-gender two-handed offshore keelboat had been a strong contender to be introduced at the Paris Olympics, but wasn’t chosen. But it’s still a strong class in Europe, which makes the Kiwis the underdogs.
“A lot of the teams we’ll meet up there have been sailing these boats since they were launched last November, and they’ve been sailing them in that body of water, too,” Hall says. “But at least everyone’s in the same boat as us – because they can’t use their own boats in the event.”
While Bees and Hall would love to make it through to the final race, they also simply want to notch up experience in the Sun Fast 30, so they can have another shot at the worlds in Cowes, on England’s Isle of Wight, in 2025.