About Me.

My Story.

Culebra island bay, Ensenada Honda (Deep Bay) is like an inland lake with smooth waters and a prevailing trade wind coming in from the wide east entrance, blowing over the protected reefs and boat channel. Many days of the week you will find me along the mangrove edge of the bay, standing in waist-deep water, coaching my students, losing my voice and having a blast turning one more person into a windsurfer, and changing lives, one lesson at a time.

Teaching windsurfing, snorkeling, and swimming is a fulfilling yet exhausting experience, but it’s the type of exhaustion that feels good.

 “Living in the Caribbean is like having the experience of a beautiful summer day, every day.” These were the words of my late mother, Alice Penfield, when she visited me in the early 2000s.

Being a resident of this tiny island with immense beauty, Culebra, in the archipelago of Puerto Rico, has shaped my personality, nurtured, and disciplined me, more than any other time period in my life. The time spent here emerged in nature, the rhythms of the wind, the moon, and the music in the streets, has put me in touch with myself and my community.

 I was daddy’s girl growing up next to SUNY Binghamton, New York. Throwing a whirling temper tantrum if I, a girl, could not be included on fishing trips with my Dad and brothers. I would not take no for an answer. In the early 70s, there were no girls' sports in school. I tried out for the cheerleading team and did not make it. I thought my jumps were higher and my splits deeper, and that made the defeat worse. I went out for the school play and received a minor part as a Puerto Rican “streetwalker”, in Guys and Dolls. I had no idea where Puerto Rico was, but I learned from Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons that music, dance, and most of all, romance, could be found in Puerto Rico.

 I sailed right past Puerto Rico, on the maiden voyage of a 42 foot Morgan sailboat, the stinky fiberglass still curing. Every time I put my head in the icebox I thought I would throw up, and I was the cook! I often stood “watch” (steering the boat alone); four hours on, eight hours off, a grueling schedule with only two crew members and a crabby captain. There was no navigation equipment, only a sextant, the captain would charter the course on the swaying galley table.

“That dome of light in the distance, that’s Puerto Rico”, We sailed right past the gigantic island, on a dark star-filled night, the dome of light over the island beckoned me. Our destination was Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. It would be 5 more years until I would dance with the people of Puerto Rico, meet a charming Puerto Rican, and give birth to a little island girl, becoming a mother for the second time. 

 In school, I was always the youngest in my class, I also struggled with dyslexia, which was basically unheard of in the 70s. By the time I got to university, I caught up. With a 4.0 average and a full scholarship to SUNY Binghamton (now Binghamton University) to study Biochemistry. In the summer of ‘79, I fell in love with this brand new sport on Cayuga Lake, when I was going to summer school at Cornell. There were no windsurfing teachers then, and no beginner boards or sails. It took me a few weeks, but with the help of my friend Zapes, I managed to figure it out. You had to free fall before “ sheeting-in” (pulling the sail in), in order to get the leverage needed to hold up the huge rig! De-rigging the sail, furling it up, and paddling against the wind to get back was an everyday experience. I soon decided to take a year off and escape to the Caribbean to windsurf. 

My year off to the Caribbean kicked off with a stop at the Windsurfing World Championships in Clearwater FL, where a DNF (did not finish but started the race) was my best score. Then onto a sailboat to the Virgin Islands, my first ever sailboat trip. Then practice, practice, and more practice, windsurfing all day every day, for a few years. I was constantly discovering freestyle moves, endlessly falling in crystal clear blue waters, living and working on wooden sailboats, teaching windsurfing, living off tuna fish sandwiches, and competing in local windsurfing regattas, it was a dream.

Then came the day-long passage to ST. Croix with an 85-year-old captain, on vessel “Eastern Air '' to compete in a regatta. St. Croix was the island where I experienced the birth of my son in ‘83 and became a mother for the first time, forever changing the course of my life.

I then competed in the 1984 Olympics held in L.A., a year after my son was born, then later that year I won the Women Freestyle Windsurfing World Championships, at the Coca-Cola bottlers Windsurfing World Championships in Perth, Australia. At this point, I was the Women’s Windsurfing World Champion. I had won the 1981 Open Class ISBA International Boardsailing Class Association in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 And until this day, I am a cheerleader, cheering on my fellow people, as one by one, I do my best with every student to share my love of the wind and sea.