sailing the high seas for snowdome
Warwick Sherman won Division 2 of the 2012 Sydney to Hobart. Five months earlier he was undergoing a debilitating course of chemotherapy and a stem-cell treatment to try to defeat lymphoma.
Happily, he’s now in remission and recently tried to repeat his 2012 success in the 2014 race. He donated his yacht’s sponsorship fee of $10,000 to Snowdome. This is his story.
Warwick Sherman is a fighter. He’s also an experienced sailor. Combine the two and you get a pretty formidable force that recently tried to win another Division gong in the 2014 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.
Rewind to 2012 and with barely five months recuperation under his belt following a massive dose of chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant, Warwick competed in and won Division 2 of the 2012 Sydney to Hobart but admits he was far from peak physical condition. “I was mentally prepared but struggled physically and relied heavily on the crew to finish the race,” he said. “The fact we won was incredible!”
In preparation for the recent 2014 race, Warwick felt he was ‘a thousand times’ in better physical shape than 2012. He also had a final check-up with his oncologist who gave him the OK to sail again. “There was still no sign of the cancer and my Doctor told me he’d just got back from a conference in San Francisco where there was news of two new drugs that should be ideal for me if the Lymphoma returns.”
So, with both physical and mental preparation ticked off, Warwick and the crew of Occasional Coarse Language Too set off for Hobart on Boxing Day only to be stymied by Mother Nature just outside of Wollongong. “You’re not always going to win, but I think the value in having done it supersedes all that,” he said.
Even though he was forced to retire early from the recent race, he and his new yacht, Occasional Coarse Language Too, are winners in the Snowdome Foundation’s eyes. Warwick and his yacht’s sponsor, Concierge Business Travel, have generously donated the yacht’s $10,000 sponsorship fees to the Snowdome Foundation and the fight to ‘make hope real’ for blood cancer patients.
Having fought and beaten the rare form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma that he was diagnosed with in 2010, Warwick is proud to be able to support Snowdome. “Not finishing the 2014 race was disappointing on many levels,” says Warwick. “But the fact that I’m still alive to try and also support a cause that I passionately believe in is actually far from disappointing!”
Concierge Business Travel’s CEO, David Greenland, adds “We fully support Warwick and his wish to help other blood cancer sufferers. He’s in remission which is great but there are others who are waiting for new treatments or drugs so we are more than happy to support Snowdome’s work to accelerate these next-generation therapies.”
The Snowdome Foundation is delighted to receive the support from both Warwick Sherman and Concierge Business Travel and we thank them for helping to accelerate new therapies for Australian men, women and children with blood cancers so that they can live longer, better lives.