YACHTS yachtsinternational.com
INTERNATIONAL
66
ON
CHARTERC
apt. Kathy Pennington and I are chatting in
the cockpit aboard the Oyster 125 Twilight.
The yacht is the British builder’s flagship, a
study in Dubois naval architecture with a new sparkle
in her spinnaker, fresh from a hull paint job and inte-
rior updates following an ownership change.
We would discuss all that, of course, but
Pennington is one among so few female charter-
yacht captains that I can count them on one hand.
So we first talked about the treatment she typically
receives as she sails throughout the Caribbean and
Mediterranean.
“Men,” she says with an eye roll. “You know, you
call them on the radio and they say, ‘Can I speak to
the captain?’ And I say, ‘I am the captain.’ And there
is just shock.”
Pennington decided to address the lack of respect
a few years ago, just before the start of the summer
season in Spain’s Balearic Isles. At the time, she was
captain aboard the 118-foot (36-meter) Abeking &
Rasmussen Tiziana, a sailing yacht built in 1963.
She brought the classic hull into a marina slip in
Palma de Mallorca while standing on deck wearing a
pair of Crocs, a bikini and her hair in pigtails.
“I just wanted to show them that it could be done,”
she says with a beaming smile. “It was hilarious.”
Now in her late 30s, Pennington is combining
her playful nature with years’ worth of experience to
create Twilight’s new charter program. I can guess by
the mischievous look in her eyes that she still has that
bikini somewhere on board, but professionalism and
the maturity forged by one particularly tough life les-
son have pushed it to the back of a cedar-lined closet.
She was born and raised in South Africa, where she
sailed with her father. Unlike many captains, she didn’t
follow a straight path from that upbringing to a life on
the water; after high school, she lived with extended
family in London, where she became a hairdresser.Kathy
Pennington
S/Y TWILIGHT
By Kim Kavin
The guy I was dating was
talking about marriage and
kids ... so I got on the first
boat I could and sailed away
across the Atlantic.
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