Of all the internationals contesting this year's Sydney To Hobart, Canadian novice Samantha Harper can lay claim to having travelled from the farthest flung corner of the globe.
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When she's not sailing on clipper Dare To Lead, the 37-year-old is a doctor in the remote Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador where temperatures plummet to -40 degrees.
It's an area known to be one of the foggiest, snowiest, wettest and windiest in all of Canada – a far cry from the near 40-degree heat that blanketed Sydney earlier this week while Harper was still desperately trying to acclimatise to Australian weather.
Where she lives people snow mobile or ski to work. Those who drive have to leave heaters on the engine bays of their cars overnight and it's not uncommon for people to leave taps running in an effort to stop pipes from freezing over.
"It's on the north Atlantic side of Canada, a lot of ice, it snows eight months of the year, it's very very cold, gets down to minus 40 for a few months of the year so there is no real sailing community up where I live," Harper said.
"If you were to drive from the next biggest city, it would probably take you about three days. Not all of the highway up there is paved and it gets pretty icy obviously in the winter time, it can get a bit treacherous."
Harper had never sailed until July this year. She took a 12 month sabbatical from her doctor duties in rural Canada to pursue the sport she'd always wanted to learn, and has completed four stages of the Clipper Round The World race aboard Dare To Lead.
The next leg of the Clipper race which takes the boat to China isn't until next month, giving the crew a chance to contest the Sydney To Hobart in the interim.
Since the race began in August, Harper has racked up more than 20,000 nautical miles at sea and knows what to expect of the Bass Strait after sailing over from Fremantle in the most recent leg.
"We came down around the bottom of Tasmania and up so we've done a little bit of the stretch already," Harper said.
"It's surprising how intense the weather can get and how diverse the weather can get in that section of ocean. What we've all heard is yes, it's the iconic race with the sheer volume of boats coming out of Sydney Harbour, but also just the treacherousness that could happen on such a small stretch of water."
It can be a lonely journey out of the Sydney Heads and down to the Derwent River, but Harper is well prepared if her time in Labrador is anything to go by.
Harper does everything as a rural GP in Canada, from delivering babies to working in an emergency room to visiting ever more remote communities on a bush plane.
"That's what drew me to that region of our country, was the opportunity to be a true general practitioner, and I've stuck around there for about 10 years now," Harper said.
"A lot of GPs in small towns would say this, it's hard being quote unquote a big fish in a small pond, everybody knows who you are, they know when you're at the store, they know when you're home, they know where you live.
"Being in a little bit of a bubble can get hard but I've got support of colleagues and we help each other out. It's an interesting place."
