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NEMA SAILORS AND FRIENDS:
Our 2024 NEMA Annual Dinner Speaker will be multihull racer, ocean-rower, performance artist and adventurer Lia Ditton.
Lia has sailed the equivalent of eight laps of the globe and has successfully raced two of the most prestigious single-handed transatlantic races: the 2005 OSTAR in a 35ft Shuttleworth trimaran, Shockwave, and the Route du Rhum in an Open 40. Her first Atlantic crossing was on board the 46ft Dick Newick trimaran, Moxie, then owned by Craig Alexander. Both boat and crew managed to survive Hurricane Kyle. Lia's story is here: https://vimeo.com/6497545.
In 2007 Lia captained LoeReal, the ORMA 60ft trimaran from the film Waterworld; and in 2015,Tûranor PlanetSolar, the largest solar-powered catamaran in the world.
Lia has had fun delivering a Chris White from New Zealand to Chile, a home-built Wharam from the very bottom of New Zealand to Napier on the north island (although the intended destination was Whangārei until the boat began to come apart); and a number of Gunboats long distances.
For reasons she will divulge, Lia began training in 2016 to cross the North Pacific Ocean from Japan to San Francisco powered only by oars. After four years of training in San Francisco Bay (and various other hair-raising adventures including rowing the length of the Oregon coast), in 2020 Lia took social-distancing to the extreme and set out to row from San Francisco to Hawaii. Lia called this her 2,500 mile ‘half marathon,’ before the full 5,500 mile Japan to San Francisco row. Lia spent 86 days at sea, got rammed by a shark, nearly drowned but still beat the existing women’s record by 13 days.
Check out her Wikipedia profile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Ditton);
her YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsIgw3Z1-IH1yhYy3qO1KHQLink);
her website, RowLiaRow, https://rowliarow.com/;
and the movie, 87 Days Alone Rowing the Pacific, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/87daysalone.
This will be live and in-person talk, so come meet Lia -- and after she tells us about her adventures, let's see if we can convince her to hang up her oars and return to sailing multihulls!
Andy Houlding
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