Mission possible

Dutch sailor Rosalin Kuiper has come a long way in the sport of sailing since she first ventured afloat as a six-year-old in an Optimist on her local lake near Zoetermeer in the Netherlands. Back then she was a little bit scared of water so she took her dog Takkie along for some company.

Fast forward twenty years and Kuiper is preparing to fulfil her long term dream by racing around the world as a member of Boris Herrmann’s German Team Malizia IMOCA entry in The Ocean Race 2022-23. It’s a dream, however, that she admits to giving up on when last year the COVID-19 pandemic brought the sport of sailing to a sudden and unexpected halt.

Kuiper remembers riding her bike to the lake after school and on weekends to rig her Optimist, before her mother would arrive with Takkie and the pair would go sailing.

“I was always a bit afraid of water so I was very happy that he accompanied me,” she says.

As she grew into a teenage Kuiper split her time between sailing, athletics, and field hockey, but it was on a solo trip to Australia at the age of 18 that she found her passion for offshore sailing as a deckhand on a charter boat in the Whitsunday Islands.

“I had told my parents that I wanted to go travelling and I had saved up enough money to go to Australia,” she recalls. “As I travelled around the country I found myself constantly drawn to harbours and marinas and I became fascinated with the sailboats I saw.”

Kuiper remembers the feeling she got on her first weekend trip out to sea on the charter boat.

“It was like a fire had started burning in my chest. This was the most amazing thing I had ever done and I knew then that this was what I wanted to do with my life.”

Back home in the Netherlands Kuiper first joined a sailing school to improve her skills, before applying to join the Team Heiner Youth Academy, a programme created by legendary Dutch skipper Roy Heiner – a veteran of three Volvo Ocean Race campaigns.

Despite applying well after the programme’s deadline had passed Kuiper was determined to find a way of getting on the list for the try out session.

“I was too late with my application but I knew that if I wanted to continue sailing and to one day do races then I had to get in. I knew this was my only way into the sailing world so I pushed so hard. I called them, and I called them, and I called them. The selection was just two days away and my plan was just to turn up anyway.”

In the end she did get her chance to try out and somehow – despite her lack of experience – managed to make it into the programme. It was a decision she believes was based less on her sailing ability and more on her grit and determination to secure a place.

“I had the least experience of anyone there and they couldn’t decide. In the end I think they just thought: Well, she is so driven, so maybe we should give her the chance to prove herself.”

Looking back Kuiper recognised that joining the Team Heiner Youth Academy was a milestone moment in her career.

“I am very thankful. Life would have been super different. I would not be where I am now – 100 percent.”

In parallel with her commitments to the academy Kuiper was also attending university where she was studying for a degree in psychology. No surprise then that she remembers her three years from 19 to 21 as ‘pretty full on’.

“Besides my studies, the academy took up 30 - 40 hours a week – mainly at weekends. All my time was spent either studying, sailing, or going to the gym.”

The academy’s goal was to turn their young recruits into good all-round sailors.

“We learned how to do all the positions on board – including the skipper role,” Kuiper explains. “Navigation, trimming, the bow – anything you can think about as important for big boat sailing, you learn it there.”

Six months into this training Kuiper set herself the wildly ambitious challenge of one day racing around the world in The Ocean Race.

Two and a half years later, armed with her psychology degree – specialising in group dynamics and team performance – she gave herself a year to find out if she could make it into the world of professional sailing.

After managing to find a spot on board the custom 46-foot race boat ‘Tilting at Windmills’ for the offshore classic Middle Sea Race, a couple sailing on the boat offered her a place to stay in Australia so that she could try to find a ride for the legendary Sydney to Hobart Race.

Kuiper didn’t hesitate.

“I think they were a bit shocked when I told them I would be there in a week, I flew there in November and immediately I arrived, I knew my journey had begun – I was on a mission.”

In her characteristically laser-focused fashion Kuiper made a target list of the top race boats entered in the Sydney Hobart, along with the marinas where they were based, and the names of the people in charge. Then she travelled to each one to introduce herself.

“I had my list of the boat captains and the team managers and made it my mission to get to know them. I would arrive at the boat and just introduce myself and tell them my story.”

As Kuiper discovered, following your dream isn’t always easy or straightforward. It can be a lonely experience – especially when you are all alone in a foreign country.

“It was not easy,” she remembers. “You are 21 years old and you are there by yourself in a country that you don’t know. You don’t know the scene. 99 percent of the people told me that I was a very nice girl, but my mission was impossible.

