Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom
Charlotte Porter is one of the world’s top match racers, but over the weekend she was holed up in an air-conditioned shipping container making sure the world’s best foiling sailors headed out on the Waitematā Harbour in peak form.
In her quiet moments, she has also been mapping out her next goal – to row across the Atlantic Ocean later this year.
Porter, 27, is SailGP’s global physiotherapist, travelling to all 13 events and taking care of athletes across the 13-nation fleet.
A three-time silver medallist in world championship women’s match racing, the Coromandel-based physio and first responder has set her sights on a very different test: joining a four-woman crew to row 3000 nautical miles from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
“I figure I’m never going to be 27 again and be able to get fit enough to row across the Atlantic, so I may as well do it now,” she says. “I can sail across the Atlantic later on.”
Despite her medical background and skill at sea, many aspects of this odyssey, called the World’s Toughest Row, still scare Porter – from stories of marlin bills puncturing rowboats to the relentless weather, towering waves, fatigue, sleep deprivation, salt sores and chafing.
“It’s quite scary,” she says. “Pretty much 90% of people say, ‘You’re crazy’. But the 10% of people who say, ‘Yeah, go for it!’ keep you going.”
For the past 12 months, Porter has been a mainstay on the SailGP circuit, brought in as a physio for the first Auckland event then invited to stay on with the competition.
“I’d made it known to the sailors that I was keen to stay, so I got to know them and build relationships,” she says. “Everyone said they wanted a consistent physio, who knew their injuries and how to treat them.”
Porter takes care of the sailors in nine of the 13 SailGP teams, helping the athletes manage injuries and maintain peak performance.
“You also learn all about their families, where they’re going on holiday, what other sailing they’re doing. So it’s cool to get to know them and make them feel comfortable to come back and see you,” she says. “I feel quite proud of them when they’ve had an injury and worked hard to get back on the boat.”
Porter would, of course, like to see less of them. In the past year, she’s introduced strength testing for all 110 athletes in a bid to help prevent injuries.
“It’s something I really wanted to bring on board,” she says. “We look at their hamstrings, their quads and their neck strength and determine whether there’s a risk of potential injuries. Obviously, freak accidents happen but it’s the things we can control.”
While knees and ankles remain the most common injuries Porter treats in the fleet, she’s seeing a rise in neck issues as the constantly shifting platforms of the F50 foiling cats push sailors’ bodies in new ways. “With the boats getting faster, and with bigger impacts, there’s bound to be more concussions,” she says.
“There’s never been any of this testing done in sailing before, so it’s a cool opportunity to do it and showcase it.”
Although Porter hasn’t sailed foiling boats or experienced the thrill of a SailGP racing machine, she sees that as an advantage.
“I can take a step back from the sport and just look at them as people,” she says. “But as a sailor, it’s also helpful to understand what they go through. There are so many Olympians and America’s Cup and round-the-world sailors here, but in the end, they’re all people who just want to be treated normally.”
Of course, she’d love the chance to sail an F50, but it comes with extensive safety training – and as a physio and first responder she understands why.
Black Foils sailor Liv Mackay, a friend and a patient of Porter’s, has been on the SailGP circuit since the women’s pathway was introduced in 2021, to accelerate the inclusion of females in the top echelon of sailing. Now, about 48% of the SailGP workforce is female.
“I think SailGP is opening up so many different career opportunities for women, which is pretty epic,” says Mackay.
“Charlotte is an amazing sailor in her own right so to tie both of her careers together like this is really cool. She’s in high demand, and I’d say her role is only growing as well – especially at venues where it’s windy, which ups the risk of injury. Everyone realises they can’t live without her.”
Mackay could have been spending more time with Porter after the Black Foils’ heavy collision 90 seconds into the opening race in Perth, the first event of the SailGP season. The crew was lucky to escape injury when the aft end of Amokura’s port hull was torn off – frighteningly close to skipper Peter Burling – in the crash with the Swiss boat.
“It sounded like a gunshot going off. It was super scary,” Mackay says. “It was definitely devastating, but it could have been much worse.”
The Black Foils were on the start line in their home event last weekend after an impressive race against time to build a new hull section in Britain and deliver it to Auckland.
Here on the Waitematā is where Porter’s sailing story began, as a 9-year-old at Kohimarama Yacht Club where she spent more time in the water than on her Optimist dinghy. Once she got the hang of it, she moved up through the dinghy fleets to the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron’s famous youth training programme.
Finding her feet in match racing, she started the Edge Women’s Match team with Celia Willison to compete on the world circuit, and they finished second at the 2022 world championships. Then Porter joined Megan Thomson’s 2.0 Racing team and won two more world champs silver medals in 2024 and 2025. Last year, the crew were crowned Female Sailors of the Year at the Yachting NZ Excellence Awards.
Although the quest for a world title remains, Porter has decided it’s time to spread her wings a little and try ocean rowing.
She’s joined You Row Girl, a team of four female sailors who’ve all raced together or against each other on the world stage. Hebe Hemming, one of two British yachtswomen in the team, is a boat builder at SailGP’s Southampton facility. Another member of the crew, Australian nurse and match racer Ruby Scholte, asked Porter to consider taking up the challenge when their fourth rower pulled out.
They will line up for the Atlantic race and leave the Canary Islands in December on a self-sufficient crossing that’s expected to take 40 to 50 days.
Porter wants to take New Zealand brands on board the boat, and so far, nine-time Coast to Coast winner Steve Gurney has given her boxes of his Gurney Goo product to prevent chafing and blisters at sea.
She’s moving to Britain next month to start serious rowing training with her team, while working at SailGP events in between.
Porter was at a crossroads when she applied to 10 different degree courses at university, uncertain what she wanted to do. But her parents convinced her physiotherapy – combining her love of sport and science – would be the best fit and she accepted an AUT scholarship.
Once she’d graduated, she worked part-time as a physio so she could also study paramedic science. “I had my sights set on doing the Ocean Race, and I knew skills as a physio and paramedic would be valuable at sea,” she says.
During the Covid pandemic, when Auckland was in lockdown, Porter moved to Whitianga so she could work hands-on with patients at a physio practice and the local St John Ambulance station. She’s lived on the Coromandel since.
“I was thrown into the deep end… which I think set me up well for this job, working out of a shipping container. It’s made me a bit more adaptable,” she says.
She finally got her chance to sail in the Ocean Race in 2023, in the final leg from The Hague to Genova – despite losing the nail and tip of a finger in a training accident.
“When I’m asked what my greatest sporting achievement is, it’s actually finishing leg seven of the Ocean Race because every day on my off-watch I had to tidy up my finger and make sure it was still functioning. I finished the race and I didn’t have an infection!” she laughs.
That race also set Porter on a new path. Veteran Kiwi round-the-world racer Daryl Wislang invited her to be an on-water medic for the Youth and Women’s America’s Cup in Barcelona in 2024 – a role that led to her physio position at last year’s Auckland SailGP.
“I love seeing more and more females popping up in SailGP, like boat builders, sparkies and hydro, even in management,” she says. “We have a women’s group, and we’ve run performance health talks about pelvic floor training. We do them for coaches as well, to support the female athletes.
“It’s nice to have a community here.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.