Lighting flares to mark Liz’s arrival in Antigua after her 44-day Atlantic row in January this year Photo: Georgia Schofield for worldstoughestrow
continued to revolve around boats and fishing. However it was in POM that Liz finally discovered sailing. It was her love affair with this sport that prompted her to quit school part way through Year 10, and move to Australia. “I realised that if I wanted to take part in the international sailing events, I needed to get out there,” she said. “I was at school at POM High (POMIS) doing a lot of international sailing, so I left PNG to go to Australia to get work on boats.” Liz worked for rich owners of racing boats who needed maintenance crews to keep their boats in pristine condition, with jobs taking her to Brisbane, Sydney, New Zealand and finally Europe – anywhere there was an opportunity to work on a boat. “Because I was young, I had to do the ‘bad jobs’ – cleaning up on the boats, maintenance, fixing stuff and getting yelled at all the time,” she recalls with a laugh. “I basically started from the bottom and worked my way up.” In 2014 Liz started working for Volvo in Lisbon, Portugal,
stripping down boats after races, then fixing and rebuilding them, in the process becoming the ultimate boat handyman. Her skills served her well as she would be selected to crew in yacht races despite being small and not physically as strong as some of the male sailors, simply because she could fix anything that broke down! She has worked on two of only eight Volvo Ocean 65 boats in the world, monohull racing yachts designed specifically for long ocean race events. Liz split her time between Portugal and her base in France until the COVID pandemic shut
with gusto!). Here she also met boyfriend Jamie, a local fisherman who shares her love of the water but who she admits she doesn’t get to see much of due to her training and racing schedule. Always ready for her next adventure, Liz was in the gym in Elliott Heads at the time of this interview in May, doing full body exercises every day to get ready for her second attempt at the World’s Toughest Row, this one across 4500km of the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii that departed in early June. However this time Liz did not compete solo but partnered
down racing in Europe and she moved back to Australia, finding a new home at Elliott Heads near Bundaberg – a windy coastal town dubbed Queensland’s kiteboarding capital (another water sport Liz has embraced
A smiling Liz before taking off from Hawaii on July 21 on her latest solo row challenge across the Pacific to PNG
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