Broad Reach Radio - The Yachting New Zealand Podcast

Ep 42 - Erica Dawson

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.

Ep 41 - Tom Saunders

A couple of weeks ago, Tom Saunders became just the second New Zealander to win the Laser world title in nearly 50 years of trying. It was a breakthrough result for the 29-year-old and sets him up nicely as he not only tries to go to his first Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 but also win a medal for his country.

Tom has been on the circuit for the best part of a decade and talks about his experiences in that time – how he’s coped with disappointments after finding success came quite easily to him as a youngster, what was different about the last world championships in Barcelona and how he might not have even gone to the world championships had he stuck to his original plan.

He also delves into his background growing up in and around a group of young sailors in Tauranga who have gone to achieve phenomenal success, what influence his brother has had on him and how training for and racing in an ironman event last year has helped shape his mentality as he commits to another Olympic cycle.

Ep 40 - Roger ‘Clouds‘ Badham

Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham is one of the world’s pre-eminent meteorologists and was also the first person to forecast for yachties and boaties on a fulltime basis. His 50-year involvement in the sport has seen him work on 10 America’s Cups, nine Olympics Games, more than 40 Sydney to Hobart races and countless world championships and big events. He’s been a critical member of Team New Zealand for 20 years, helping them firstly win the Cup in Bermuda in 2017 and then retain it earlier this year in Auckland, and has also worked with New Zealand’s top Olympic campaigners for the last five Games.

Clouds has described weather forecasting as like short-term futures trading - either selling or buying left or right – but his accuracy is something he’s renowned for it and it earned him a job working with the Ferrari Formula 1 team.

Roger talks about his career in this episode of Broad Reach Radio, how he got into the industry, what forecasting was like in the early days before computer modelling and then the arms race as teams tried to get the edge, what impact he’s had on various campaigns and the pressure he can sometimes come under to get it right. He also touches on the world of Formula 1 and how it differs to high-level sailing.

Ep 39 - Martin Tasker

Martin Tasker spent most of his time behind a microphone, having commentated and presented news stories on anything from the America’s and Admiral's Cup to the Ocean Race and Olympics. In fact, in his time as a reporter with TVNZ, he produced close to 5500 stories, many of them about yachting. He lifted the lid on a number of news breaks, like the time Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth were lured to Alinghi, but was equally happy telling the story about something happening at grassroots level.

Martin talks about his career as both a yachting reporter and commentator in this podcast and tells the stories about how he and Peter Lester were threatened by Oracle with expulsion from not only the America’s Cup but also the country, what it was like to be on the inside with Team New Zealand in Bermuda in 2017, the lengths he would go to for a story, and the time he became the story after a seemingly innocent comment picked up when he thought he was off air caused a huge controversy.

Ep 38 - Leah Fanstone and Keryn McMaster

Leah Fanstone (nee Newbold) and Keryn McMaster were trailblazers for New Zealand women’s offshore sailing in the 1990s. The pair notched up two laps each around the globe in the Whitbread Round the World Race, once together on the all-women’s crew on board EF Education, and they tell their stories from those epic races in this episode of Broad Reach Radio.

None of those circumnavigations were particularly easy, as they battled a catalogue of bad luck, breakages and broken promises, not to mention old-fashioned attitudes, but they made a big statement for women’s sailing. Leah and Keryn have so many memorable stories from those races and talk about everything from mutinies and swimming in the Southern Ocean to haul sails back on board to messages from the American first lady and getting smothered by rotten fish. They also delved into various important topics around women’s sailing including how female sailors can get noticed as well as last week’s news that women’s teams will be involved in the next America’s Cup.

Ep 37 - Chris Bouzaid

Chris Bouzaid has been called the father of New Zealand international keelboat yachting who inspired the likes of Sir Peter Blake and Grant Dalton. He was the first non-Australian to win the Sydney-Hobart Race, first non-European to win the One Ton Cup which, in those days, sat only behind the America’s Cup in terms of importance, and was part of the New Zealand team that finished 1, 2, 3 at the 1971 Sydney-Hobart Race, something that had never been done before, and which saw New Zealand claim the Southern Cross Cup. These achievements saw Chris named New Zealand sportsman of the year in 1969, and he was also inducted into the New Zealand sports hall of fame, awarded an MBE and listed as one of New Zealand’s sportsmen of the 20^th century.

