The cabin is lined with sailing books, their covers graced with the faces of men who have conquered the ocean, while peeping through from another compartment is a row of brightly coloured dresses. Forty-five in total.
Julie was just 8 when she started experimenting with women's clothing.
"I found my mother's wedding dress, which I wore hundreds of times, to the stage I tore the zip because I'd grown too much," she says.
"I felt more like myself in the dress."
But it was a secret she kept to herself.
"I always knew it wasn't right. It didn't seem right," she says.
"I couldn't say anything to them [my parents]."
As she entered her teens, New Zealand entered a debate about sexual orientation, with the Homosexual Law Reform Act being passed in 1986.
Julie was 16 at the time and, while not homosexual, she felt the weight of the nation's disapproval for being "different".
Having left school at 15 to work fulltime making canvas goods, Julie was by then buying her own dresses, but outwardly she lived as a man in a man's world.
At just 17, inspired by childhood memories of building model boats and aeroplanes with her father, she bought her first boat - the hull and decks of a 27ft ferro cement motor sailer, Southern Mist.
Moving out of home, she lived on the boat and embarked on a carpentry apprenticeship, sailing whenever she could.
While sailing up the coast she met another single-handed sailor, Bob Wise, who had completed a race across the Tasman sea.
"At that stage I had no idea there were single-handed ocean races, let alone around the world," says Julie.
The seed was sown to build a 60ft aluminium schooner to sail the world's longest, single-handed, non-stop voyage.
"The only way to achieve that goal was to build it myself. I'm not from a rich family or a family with strong sailing connections. I made the executive decision at that stage to skill myself up, to learn to weld," she says.
Julie sold Southern Mist, bought the hull and decks of 38ft steel yacht, which she named Blazing Shade, and got a job in the engineering industry.
"All the time I knew I wanted to be a girl but I could only do it as a man ... I needed to put my feelings aside. I thought being who I was, or who I wanted to be, I didn't think I could make it work," she says, sweeping wisps of her platinum blonde wig out of her eyes.
"I hated the industry as soon as I got into it. It's a horrible trade. It's filthy, there's nothing nice about it whatsoever."
In 1999, having gained the skills she needed, Julie sold Blazing Shade and started building her dream yacht, Blazing Shadz.
Renting an old shed 15km outside Tauranga, over the course of two years she turned nine tonnes of aluminium plate into the bones of an ocean-going yacht.
Blazing Shadz was then moved closer to the water where Julie fitted the keel and rudder and finished the aluminium fabrication, launching the black, flame-emblazoned vessel with a magnum of champagne in 2009.
It was a happy, but bittersweet, occasion.
While closer to her sailing dream, Julie was drifting further away from herself.
By day, she hid her yearning to be a woman behind facial hair, rugby shorts and black T-shirts. But in the evenings, in the privacy of her yacht, Julie would indulge her guilty secret, delving into her extensive collection of women's clothing.
"I would dress in women's clothes most evenings. I knew if I went out it would be the end of being a bloke," says Julie.
"I had a wardrobe and discarded it half a dozen times or more."
In 2010, with a heavy heart and mounting financial pressure, Julie took Blazing Shadz on her maiden voyage to the Bay of Islands.
"I went to the Bay of Islands to try to suppress it and get it out of my system. I went away to figure out what I was going to do. Could I become female? Could I carry on with the boat? Was there any chance of sponsorship if I was female? I knew more and more I couldn't change and the chances of me finding sponsorship and recognition as a transgender would be less than what I could generate as a man," she says.
But she didn't find the answers, or the peace, she was so desperately seeking.
"So, I struggled on."
When she returned to Tauranga two years later, she was "in a pretty low state".
Deeply depressed, Julie contemplated suicide more than once.
"I had grown to hate myself and the person I'd become and was having difficulty dealing with people," she says.
"I was beginning to not communicate with my parents very well. I avoided them basically. After about six months I came to the conclusion I despised my parents for giving me the body that they had."
