On the 2013 Blind Sailing World Championships held in Japan, Dave and his B2 team won a Silver medal and New Zealand got the second place overall. Photo/supplied
On the 2013 Blind Sailing World Championships held in Japan, Dave and his B2 team won a Silver medal and New Zealand got the second place overall. Photo/supplied
Sixty one-year-old Waihi resident Dave Parker will represent New Zealand in the 2015 World Blind Sailing Fleet Racing Championships in September. The four-day competition will bring the world's top sight-impaired sailors to Lake Michigan in Chicago.
Dave and his team will embark on 15 fleet races against five other nations: the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Japan and Australia. The Sailing Championships take place every second year.
They are organised by the International Blind Sports Association. In the competition, vision impaired sailors team up with sighted ones in groups of four within three categories according to the varying degrees of vision impairment from B1, B2 to B3.
Dave suffers from a partial loss of vision, and will be the sail trimmer in the New Zealand B2 team.
To prepare for the competition, he has been training at the Blind Sailing Club in Auckland on a SONAR boat adapted for disability sailing.
At the last Blind Sailing World Championships in Japan in 2013, Dave and his B2 team won a silver medal. Over the three categories, New Zealand ended up second overall and the B3 team led by Tony Holmes brought back the gold. "Our biggest competition were the UK sailors," Dave says.
This time the Kiwi team are after a golden result. Above and beyond Originally from Tauranga, Dave's love of the sea came from his dad who was the secretary of a local boat club there.
He worked as a commercial skipper in Fiordland for 40 years before heading back to the North Island when he was diagnosed with PXE.
Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) is an inherited disorder that causes some elastic body tissues to become mineralized which can then affect vision.
In 2005, Dave partially lost his eyesight and with it, his professional sailing career. He was faced with the situation of having to re-think his life. "I can see most things but they are deformed as if I was looking through water or glass.
It is the second time Dave Parker has been selected the Blind Sailing World Championships to challenge with the world's top sight-impaired sailors. Photo/supplied
It was getting hard to get a job but I hate being stuck doing nothing." Some people would have given up but Dave found a way to pursue his passion through the Blind Sailing Association of New Zealand.
"I first heard about them when I was sighted and was sailing in Auckland during weekends," he says.
Dave has been the treasurer and a member of the board for the past four years. " For me, this competition is all about experiences and I want to experience as much as I can."
As well as a personal challenge, the competition is a way to give paradisciplines exposure.
Recently, blind sailing has been pulled out of the Paralympics and we (with Blind Sailing International) are working very hard to bring the discipline back and be part of the Paralympics Sailing for the 2020 games.
The Championships are to be held in Chicago (USA) from 9 and 13 September. Follow the NZ team on their Facebook page: Blind Sailing New Zealand.
