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Leslie Egnot knows she won't be able to help herself when she gets behind the wheel of the Beneteau 40.7 this weekend.
"I can’t even rum race without my competitive nature coming out," she admitted. "I find it really hard to not try to get the last little bit out of the boat."
Egnot will be doing that this weekend when she's among 213 sailors competing on 32 yachts in the Evolution Sails Women's Regatta held at the Waikawa Boating Club.
It's a well-established event that regularly features world and Olympic champions through to absolute beginners and this weekend it can add a former America's Cup skipper to the list.
Egnot made headlines in 1995 when she became the first woman to skipper and helm an America's Cup team, America3, which came agonisingly close to beating Dennis Conner and Stars and Stripes for the right to defend the Cup against Team New Zealand. She had previously claimed a silver medal with Jan Shearer in the women's 470 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
It will be the first time Egnot has competed at the Evolution Sails Women's Regatta but she didn't take much convincing when her sister Jenny, who is also a top sailor, suggested she sign up.
Leslie Egnot (pink shirt) with most of her crew - Helen Evans, Wendy Faulkner, Linda Rae, Celia Snedden, Joy Adams and Steph Allan.
She got to work recruiting a number of the women she's started sailing with again over the last couple of years, some who she sailed with 30 years ago, and this weekend will jump on board David Croad's Beneteau Northern Rebel.
"I have never done it before but all the women I talked to who have done it rave about it and how great it is," Leslie Egnot said. "I’ve put a team together. We are a bunch of friends, really, and it’s a great way to get together.
"We are going to have a good time but we will try to sail the best we can. Having said that, we are on a boat we haven’t sailed before so it’s going to be a case of see how it goes. We will be trying very hard to get the boat around the race track the best we can.
"There are some really talented sailors going, an amazing group of women will be there."
The list includes the likes of ocean racer Keryn McMaster, Olympian Sara Winther and multiple keelboat national champions Sally Garrett and Karleen Dixon.
But one of the aims of the regatta is to encourage women of all abilities to take part and there are often relative newcomers dotted throughout the fleet. Local owners make their boats available, anything from trailer yachts and sports boats to slick keelboats, and each crew must be at least 70 percent female, including the helm.
Egnot can't remember the last time she competed on the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound but has cruised around the area and supported her children racing there when they were sailing Optimists and Starlings.
"I know it’s pretty seat-of-the-pants sailing because the gusts come straight down from the hills and are quite unpredictable," she said. "We’re going to be relying on our boat owner a lot for local knowledge, that’s for sure."
And that famous competitive instinct.