But Chris considers himself more of a businessman than a top yachtie and also ran one of the world’s biggest sail making businesses. It was something he was thrust into early in life, taking over his dad’s business with his brother when only a teenager, but he recognised the importance of marketing and did a lot of this through his yachting exploits.

We traverse a lot of Chris Bouzaid’s career on and off the water in this podcast and the part he played in awakening New Zealand’s passion for international yachting. He tells the story of the day he shared the front page with the moon landing, how he won 121 races with his famous yacht Rainbow II, the impact hosting the 1971 One Ton Cup had on this country and the embarrassing, but scary, tale of his worst wipeout ever.

Ep 36 - Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Willcox

Finishing fourth at an Olympic Games is one of the hardest things for any athlete to go through and, unfortunately, it’s what happened to Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Willcox at the recent Tokyo Olympics. What made it even more emotional was the fact the medal race was probably the last time the pair will sail a 470 competitively together with the class going to a mixed format for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Paul and Dan are presently in MIQ in Christchurch but Broad Reach Radio caught up with them just before they left Enoshima, the sailing venue for the Games. They reflected on that Olympic campaign as well as the nine years they had been sailing together. But their association goes back way further than that, to the time they competed against each other as young Opti sailors and went to junior world championships as teammates.

Paul and Dan have some good stories to tell, like the time they scrambled to get out of Spain as Covid-19 took a hold on the world and how their Rio Olympics was scuppered by illness but they also give a good insight into what it’s like being an Olympic sailor and the impact it has on loved ones. And, of course, they tell the stories of their worst wipeouts ever.

Ep 35 - Tom Ashley

The Olympics have played a large part in Tom Ashley’s life, firstly as a competitor and Olympic gold medallist, then as an international coach and now as a CEO of a national sporting organisation with high hopes of success in Tokyo. In this episode of Broad Reach Radio, we talk to Tom about the many layers to his journey, from growing up in the sport at a time of remarkable success in this country and his non-conventional approaches to training to achieving his lifelong goal and then rather stumbling into coaching in a vastly different environment to the one he was used to.

Tom also talks about how he got into sports administration and his plans for the future and offers his thoughts on what athletes can expect at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.

Tom Ashley is articulate, thoughtful and engaging and has a really good recall of details, which all come across in this podcast.

Ep 34 - John Cutler

Few people have done as much in sailing as John Cutler. He’s been involved in five America’s Cups and will next month go to his fifth Olympics – he came home from his first in 1988 with a medal – and is also a multiple world champion and Admiral's Cup winner. On top of that, John has been a professional sailor for more than 30 years, and also been heavily involved as a coach and official.

John talks about his journey, from lanky teenager who discovered the sport after moving to New Zealand to his place now as an elder statesman, and most things in between. He never really thought you could make a career out of sailing, and still wonders how he has in an industry he’s labelled as precarious because of its ruthlessness, politics and egos.

John is well liked and well respected and offers a good perspective on the sport and his place in it in this podcast. 

Ep 33 - Suzanne McFadden

Suzanne McFadden has been instrumental in the upsurge in coverage of women's sport in this country and was recently named New Zealand sport journalist of the year. She's also had a long association with sailing, having reported on the sport since the early 1990s.

Suzanne writes almost exclusively about women’s sport these days, and talks in this podcast about a range of topics from quotas in professional sailing to the dangers of an unhealthy lifestyle for top athletes and what more can be done to shine a light on females. She also dives into a number of stories from reporting on sailing, like the time Team New Zealand tried to influence her, how Peter Blake became synonymous with red socks, her run-in with Chris Dickson and the story behind the split in Team New Zealand in the early 2000s.