“‘It is not happening – so put it out of your head,’ they would say.’

“In those moments you feel quite alone and I am happy to have a fantastic family who are always so supportive. Then along the way you meet people who believe in it and want to help you. That made the difference for me.”

One such person was Bradshaw Kellet, boat captain on the 100-foot super maxi InfoTrack. On hearing Kuiper’s pitch Kellet decided to give her a chance and offered her a job as a member of the shore team..

Having finally got her break Kuiper was determined to make the most of it. Despite a long and convoluted daily commute that meant leaving home in the early hours of the morning and arriving back late every night she made sure she was on time for work every day – and with a smile on her face.

“I tried to always be there to lend a hand to whoever needed it,” she says. “It was a great way of learning too because you get to work with many more people. In the back of my mind though I was always hoping for a chance to move up into the sailing team.”

Kuiper’s patience and hard work eventually paid off when InfoTrack skipper Tony Mutter (NZL) – a six-time competitor in The Ocean Race – put her on the crew list for a training session.

Things went so well that further training sessions followed before eventually Mutter let Kuiper know she would be part of the InfoTrack crew for the 2018 Sydney to Hobart Race.

Among InfoTrack’s 24-strong sailing team Kuiper’s crewmates included iconic around the world racers like Chris Nicholson (AUS), Bouwe Bekking (NED), Stu Bannatyne (NZL), Willy Attadil (ESP), Nick Dana (USA), and Antonio ‘Ñeti’ Mons (ESP).

Despite sailing in such elevated company Kuiper says competing in the race didn’t make her feel in any way like she had ‘made it’ as a professional sailor.

“Not at all! Far from it! I felt like this was a very lucky shot I’d had. This was a nice kick off – and now the hard work really starts.”

After a season of racing on the Swan one-design circuit in Europe Kuiper was given the job of running a Cookson 50 for a female Australian owner.

“It was a great job. She sent me to the Caribbean to buy the boat and it was fun to see the expression on some people’s faces when they realised that this blond-haired girl was the one in charge.”

The Ocean Race remained her primary objective, however, and she jumped at a chance to sail with Chris Nicholson the team AkzoNobel VO65 after the 2017-18 edition for a European post-race sponsor activation tour.

Nicholson called Kuiper up again for the 2021 inaugural edition of The Ocean Race Europe, where she raced alongside British navigator Will Harris – now also a member of Team Malizia – to a second place finish.

When she received a call earlier this year from Team Malizia team director Holly Cova saying that ‘someone’ within the team had mentioned her name – Kuiper suspects it was Harris doing her a good turn.

Although at first she thought the call might be a hoax she quickly realised it was genuine.

“Holly called and said my name had been mentioned and they were interested in having me involved in their campaign for The Ocean Race. I was on a bus at the time and I thought maybe it was a joke.”

“Of course I jumped at the chance.”

After a training session in February for, as Kuiper puts it, “me to meet the team and for them to find out if what was on my resume was correct”, she was offered a contract to join the team as a sailor in The Ocean Race 2022-23.

Since then she has been based at the team’s base in Vannes, France where its brand new IMOCA race boat Malizia – Seaexplorer was under construction.

In the months leading up to the new boat’s recent launch, Kuiper – who will take on the role of boat captain when the yacht is racing – has worked closely with the specialist technicians installing the boat’s complex hydraulic and electronic systems.

This time and experience, she hopes, will stand her in good stead to deal with issues on board as the crew race around the world.

“I think there is so much value in having the sailors building the boats,” she says. “When things break you need to act fast and if you installed the system yourself then I think you will be able to fix it quicker. “This boat is so much more technical than any one I have ever seen, but I feel now like I know it inside and out.”

Asked if she felt satisfaction in being about to fulfil her dream of competing in The Ocean Race, Kuiper’s answer is as intriguing as it is honest.

“I am kind of proud of where I have got to,” she says. “But the truth is that when the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in and the whole sailing world collapsed – I let my goal go.

“I was exhausted and asking myself why have I been investing so much in this world? Why did I give up so much socially in my life to go down this road? From what I could see then there was no sailing world anymore – and maybe it was not coming back.

“There is one thing that is very important to me and that is to try to be happy every day. I told myself that whether I make it to The Ocean Race or not doesn’t matter – because I want to win every day.

“What is happening now is a gift,” Kuiper concludes. “If this hadn’t happened I would still be happy too. So all this is extra.”