Team Sailing Grace (AKA ‘The Pink Ladies’), Henriette Smith & Solfrid Kvinnesland, have been racing together since 2022 and are big advocates for the sport in the para sailing community. This year, they return to the RS Venture Connect World Championships 2024 as the defending champions of the Para Category. Henriette talks to us ahead of the competition and shows us there are truly no boundaries in the sport of sailing.
Why did you sign-up to the RS Venture Connect World Championship?
Sailing at the 2023 RS Venture Connect Worlds
“We signed-up to the RS Venture Connect World Championship because the RS Venture Connect is our favourite boat, and we love sailing it!”
What’s your sailing background?
“We have been sailing together since the run up to the Oman World Championship in 2022, but prior to that the road was long, winding and full of hurdles. I fell in love with sailing at age 17, but experience had taught me that I couldn’t do competitive sport. Even so, I am super competitive as well as fearless, so, when opportunities arose, I jumped in and raced keelboats.
It took me 13 years and a lot of different size boats to believe that I could sail in dinghies. The love was instant. However, with a body that refuses to cooperate, I struggled. That was until I found the RS Venture Connect four years ago on the dock in Tønsberg.
The test-sail with Bjørnar Erikstad had me hooked from the first moment. It took a while getting here, able to sail the RS Venture Connect as much as we want, but I thank all my lucky stars; the MNA and our club for the possibilities!
Sol [Solfrid], on the other hand, hadn’t sailed much when I tricked her in to joining me for the World Championship, but she claims it was the coolest thing to happen to her. And she’s stuck with me ever since, putting in the hours like a champ! Literally – we climbed to from 19th place in the 2022 RS Venture Connect Championship to Gold in the Para Category at the 2023 World Championship.”
How did you meet your teammate? What’s your favourite thing about sailing together?
The Pink Ladies in their RS Custom Hats
“Sol and I met on the docks the summer of 2021. At the time we only said “Hello, nice to meet you, fair winds” as she was stepping aboard for a test-sail while I was disembarking after practice. It took us another year before we reconnected at Asker Seilforening because Sol wanted to sail more. She was very sceptical. She came out with me, got dropped in the deep end, and I showed her what the RS Venture Connect could actually do when the wind was right. Two months later she was sailing the World Championship in Oman as her first ever regatta.
My favourite thing about sailing with Sol is that she says “sure thing” to all my crazy ideas, which has led to some very straight-up personal experiences with the limits of this boats and ourselves. Let’s just say we know how to recover from a broach now!
Sol’s favourite thing is that deep sense of mastery as you figure out how to get the boat moving forwards after it starts sailing backwards because of sailors stalling it. Comparing it to the RS Quest, which she feels just sails itself, the RS Venture Connect demands more of the sailor. In her words, it is such a deeply technical boat that the sense of accomplishment is unlike anything she’s ever experienced.”
Why do you choose to sail the RS Venture Connect?
“Having a neuromuscular disorder that affects both muscle strength and endurance I have found it hard to be able to complete movements when I compete. Retiring from races felt almost like an inevitability. Until I met our RS Venture Connect boat, ‘Grace’.
The first time I properly raced the RS Venture Connect was in a local regatta, trying out starting and competing on Plymouth Yardstick against RS Feva. I not only finished races, but I ended up doing them singlehanded and eventually kicked some RS Feva transom in the process.
Helga Cup 2024 – Inklusion
I keep sailing the RS Venture Connect because it gives me the freedom to race for days in even the gnarliest of conditions and alongside that is the extreme sense of mastery. The RS Venture Connect is, to me, a confidence booster like no other. The RS Venture Connect is also a downright mental health check and happy-pill – as soon as I launch it, it doesn’t matter what kind of wind I have, the chaos of home life dissipates. It has also given me a whole new family in the sailing world.
Sol says she is sailing it partly because it was available but mostly because of the team. She says she loves sailing with her skipper and despite her introverted preferences she’s happy with the social aspect that comes with it as well. We both agree that we love the technical challenge of sailing it – the demand that it puts on us to be present and focused.”
What are you most looking forward to at the World Championships?
“The people and the racing. There are so many cool people that we’ve gotten to know and this year the class is growing even more. It’s going to be exiting to race them, to see how far we’ve come in cutting the gap of experience and to make new connections. New this year is the possibility of pitting our abilities against other Norwegian teams – which is something that we are looking very much forward to.”
Thanks to Henriette for the interview. You can read more about Henriette’s journey in her guest editorial for World Sailing. To find out more about the RS Venture World Championship click here.