It's been 50 years since Victoria Willman, fed up with being asked to cook for Sydney to Hobart sailors, made history by skippering the race's first all-female crew.
Willman grew up sailing off Sydney's northern suburbs in a boat her father built and became so eager to race in the Hobart that she once attempted to follow the fleet down the NSW coast on a dinghy.
She made it out of the Sydney Heads and into open seas, but turned back off the eastern suburbs.
"It was very stupid of me," she said.
Not to be deterred from her childhood dream, Willman spent the early 1970s honing her craft only to be met with rejection whenever she asked to join a boat down to Hobart.
"They didn't want a girl as crew," Willman said.
"No one would take me. Every time I'd try and go, (they'd say), 'Yes, you can come if you cook' and I kept saying, 'I don't cook'."
Willman chartered a yacht, Barbarian, and held tryouts for women wanting to partake in the Hobart and the races that preceded it.
Things didn't go totally to plan once the starting gun fired on Boxing Day of 1975.
In the harbour, Barbarian accidentally collided with a spectator boat, whose two crew clamoured aboard in a tizzy.
"Two men appeared on the deck and I said, 'What are those men doing on the deck?' and they said, 'You just ran down a boat'," Willman said.
"The police came alongside, the water police, took the guys off and said 'Keep going girls'.
"I think I still hold the record for the only participant that has run down a spectator boat at the start of a Hobart race."
Barbarian's owner John Shaw had asked for his wife to come along as part of the crew, but she spent much of the race below deck managing a serious injury.
Nancy Shaw was struck in the head while Barbarian was jibing a spinnaker.
"We had a lot of argument, do we go ashore or don't we? But we had a nurse on board and she kept making sure that she was okay. So we just kept going," Willman said.
Five decades on, Willman still smiles as she recalls sailing towards Hobart's Constitution Dock, where the 628nm race finishes.
"On the way into the dock, there was an Irish battleship," she said.
"We went past that and all the crew were in their whites along the side of the deck and they whistled us in. That was quite something, we were all excited."
In 2025, female sailors will make up around 12 per cent of the Hobart fleet, which has 14 women who are either skippering a boat or are an owner of one.
"It was more a man's world but it isn't now. Everyone has a different attitude. They accept that women can do what they want to do," Willman said.
Willman's sailing days are behind her, but she still tunes in to watch the start of the Hobart on Boxing Day.
This year, she's "really looking forward" to tracking the progress of First Light, whose all-female crew will be skippered by Elizabeth Tucker.
Only one year out of school, 18-year-old Ali Braden is the youngest female competitor in this year's race and dreams of sailing professionally one day.
This is her first Hobart; sailors must be 18 to take part.
"It was always a goal of mine to do it as soon as I possibly could when I turned 18 and here we are," said Braden, who is one of three female sailors aboard Pacific Road Xanthus.
From one sailor to another, Willman had some simple advice for her.
"Believe in yourself, get plenty of rest and don't wait for someone to tell you what to do," Willman said.
"If you see something that needs doing, just do it."
