Unable to see a professional pathway, the world champs medallist left sailing and became an optometrist. Now she’s switched her focus to both the Black Foils and the LA Olympics, as she learns the art of foiling
Kate Stewart’s vision into her future has changed markedly in the past 12 months.
This time last year, she was staring into people’s eyes as an optometrist working in Christchurch. After seven years of university study, she loved her job. “If you want prescription glasses, I’m your gal,” Stewart laughs.
But the pull to return to her sailing roots became too great.
First, her partner, Olympic bronze medallist Micah Wilkinson, convinced her to join him on a foiling catamaran – which led to their campaign to compete together at the LA 2028 Olympics.
Now an opportunity has come to learn the ropes on a much larger and faster foiling boat, the F50 – as a development sailor and reserve strategist with the Black Foils on the SailGP professional circuit. As strategist, she’ll be the eyes and the ears of the crew, tucked in behind driver Peter Burling.
Finally able to see a pathway for women sailors beyond the Olympics, Stewart, 27, has leapt at the chance. It’s a pathway that didn’t exist when she walked away from the sport.
One of only two female sailors to win the P Class Tauranga Cup when she was 15, Stewart collected two bronze medals at the world youth championships – with her sister, Greta – and had a strong partnership with Erica Dawson in the 49erFX, before deciding to study physiology then optometry.
“I’ve always loved sailing, but I couldn’t see a long-term pathway or female role models post-Olympics. So I left and did the smart, appropriate thing – I did some study and got a job,” she says.
“Then all these really cool roles for females on boats started coming up, in SailGP and the Women’s America’s Cup, and I was watching from the sideline going, ‘Shoot, I want to be doing that too’.”
Now she’s living the professional sailor’s life. For the next two months, Stewart will be based in Valencia – sailing and learning from the Black Foils in the lead-up to the SailGP regattas in the city this weekend and in Geneva a fortnight later. In between, she’s training in the Nacra 17 with Wilkinson.
The whirlwind of the past few months doesn’t look like slowing up yet.
“I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet because this time last year I was still working a fulltime job and not back in the sailing world. So it’s unbelievable, really – everything has happened so fast,” she says.
“So it’s quite nice to be based in one spot for two months. You get to unpack a bag and have the same bottle of olive oil in the kitchen.”
Stewart is used to the nomadic life of a professional sailor. Her dad, Ian Stewart, sailed in two round-the-world races and the 1995 America’s Cup with Chris Dickson’s Tag Heuer, before running the logistics of Cup teams for 15 years. He’s now Yachting New Zealand’s high performance director.
During her childhood, Stewart spent nine months living in Valencia during the 2007 America’s Cup. She finished her last two years of high school at Warwick Academy in Bermuda during the 2017 Cup regatta – the school proudly laid claim to her when she first joined the Black Foils a fortnight ago.
“I look back on that time in Bermuda very fondly. I was sailing 29ers with my sister, Greta – pushing off the front lawn of our house and doing laps of the harbour by ourselves. Such cool memories,” says Stewart, who learned to sail at the Wakatere Boating Club in Auckland’s Devonport.
“I feel very lucky having Dad’s knowledge and all those incredible sailors around me growing up. Dad has had a very successful career and he’s been a huge driver for women in sailing.”
She’s had plenty of impressive role models throughout her career – like America’s Cup helmswoman Leslie Egnot, the only other woman to win the Tauranga Cup.
Another is Dawson, who paired up with Wilkinson to win Olympic bronze in the Nacra 17 at the 2024 Games, sailed for Emirates Team New Zealand in the first Women’s America’s Cup, and has been a Black Foils strategist.
“Erica is such a talented sailor – I look at what she was doing and think, ‘I want to do that’,” Stewart says. “I feel very lucky to be stepping back into sailing after these incredible women have broken these boundaries and created these opportunities. I’m just following in their footsteps.”
She’s soaking up all she can from the Black Foils long-time strategist, Liv Mackay.
“She’s taught me how to cross the boat, where to hold on, which is the most important part!” Stewart laughs. “But Liv’s had so much experience in this GP fleet, anything that I can learn from her is huge.”
Mackay, who’s been with the Black Foils since 2022, says Stewart’s arrival comes at an important time for the team. “To be able to grow the team and invest in more sailors is a really exciting step we’ve been working towards for a long time,” she says. “And to bring in another female sailor is also exciting and just shows we have a lot of talent in New Zealand.”
The strategist is essentially the “eyes and ears” of the crew, positioned at the back of the F50 to focus on the big picture – calling wind shifts and boundaries, and keeping an eye on the rest of the fleet to avoid collisions.
During her first SailGP experience in Sassnitz, Germany, two weeks ago, Stewart sailed with the crew on board their new boat, Manawatītī, for the two days building into the weekend’s racing.
“It was even more amazing than I could have expected,” she says. “The weather gods were on my side, and I got a taste of full foiling. The F50s are so much more technical and precise [than the Nacra].
“It’s crazy. The direction of the forces is the same as on a smaller boat, but times 10. You really do have to hold on. But you’re flying so much higher than a Nacra, and the speeds are so much higher. It really does feel like you’re flying.”
On the race days in Sassnitz – where the Black Foils made the final and finished fourth – Stewart sat in the coaching booth with Kiwi coaches Will McKenzie and Matt Steven, assisting with data and comms to the race boat.
And there lies another tie-in: McKenzie, who won Olympic silver in the 49er, was coached by Steven – who also happens to be Dawson’s husband.
Stewart will be with the Black Foils for the rest of the SailGP season, only missing a few regattas on next year’s calendar while she races the Nacra 17 world championships and the Olympic test event in Los Angeles.
Wilkinson first joked with Stewart about joining him on the Nacra two Christmases ago. When they moved to Christchurch, he took her out sailing on the boat. “It was just so good being back sailing again,” she says.
They trialled their on-the-water partnership through a cold Christchurch winter, but the challenge of learning the nuances of a foiling boat – “where you’re sailing in 3D rather than 2D on a normal boat” – had Stewart hooked.
The pair seriously began their campaign in this Northern Hemisphere summer, battling into the gold fleet at their first world championships to finish a creditable 18th in France. They notched up their best place yet in July – fifth at the European championships in Eckernforde, Germany.
“That was really unexpected,” Stewart says. “Not in terms of the result, but how quickly a good result like that fell into place. It was just a taste of more to come and what we can achieve. It’s so exciting and motivating.”
Looking further down the racetrack, Stewart would love to be involved in the America’s Cup one day, now that women are an integral part of the racing crew.
“Growing up surrounded by it, then seeing the incredible women’s team compete in Barcelona, and the new opportunities that are there, the America’s Cup is definitely something I’d like to do – but in the future,” she says. “It’s still the pinnacle of our sport.”
Stewart now questions whether she should have done an engineering degree, instead of physiology, then optometry at the University of Auckland. “A full knowledge of engineering, especially the software and data side of things, would have been way more applicable to what I’m trying to achieve now,” she says.
She was hoping to do optometry part-time alongside her Olympic campaign, but the SailGP calendar has made that impossible. “That’s all right. I’ll be back there one day,” she says.
Once she’s filled her sailing cup again.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.