Something had to give - and it did.
After sharing her suicidal thoughts with her GP, Julie was admitted to hospital for a week, all the while continuing to keep the source of her angst to herself.
"It was a horrible ordeal. I loaded myself up and slept," she says.
But several months later, in September last year, she made the brave decision to finally let the secret that had tormented her for her whole life, out.
Shaving off the goatee behind which she had hidden for years, Julie started living as the woman she had always wanted to be.
Along with her black rugby shorts, she discarded her male name and replaced it with "Julie", the name she believes her parents had intended to use, had she been born a girl.
"A month or so prior I decided I wanted to come out. I gave myself a few weeks to think about the implications. At that stage I would dress as a female in the morning and go to work as a bloke," says Julie.
When she finally left the dry stack yard, where she resides on her yacht, it was "amazing".
"I couldn't believe how good I felt. I thought I would be nervous and my heart would be thumping and everything, but it was so incredibly good," she says, grinning broadly.
"The first night I walked away from people, but the second night I went for a walk and walked past people, as opposed to crossing the road. Three nights in a row I went for a walk downtown. Each time I got a bit closer to people."
But it was her first shopping trip as a woman that really made her heart sing.
"It was an awesome morning. I got a really warm reception from the ladies in the shops I went into. A couple of ladies asked about the dress I was wearing at the time. I was on a big high," she says.
"There is nothing like trying on a dress before you buy it, so I found out."
Julie's metamorphosis has not been received well by some, but she hopes in time that will change.
"Most men are a bit cagey. They don't like what I'm doing. Several good friends who have known me for a long time have not taken my change the way I would have liked them to have, but a couple of friends have more respect for me now than before," says Julie.
"I haven't had that many friends anyway. Friendships, a lot of people take too lightly I think. I don't have many friends but the friends I have I would do anything for and I hope they would do the same. And I have met a few other friends, which is good."
Julie's transformation is, like her yacht, a work in progress.
Julie has had a mandatory psychiatric and psychological evaluation and her GP has referred to her an endocrinologist for hormone therapy.
Ultimately she would like to have sex reassignment surgery.
Julie's GP, who did not want to be named, says the treatment will help minimise male characteristics and enhance female characteristics.
"You have to make sure they are doing the right thing ... making sure that it is someone who is transgender, as opposed to it being a mental health issue."
The process can take years, she adds.
Meanwhile Julie continues to chip away at her other life's dream, with what limited funds she has.
She hopes to attract sponsorship for the completion of Blazing Shadz, which she estimates will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As a warm-up to her world trip, she plans to sail around New Zealand solo in the spring - a trip of 2200 nautical miles over 12 to 14 days.
A mere drop in the ocean, compared to her planned world trip of 1000 days at sea, covering 100,000 nautical miles, while sailing below 40 degrees south.
"From the age of 19 I knew I wanted to go sailing for 1000 days," she says.
"It's a life. Everything I've done since I've had the notion of sailing the longest voyage is my whole life. It has revolved around that."
And, while she worries that becoming Julie will hinder her ability to earn a living and attract finance, she has no regrets.
"It's good to get one thing off my shoulders," says Julie.
"I'm loving it. I haven't felt better about myself for a long time, for ever."
Eligibility for gender reassignment surgery:
Must be over 18 years old.
More than 12 months of continuous hormonal treatment.
More than two years of successful and continuous real life experience as a woman/man.
Two psychiatric reports by senior psychiatrists with some experience in this field, one of which is by an evaluating (not treating) doctor.
One psychologist's report by a senior psychologist or social worker with experience in this field.
Funding:
A limited amount of funding is available from the special high cost treatment pool.
After surgery the person is asked to:
Stay in regular touch with a doctor for the ongoing prescribing of hormonal therapy.
Be monitored for possible conditions consequent to the medical and surgical interventions.
Continue with normal screening (eg, for prostate cancer).
Be open to further mental health input that would assist with any problems adjusting after operation.
