A gaggle of Optimists in a drifting match at Weihai
EVER THE OPTIMIST BY MICHAEL PIGNÉGUY S
uzanne Bourke has a very busy time over our summer taking people out on her Beneteau Oceanus 323 French Connection and teaching them how to sail and navigate. Since she started her Sailing Away School of Sailing in 2004, Suzanne has built up a solid reputation in the boating education business.
Her sailing days started when she was only eight years old and her best friend was Elizabeth Blake, sister of the late Sir Peter Blake. The Blake family invited Suzanne along on their boat Ladybird when they went out for weekends and school holidays. It didn't take her long to fall in love with sailing, so her father bought her a Sunburst (No. 149) when she was aged 11. Once Suzanne was into her own boat there was no stopping
her. She was a regular competitor every Sunday in the 35-boat fleet of Sunbursts at the Wakatere Yacht Club at Narrow Neck on Auckland's North Shore. This was the home of the New Zealand Sunburst fleet, and they were invited to race at many yacht clubs around the country and also up in Rarotonga. Sailing Sunbursts and then Starlings was a way of life for Suzanne for over 30 years. A teaching career followed, and Suzanne augmented that by becoming a Yachting New Zealand instructor in 1990 teaching Waterwise courses for schools and at the Glendowie Boating Club.
Keen to start her own sailing school, Suzanne became a
Yachting New Zealand keelboat instructor and taught sailing in Solings at the Rangitoto Sailing School for five years.
26 Professional Skipper November/December 2011
With her new boat, French Connection, Suzanne started teaching YNZ keelboat courses to level two, and in 2005 she became an RYA sailing instructor.
Many of her clients who come here for a sailing holiday with tuition are from the northern hemisphere, so she now teaches the full range of RYA courses, from a Start Yachting Certificate through to Practical Coastal Skipper. This keeps her busy for at least nine months over spring, summer and autumn, and after that one would think it was time for her to have a break. Four years ago, Suzanne was invited to teach RYA courses at a charter/sailing school in Croatia during the northern summer and she did this for three years, learning plenty while she was there. Earlier this year that school closed and the prospect of having to spend a winter in New Zealand loomed large. But a client who had recently been living in China asked if she would like to teach some children there how to sail Optimists. The deal was she would have to leave in a week and the job was for two months!
After arriving in Beijing, another flight of an hour brought her to the seaside city of Weihai in Shandong Province, on the northern side of the peninsula that protrudes out into the Yellow Sea. Because there were few private cars on the roads it was not immediately obvious the city had a population of two million. Suzanne was assigned a fulltime interpreter and settled into a smart 11th floor apartment with sweeping views along the beach. The Optimist programme was funded by the Department of Sport and local government, and the city's deputy mayor took a
