Janet Gibb

Nationality: New Zealander
2008

Janet is passionate about food and cooking. Her interest and involvement in food goes back to when she was brought up on a sheep and beef farm in North Canterbury, New Zealand. She recalls that “all the food we ate was fresh and home grown. I wasn’t taught to cook. I just assimilated from my mother, who used to do the most fabulous farm meals. In that environment you couldn’t help but develop an interest in good cooking and good food.

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Janet recalls, “there were no supermarkets or butchers to pop into after work. “In fact the nearest store was miles away, so we had to grow everything we ate in a large vegetable garden. Every week a sheep was killed, dressed and eaten — we only ate the best.”

Janet studied for a Diploma in Horticulture at University and spent the next few years wandering the world. ““I did all sorts of things,” she recalls, from cooking for shearing gangs and Jillarooing in the outback of Western Australia, through to shepherding for several seasons on a Scottish highland farm. “It was working on the Highland Farm that I developed a love of single malt whiskey.””

Janet’s introduction to sailing was in her early teens through her brother-in-law. Summers were spent on the Estuary in Christchurch falling into, or out of, an ‘A Class’ Cat and mucking about at The Christchurch Yacht Club. Ten years later Janet joined The Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club in Wellington where she regularly crewed in Keelboats in both Coastal and Harbour Yacht Races. Blue Water experience was delivery trips from both Fiji and New Caledonia to New Zealand. In between there have been trips with friends on charter yachts in The Whitsundays and Tonga and a backpacking sailing experience in Turkey.

For the last 25 years Janet has worked in the food service industry — boutique fine food wholesaler; ship’s providor; seafood wholesaler; a salmon company. She has been at Moore Wilsons’ for five years, wholesalers to the food service industry. Food, in particular sourcing it, and cooking it are Janet’s life.

Janet says “I look forward to the experience of sailing on the Schooner Maggie B- a very different boat in different seas, which will bring a marvellous new set of experiences and memories.”

Curtis Weinrich

Nationality: USA
2007
Read my blog

Chemist by schooling, builder by training, stubborn and somewhat irreverent by birth, Curtis is on a quest to reinvent the wheel, as it were. Determined to find out if the world really is round, he has joined forces with the wonderful crew of the Maggie B to make his first experience ever setting foot aboard a sailing vessel a rounding of the infamous Cape Horn.

Before this trial by fire, he has been, in turn, a forklift operator, concrete flatworker, printing factory grunt, lawn god (actual job description), DOE researcher, strawbale house builder, farmer, aspiring writer (to what he doesn’t know yet), commercial fisherman, and busboy.

When not being gently prodded by the Captain of the Maggie B to hurry up and write his bio, Curtis is spending his time aboard being awestruck at the otherworldly beauty of southern Chile, cooking, avoiding doing the dishes, and reading. Son of four parents, older brother to 3, friend to many, Curtis resides mainly in his own head.

Hannah Joudrey

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 22
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Hannah has lived the past 5 1/2 yrs almost entirely on board a tallship and at sea somewhere on this planet. First, the Picton Castle , then The Eye Of the Wind and Mist Of Avalon.

She may look like just one individual however she carries along with her on her travels, her family, mentors, her community and many many friends she has scattered around the globe.

She is dedicated to sailing, furthering her skills and all things sailor-ish and cannot imagine living any other way.

Hannah has a weakness for critters ……don’t be surprised to find a named walrus, dolphin or finned “something -’r -other” following the ship, or perhaps an recovering albatross sporting a cast.

Frank Blair

Nationality: USA
Age: Old enough!
Captain and Owner

Frank Blair is the owner, Master and Captain of the Maggie B.

He is a former US Navy fighter pilot, USCG Master, Senior instructor in the Hurricane Island Outward Bound Sea School, and knows every rock in the Bay of Fundy, many personally.