How nervous were you both leading up to the birth? Were you allowed to go sailing?
Nayra has been, and still is, super cool with me going sailing and surfing. It’s a really weird feeling waiting for the birth. You are waiting around for something massive to happen, but you have no idea when it will happen.
It sort of reminded me of a no-wind windsurf contest. You can never go too far in case it starts, except that with the baby there is no Big Salty to check the forecast!
The weeks before I set up an old phone with my U.K. SIM card and then wrapped it up in cling film. I set a super loud alarm ring tone and vibrate and put it in my wetsuit whenever I was on the water.
Basically if Nayra started feeling anything, she would call my U.K. mobile and it would ring like an air raid siren and I would be off the water in a flash. Thankfully it didn’t happen like that, but I was ready.
How are you managing to juggle having a daughter with your occupation as a professional windsurfing couple?
It’s been easier for me than Nayra for sure! It was a massive decision for her really. In 2011 she finished 3rd overall in the world and had to stand down from that to be pregnant for a year. Now she is just getting back to full strength so it will be interesting trying to work it out from now on.
For me she has been amazingly understanding. I guess she knows better than anyone that when it’s windy, you have to go. It’s definitely much harder now that she is sailing again.
Now we have to try to schedule everything but it’s hard. Basically Nayra chooses exactly when she wants to sail and I make sure that I am off the water then and normally try to rig for her too.
I sort of owe her a year, so she gets priority and I am nanny for a bit! It’s working alright at the moment, but I definitely get to sail more than her.
Two months down the line and you went out to Cape Town alone. Did you feel it was too early to disrupt life at home?
We had really hoped to go together as a family. Roberto [Ricci] has such a good set up out there, that it would have been really easy. However with Lily just 2 months old it was a bit too soon. Plus Nayra was still not really up to sailing, so she would have just been sat around most of the time going crazy.
In the end I am really happy she didn’t come as I think it would have been a nightmare. It was windy every single day and I had so much work with photos and testing, that there would have been very little time for her or Lily.
I think it worked out better for her to stay at home with her family around to help out. However I hope we can work things out better in the future to always travel as a family.
