A Guinness World Record holder for rowing across the Atlantic with three other women and a silver medal winner in the Commonwealth Kayak Regatta representing New Zealand.
These are some of the achievements of Kathy Tracey, who lives in Martinborough and is owner/director of Thinking Spaces Ltd, a leadership and team coaching company.
Kathy has long had a love affair with the sea. When she was young, her family spent a lot of time holidaying at Otaki Beach where her grandfather had a bach. It was there she joined the Surf Lifesaving Club.
The skills and physical strength she developed paddling surf-skis helped her later in life when she spent two years in Gisborne intensively training with the New Zealand women’s K-4 kayak team. The team went to Montreal in 1986 and reached the semi-final at the World Kayak Championships then won the silver medal in the Commonwealth Kayak Regatta.
Embarking on her social work career, Kathy worked in London for five years then gained a position in Guernsey, where it quickly became known around the island that she was an international kayaker. She was invited to join the Guernsey Rowing Club and soon became an integral part of it. Kathy was looking for a long-distance rowing challenge when she heard that the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race had included fours. She found three other women keen to join the team and then managed the project – securing funds, organising training and preparing for the epic journey. They set out from the Canary Islands on 30 November 2005 and sixty-seven days later crossed the finishing line in the West Indies. They were awarded the Guinness World Record for the first women’s fours to row unsupported across the Atlantic, or in fact
any ocean.
Kathy’s philosophy is to set yourself a goal that feels out of reach, and then work out how you are going to go about giving yourself the best chance of reaching it.
Her belief: “It’s important to push yourself outside your comfort zone and then you grow as a person. Extreme situations bring out extreme behaviour. It’s good to know how to cope.” Since rowing the Atlantic she has, among other adventures, walked for five days across the Abu Dhabi Desert, trekked to Everest Base Camp and now regularly competes in trail running, recently completing an ultra-marathon of 102 km.
“It’s not so much the competition now but just getting out in nature to do different things and experience different places.” With her coaching business she helps people become more conscious of how they function and therefore understand themselves and others better so they can achieve their goals. She facilitates leadership courses and team building events around the country and at Outward Bound in Anakiwa.
