Every so often, a student's story stops you in your tracks. Blake's is one of them.
Most mornings, Blake is up before the sun. There's a gym session before class, training on the water three afternoons a week, an hour's commute each way, and on any given weekend between September and April, a regatta somewhere in New Zealand. And somewhere in all of that, there's school.
For most families, this kind of schedule would mean something has to give. For Blake and his whānau, finding Aotearoa Infinite Academy meant nothing had to.
Blake began sailing at Waiuku Yacht Club, a small rural club south of Auckland. What started as a love of the outdoors grew into something far bigger. Progressing through the Optimist and P Class fleets, Blake went on to represent New Zealand at the Optimist Asian & Oceanian Championships in Abu Dhabi (2023) and the Optimist World Championships in Argentina (2024).
In P Class, in a boat designed right here in New Zealand and sailed nowhere else on earth, Blake became back-to-back National Champion in 2025 and 2026. Only ten sailors in the class's 84-year history have ever done that. Winning the title in his very first season made it all the more remarkable.
In December 2025, the sailing community took notice. Blake was awarded the Yachting NZ Emerging Talent Award and named Counties Manukau U16 Sportsman of the Year. Then, in January 2026, he and his crew crossed the line first at the YNZ Oceanbridge Regatta, New Zealand's premier youth and Olympic classes event, which draws international competition.
The boat Blake now races is the 29er, a high-performance two-person skiff widely considered the key stepping stone to the Olympic 49er class. Fast, technical, and demanding, it's a boat that rewards the kind of total commitment Blake brings to everything he does.
He and his crew qualified as New Zealand's top-ranked 29er sailors, earning selection for both the Kieler Woche Regatta and the 29er World Championships, both in Kiel, Germany in July 2026. Between now and then, there's the 29er National Championships in late May, a calendar full of training camps, and an ongoing sail-testing project for one of New Zealand's leading sailmakers, where Blake is logging conditions, recording hours, and photographing sails every ten hours as they're digitised and studied for stretch and degradation.
It is, as his mum puts it, “an interesting project for him.”
Why Aotearoa Infinite Academy
Blake's family had been homeschooling him since he was young, a deliberate choice driven by the realities of elite sport training. When they began looking for a school, the priorities were clear: quality education and genuine flexibility - including the ability to travel.
“With sailing, we travel a lot, so it was important that school be transportable to minimise any missed learning,” Jessica shared.
Infinite Academy - New Zealand’s first online charter school - made it all possible.
The school's flexible timetable allows Blake to get to the gym before morning classes begin. And when the road calls, school comes along. This week's classes were completed in the car en route to a three-day training camp.
“Infinite Academy has been a brilliant fit so far,” said Jessica, “providing both accountability and flexibility, as well as teachers who are responsive and engaged.”
Learning Without Limits
We built this school for students like Blake, young people with extraordinary drive, pursuing goals that most adults would consider ambitions enough for a lifetime.
As Blake sets his sights on Kiel, we'll be cheering from every corner of Aotearoa. Fair winds, Blake. The world is watching. 🌊⛵