Joanna Breen

Joanna Breen was awarded the Trophy for 2019 on the basis of her passage from Melbourne Australia to Osaka in the two-handed Race in 2018 on her Sparkman & Stephens 34 Morning Star. She was second in her division with a time 39 days for a distance of 5,500 nm non-stop. There were 19 participants.

It is the only north-south long ocean race in the world, The route crosses multiple weather systems as it crosses the eastern Australian Current which travels south when the fleet is going north, then has south-east winds through the Solomon Islands to the doldrums at the Equator then to the east coast of Japan after fighting the Kurosgio current.

This Race is held every 4 years. Joanna has sold Morning Star and bought a yacht called Runaway that was in the Osaka Race in 2018 with the previous owner. She did well in the 2019 Sydney Hobart Race in water ballasted Runaway. Joanna is going to compete in 2022 in the Osaka Race with Runaway.

Joanna is a remarkable sailor and has done substantial cruises in her 29 years including rounding Cape Horn in Pelagic with Skip and recently sailing from Los Angeles to Auckland New Zealand two-handed with rough weather part of the time. She was in the Baltic then across the Atlantic with then-new OCC members and much more ocean sailing in the last 10 years.

Joanna was brought up in northern Tasmania and raced skiffs on the Tamar River from her early teens [ see Jo Breen sailing]