In her youth, Laurel Seaborn’s family moved onto a 10.98m (36 ft) Wharram catamaran – later, upgrading to a 15.2m (50 ft) Herreshoff Ketch.
She sailed the waters of British Columbia and Washington State in the United States, where she later began teaching sailing.
“When you're a teenager, you either turn 180 degrees like, ‘I never want to be on a boat again,’ or you turn around and you go, ‘Actually, this is really cool, and I know what I'm doing,’” she said.
For Seaborn, she found the calling and desire to pass her knowledge and skills of sailing to others.
“I must have started teaching right out of high school, going into university, teaching my friends, teaching anybody who wanted to learn,” she said.
It wasn’t until the American Sailing Association shared a job posting from Athen’s Sailing Academy in Poros Island, Greece – looking for a female sailing instructor to lead their women’s sailing school – that Seaborn found her next calling.
“Historically, it's just such a male environment and it’s almost like a closed space … It's still not the norm to see women around and sailing. It's still the exception,” explained Seaborn.
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As an instructor, Seaborn’s goal is to get more women into the sport – to have more representation of women on the water – in addition to admiring pro athletes and Olympians competing.
“To teach women in this situation, and it's all women on the boat, I think there's just a different layer of how we discuss safety, how we discuss what's going to happen, how the boat is going to move,” said Seaborn, adding, “If you can see it, you can be it.”
Athen’s Sailing Academy’s courses take place in the Saronic Gulf and the Cyclades Islands, where students can immerse themselves in Greek landscapes and architecture.
“Being in Greece is the bucket list. So not just that you get to sail, but that you get to snorkel over ancient Roman villa ruins … Or you can walk from the boat up the hill to an ancient Greek amphitheatre. It’s just a fabulous place to sail,” she said.
Running from April through October, each beginners course equips women with hands-on experience and essential sailing theory.
After that, students can choose to enroll in advanced courses about navigation and bare boat sailing.
“Once you've graduated through that upper level, according to the American Sailing Association, you should have the skills to go to a charter company and rent a boat by yourself and go and sail it,” explained Seaborn.
Despite now having over 30 years of experience of living and teaching others how to sail, Laurel Seaborn says growing up, it was difficult to find female mentors.
“It's a lot easier now with the internet to find those stories of women that are in anything maritime in the world now,” she said.
“It's just that idea of having someone as a guiding force … just to be able to be there as an example, that’s the best I can hope for.”
While she says she takes no credit for the success of her students, she is proud to have been a small part of their sailing journey – including one student she points to who recently completed a race across the Atlantic in a boat by herself.
“To be able to guide other people, other women, it just becomes such a part of what you do in life,” she said.
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