Breen’s living her big dreams

AT the age of 28, Tasmanian Jo Breen has already sailed 30,000 nautical miles in oceans around the world, including around Cape Horn.

In May next year she will skipper her own small yacht Morning Star in the 5500nautical mile two-handed race from Melbourne to Osaka, Japan, with a Russian woman as her crew.

In the lead-up to that marathon ocean race from the southern to the northern hemisphere, Breen — who lives with her parents at Winkleigh on the West Tamar — plans to compete in the SB20 sports boat world championship in Hobart next January.

This coming long weekend she will be part of the crew of a Hobart women’s team sailing the Archambault 35 Absolut in the Australian Women’s Keelboat Regatta on Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay.

The Tasmanian team, skippered by Colleen Darcey, is among the favourites in the fleet of 20 boats sailed by women from all states.

Breen and her crew of the S20 Fire of Athena, Clare Brown, Tammara Potter and Mollie Grainger, make up four of the 10-woman Tasmanian crew sailing in the AWKR this weekend.

Breen began her sailing in Sabot, Flying 11 and Laser dinghies with the Tamar Yacht Cub before moving up to keelboats and going ocean racing and cruising.

Her sailing record is quite remarkable: four years as a yacht delivery skipper, then nine months in the high lati- tudes aboard famous yachtsman Skip Novak’s Palegic.

“That’s when I sailed around the Horn,” Breen said.

“I also sailed a yacht solo from the Azores to England, surviving a deep low in the North Atlantic.”

Breen raced in last December’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Race as navigator aboard the Tasmanian yacht Cromarty of Magellan, which won the Corinthian division.

Sailing with Breen in the Melbourne to Osaka race aboard her S&S 34 will be 36year-old Russian yachtswoman Svetlana Pashschenko, now based in Melbourne.

“We will be the smallest yacht and the only all-woman crew in the fleet of 30 boats,” Breen said.

Next on her sailing agenda after the AWKR will be the SB20 Mid-Winter Championship on the Derwent on June 17-18. Then there will be leadup regattas to the SB20 worlds and the worlds in January.

“To qualify for the Melbourne to Osaka race, we must sail two-handed in the Maria Island Race in November and then the Melbourne to Hobart West Coaster at the end of December,” Breen said.