59° North Sailingvideo
Women & the Wind // Adventuring aboard Mara Noka
29 May 2025 · 1h 40m · 8K views
What this video covers
A three-woman crew — Kiana, Laerca, and Elise — crossed the North Atlantic aboard Mara Noka, a 41-foot, 50-year-old plywood catamaran designed by James Warren, to document how plastic travels through ocean currents.5:33 The boat carries nylon sheathing and tar coating, has a planked open deck with no cabin top, and sleeps four in two hulls.24:17 Kiana found the vessel in a bay with a for-sale sign after writing in her journal that she wanted a black catamaran with shallow draft and full modifiability — Mara Noka matched every criterion. The crew spent more than a year on a refit in Florida before departing.10:18 Laerca grew up sailing from three months old on a wooden boat in Denmark and the Canaries, which shaped her comfort aboard traditional vessels.33:27 The conversation covers each woman's path to offshore sailing: Kiana left Miami real estate as a teenager, found boat life through the Workaway volunteer platform as an au pair on a French family's catamaran, and learned the live-aboard lifestyle through a mentor on a 74-foot Polynesian voyaging canoe built from mahogany planks.17:30 Host Andy Schell introduces the episode from his childhood home in Pennsylvania after flying back from Tahiti, where he left the boat Falcon bound for Bora Bora under skipper Emily.0:05
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