Minnie was around nine years old when she first stepped aboard a large ship. Travelling at night, she found her way to the wheelhouse and stood watching the captain, fascinated by what he was doing. Seeing her curiosity, he sat her on his lap so she could take in the view from the helm. 

It was just one moment, but it stayed with her. 

“That’s when I started to love going on boats,” she remembers. 

Perhaps the water was always going to call. Minnie’s grandfather was a fisherman, among her extended family are engineers and captains, and she grew up surrounded by people whose lives are livelihoods were connected to the sea. 

In 2005, she began studying at what was then the Fiji Institute of Technology’s Maritime Academy, setting in motion a career that would eventually take her across Fiji’s waterways and, in May 2026, to Kokomo Private Island. 

She arrived without knowing she was about to make a little Kokomo history. It was only during the interview process that Minnie discovered she would become Kokomo’s first female Boat Captain. Today, she works alongside the island’s predominantly male marine team – a distinction she approaches with characteristic matter-of-factness. 

“I can’t be coming to work and expect that you treat me (differently) because I’m a woman,” she says. “At the end of the day, the work is done.” 

Her appointment is significant. Women remain markedly underrepresented at sea. The lasted IMO-WISTA Women in Maritime survey found that women account for just one per cent of active seafarers among the organisations surveyed. Across the Pacific, the numbers are significantly similar with women estimated to represent less than two per cent of seafarers serving national fleets and less than one per cent aboard foreign-going vessels. Against that backdrop, Minnie’s place at the helm at Kokomo carries significance well beyond the island. 

Minnie is also connected with Fiji’s community of women seafarers, attending meetings when she can and staying in touch with her network while working on the island. For her, that connection extends beyond Fiji to women who began their maritime careers at home and have since taken their skills overseas. 

At Kokomo, however, the job is about far more than navigating from one point to another. Minnie talks most enthusiastically about taking guests out onto the water and watching their perspective change once they leave the island’s shoreline behind: the sun, the fish, the open ocean and the conversations that happen along the way. 

She is continuing to train across Kokomo’s marine operation, including aboard Twilight, the island’s 51-foot Leopard catamaran, while broadening her guests-service skills. Despite arriving with years of experience on the water, Minnie says Kokomo has given her the opportunity to work towards an entirely new standard. 

And she already knows where she would like that training to take her. Asked whether she has ambitions to one day captain one of Kokomo’s larger vessels, her answer is immediate.  

“That’s going to be my dream. That’s my aim for the next year or so.” 

And when told she’ll do it? 

“I will,” she replies.  

For the little girl who once stared up at the captain from the wheelhouse of a ship, wondering