Stacey faces her toughest race

By Bill Hoffman, Sunshine Coast Daily, September 2014

When Bill Jackson decided he wanted to buy a cruise boat for his family, the first thing he did was send his then seven-year-old daughter Stacey and her brother to Mooloolaba Yacht Club to test their love for it.

It was a decision that set his daughter on course to a career, and lifestyle, which have taken her around the globe and into arguably sport’s ultimate challenge.

At 31, the surfing, skating and stand-up paddleboard-loving athlete finds herself in the bow of Team SCA’s $50 million challenge for the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Racing Series.

Next month she and Team SCA’s all-female crew will begin a 38,739 nautical mile, 11-port race around the globe against six all-male crews sailing identical Volvo 65s.

Team SCA is the first female crew in 12 years to contest the event and the first to be driving a team’s “A” boat rather than a backup craft.

The craft are hi-tech, powerful speed machines that come as part of the $5 million entry fee. Team SCA is named after its sponsor, the SCA Group, whose products include the Sorbent range of toilet, facial and hygiene wipes.

“The whole purpose is to be successful,” Stacey said. “We’ve got one of the bigger budgets, the biggest shore team and the best set-up.”

And in case there is any uncertainty she says the team’s colours are magenta, not pink.

Stacey, who attended Mooloolaba State School and Mountain Creek High before pursuing an early passion for cello at Immanuel, learned the ropes on family sailing adventures aboard their Duncanson 35 Tamahine 2 up the Great Sandy Straits and in MYC cruising class races out of Mooloolaba.

She cut her teeth on Soraya, a boat owned by the late Jim Cradock and Lyn Sharp.

“They had a lot of good young sailors on board who have gone on to other things,” Stacey said.

At 18, after securing the job her father made conditional on her leaving home, she headed for Sydney and a sail-making apprenticeship with North Sail.

What she was looking for was a chance to race in the really big boats that populate that city’s harbour, driven by a glib observation she would make a good sailor if she didn’t crew a boat longer than 40 foot.

“I thought ‘stuff you, I’ll prove you wrong’,” Stacey said yesterday during a quick pre-race break with her parents, who still live in Mooloolaba.

She’s more than done that, being on board the 100-foot long Wild Oats for its 2010 Sydney to Hobart win, serving a stint as sailmaker and crew on its sister vessel, the RP 100 Alfa Romeo, based in Antibes in the south of France for three years, and being appointed boat captain of Peter Harburg’s Brisbane- based 66-footer Black Jack.

“That was a hard job to leave,” Stacey said. “Peter’s an awesome person, Black Jack was a great boat and the outfit was 100% professional.

“But it’s always been a goal to secure something like this.”