Liz (left) aged 14 in 1993 with her older sister Nicola and father David after competing in a POM fishing competition
Liz with her parents, longtime PNG residents David and Irene Wardley
in her cabin where she had been sleeping moments before and hope the boat would upright itself as she waited for daylight to assess the damage. However the PNG-born and raised champion yachtswoman is built of tougher stuff. Into the ocean she plunged and, fortunately, was able to quickly flip the
7.2m rowboat back over with just a slight nudge to its in-built flotation mechanism. She then went on to finish the
race in record time. “I managed to fish all my (navigating)
Tic Tac due to its compact size and shape – was Liz’s ocean home for the 44-day row, where she lived on freeze-dried ration food packs (macaroni and cheese is a
favourite) and seawater processed through a portable desalination unit. Black emblems of a PNG ‘kumul’ (bird of paradise) on the front and back of the boat were a constant reminder of her roots during the 5000km journey, from the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa to Antigua in the West Indies. Despite the capsizing setback just 24 hours off the finish line, Liz still managed to smash the 55-day solo female race record by 15 days, coming in third in the solo category, with her only crew members being two beloved stuffed toys: purple dinosaur Barney and green crocodile ‘Havi’ (short for Javier). Havi particularly – who was bought in Spain, hence the name – regularly pops up as a comical wingman in Liz’s Instagram reel updates. Liz recalls another
instruments out of the sea,” Liz says matter-of- factly about her close call. Her small rowboat – affectionately dubbed
“Liz won so many trophies for fishing that one year they made one of the prizes a wheelbarrow so she could carry them all home”
Liz posted these photos of her and sister Tiffany (below right) from 1992 with the caption: “my sister and me in full-on ‘water rat’ mode up in PNG”
VOLUME 39 2024
21
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog