round the world yacht race documentary

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The story of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. The story of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. The story of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.

• Alex Holmes
• Frank Bough
• John Chittenden
• Bruno Du Bois
• 33 User reviews
• 47 Critic reviews
• 82 Metascore
• 8 wins & 11 nominations total

• (archive footage)
• Tracy Edwards
• (as Barry Rickthall)
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• Trivia In 2014, Tracy Edwards learned that her boat, "Maiden," was rotting on the rocks in The Seychelles, a small group of islands in the Indian Ocean off East Africa, where it had been abandoned by its owner two years before. She crowdfunded the money to repurchase the wreck in 2016, and took another year to restore it at Southampton, where she and her crew had rebuilt it the first time in 1989. As of 2019, it is on a three-year world tour to raise money and awareness for girls' access to education in poorer nations. Her project is called "The Maiden Factor."

Tracy Edwards : We were a real mixed bag of mostly dropouts, misfits and gypsies and nomads. We were all running away from something, but we were family units... I mean surreal family units.

User reviews 33

• Jan 5, 2020
• How long is Maiden? Powered by Alexa
• June 28, 2019 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• Official site
• Southampton, England, UK
• New Black Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Jun 30, 2019

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• Runtime 1 hour 37 minutes

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‘Maiden’: The tense story of seawomen who braved the waves and the cynics

Documentary recalls the first time an all-female crew competed in a round-the-world yacht race..

Tracy Edwards (center) steers her yacht during the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race, the subject of the documentary “Maiden.”

Sony Pictures Classics

“I hate the word feminist,” British sailor Tracy Edwards told the TV cameras before embarking on a round-the-world race with the first-ever all-woman crew in 1989. “I [just] like to be allowed to do what I want to do.”

Four years earlier, she had begged her way onto a South African yacht as the cook.

“I never wanted anything in my life as much as to fit in with those guys,” she recalls in the new documentary “Maiden.” Instead, “I was treated like a servant” at the boys club.

If she couldn’t join them, she decided, she would have to beat them. As she scrambled to raise sponsorship money and restore a secondhand yacht, rechristened Maiden, the press pooh-poohed her efforts. And when her crew surpassed expectations in the opening legs of the Whitbread Round the World Race, condescension grew to outright hostility. One reporter called the boat “a tinful of tarts.”

“What the aggression against Maiden did was made me realize maybe I actually am a feminist,” she says. “I’d begun a fight I didn’t realizing I was having.”

Tracy Edwards on the Maiden in 1989.

Thirty years later, as soccer fans everywhere applaud the women in the World Cup, “Maiden” celebrates the defiant spirit of all the female athletes who have challenged the sporting world’s entrenched sexism.

It’s also a flat-out good yarn. With plenty of archival footage to go with the usual talking-head interviews, director Alex Holmes (“Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story”) takes a straightforward chronological approach, and it works beautifully because the facts fit neatly into the familiar three-act structure of fictional films, with setbacks, triumphs and a climax that isn’t quite what you expect but delivers an emotional payoff.

The dramatic tension is very real.

“The ocean’s always trying to kill you. It doesn’t take a break,” says Edwards, who made a risky shortcut along the coast of Antarctica to beat the other boats in Maiden’s class from Uruguay to New Zealand.

Some of the all-female crew aboard the Maiden.

During the next leg of the race, however, the yacht took on water and the crew lost 18 hours on the way to Fort Lauderdale. Dreading the I-told-you-so’s awaiting them on the docks, she had the women dress in bathing suits as a distraction.

“In hindsight, we really didn’t think that through enough,” Edwards says.

Maybe, but in the end, she won the respect of her critics and the ironic title of Britain’s Yachtsman of the Year.

Meanwhile, Maiden’s voyage continues, marking the race’s 30th anniversary with a victory lap around the globe. The yacht’s latest crew sailed into Honolulu this week.

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'maiden': groundbreaking 1989 sailing race for all-female crew.

Kenneth Turan

A new documentary tells the story of the first all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World sailing race in 1989. The crew was led by a 24-year-old and the boat was called Maiden.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

They were told no because they were women This is the true story that proved everyone wrong

In 1989, the very idea of a competitive all-female sailboat crew was nearly inconceivable to the manly world of open-ocean yacht racing. They’d never make it to the start of the Whitbread Round the World Race, much less survive to the finish. They’d never find funding. They didn’t have the strength or skill. They’d die at sea. Did that many professional female sailors even exist?

Tracy Edwards proved them wrong. 26-year-old skipper Edwards, her second-hand racing yacht Maiden , and her seasoned crew not only became the first-ever all-woman challenge to the Whitbread, they proved able competitors in the famously grueling race, besting male crews in their class. By the time they returned to their starting point at Southampton, England after 32,000 miles of global racing, they had shocked, inspired, and transfixed the sailing world and the British nation. Tracy Edwards was awarded the 1990 Yachtsman of the Year Award, the first woman ever to receive the accolade, and was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Maiden ’s story does not begin in such glory. Unlike most of her Maiden crewmates, Edwards did not grow up in a sailing family. After her beloved father died when she was 10, conflict at home with an antagonistic, alcoholic stepfather drove Tracy to anger and rebellion. Although her supportive and adventurous mother stood by her always, Tracy dropped out of school and ran away at 16, finding refuge around island resorts among the hard-partying tribe of boat crew gypsies, working as a cook and stewardess. Sailing represented freedom—and she then set her sights on experiencing the world’s biggest sailing event, the Whitbread Round the World Race that circumnavigated the globe every three years (known since 2001 as the Volvo Ocean Race). In 1985 she managed—barely—to find a berth as a cook on a British boat in the 4th Whitbread Race, observing and absorbing as much as she could about racing “when they’d let me up on deck.” After that exciting taste of the sport—along with the bitter taste of the sport’s pervasive sexism—Edwards became determined to skipper her own boat in the 5th Whitbread, in 1989- 90.

The obstacles were daunting. Racing requires massive financial support, and corporate sponsors were leery of attaching their names to a novel and potentially disastrous effort led by an untried girl in her twenties. When the yachting press paid attention at all, it was to treat Edwards and her campaign as an amusing curiosity.

She didn’t even have her own boat till she found an old racing yacht, beat-up but still sound. Edwards put everything on the line, mortgaging her house to pay for the 58-foot aluminum monohull previously named Disque D’Or and later Prestige , a veteran of two earlier Whitbread races that had performed well. She had been designed to be relatively easily handled on long ocean passages—but when Edwards bought her, she was in disrepair, “a wreck with a pedigree” as Edwards called her.

Edwards may have lacked funds, but what she did have in strength was a knack for finding and inspiring talent. Highly skilled professional women sailors did indeed exist, and they signed on to fight alongside Edwards for recognition, opportunity, and passion for their sport. One of the first to join was Tracy’s girlhood best friend, confidante, and moral support Joanna Gooding, who came aboard as cook (and behind-the-scenes videographer). Many of the crew members had far more sailing knowledge and experience than Edwards herself, but her relentless determination made her a leader, even when she battled exhaustion and self-doubt.

To get to the Whitbread start line in the first place, the crew rolled up their sleeves to painstakingly tear down and refurbish Maiden in the venerable Hamble shipyard, a traditionally male bastion. By carrying out the refurb themselves, the crew knew every cable, bolt, and latch on the boat—which proved life-saving when they were able to diagnose and repair a leak at sea off Cape Horn. Edwards and crew adapted the boat to compensate for the lesser physical strength of a female crew but to benefit their talents; for example, the foresails were smaller than those on their competitors’ male-crewed yachts because they require frequent changing. Because the Maiden crew could muscle their way quickly through resetting foresails, they could use sail changes strategically. Maiden n wore the colors of Royal Jordanian Airlines, the sponsor Tracy finally secured through the patronage of Jordan’s King Hussein.

The story of Maiden ’s upstart, defiant run at the Whitbread Round the World Race has all the elements of an epic adventure tale—50-foot waves, life and death drama, near-mutiny, thrilling victory—grounded in a perceptive group portrait of a team of courageous young women led by the remarkable, complicated Tracy Edwards. They pioneered the sport of long-distance racing for the women who followed and inspired women in all fields to prove themselves the equal of men.

The Maiden & The Whitbread

The whitbread round the world race began in 1973, sponsored by britain’s whitbread, a brewery that evolved into a hotel and hospitality chain. the race, held every three years, switched sponsors in 2001 and is now known as the volvo ocean race., maiden competed in the 5th wrtwr which comprised several classes of different boat sizes and six legs totalling 32,000 nautical miles. in more recent years, smaller yachts such as tracy edwards’ 58-foot maiden no longer run the volvo ocean race, which is dominated by bigger yachts racing more and shorter legs., maiden won two of the legs, the longest and shortest, in the 5th wrtwr and came in second overall in her class, the best result for a british boat in 17 years, and still remaining the best result ever for an all-female crew., september 2, 1989, southampton, england to punta del este, uruguay, 5,938 miles, punta del este to fremantle, australia, the southern ocean crossing, 7,260 miles, as skipper, tracy determined navigation, choosing the daring strategy of sailing the most southerly route, which was most direct but also challenging, with huge seas and icebergs. 52 days at sea in extreme conditions. creighton’s naturally , a contestant in a larger boat class, lost two men overboard in frigid seas. they were recovered with hypothermia. maiden was the closest vessel, and the medic onboard, claire warren, instructed the creighton ’s crew by radio in resuscitating the men. one survived. maiden won the 2nd leg for her class., december 23, 1989, fremantle to auckland, new zealand, 3,272 miles, the shortest leg. maiden again wins this leg., february 4, 1990, auckland to punta del este, 6,255 miles, over this and the following leg, the 18-hour overall lead time in class that maiden had built up on her winning legs 2 and 3 evaporated on legs 4 and 5 due to 100 days at sea with little wind followed by pounding waves that caused a leak around the mainmast. with the boat taking on water in open sea, the crew was able to find and patch the leak, but time was lost., march 17, 1990, punta del este to ft. lauderdale, florida, 5,475 miles, by the end of this leg, maiden was 16 hours behind the class leader, the belgian boat rucanor ., may 5, 1990, ft. lauderdale to southampton, 3,818 miles, despite low wind, maiden regains some time in this leg. when rucanor is stuck on a sand bank off the coast of england maiden is just behind her. l’esprit de liberté wins the leg and the overall race in division d with maiden second and rucanor placing third. but for the thousands of spectators on shore and the swarm of yachts and dinghies accompanying maiden into port, it was a momentous triumph for the hometown yacht maiden , her intrepid crew, and her inspiring skipper, tracy edwards..

“Seeing the documentary, once again, made me realize that the achievement of Maiden was truly a historic first, something I believe that most of us—to this day—have not always been able to comprehend.”

Mikaela Von Koskull

“For all of us it was a big dream that came true. The trust and respect for each other, the strong sisterhood of my Maiden friends makes me feel strong in difficult times."

Tanja Visser

"If what we did inspired people and changed misconceptions then that is a very good thing that happened from something that was so enjoyable."

Sally Creaser Hunter

Tracy edwards, mbe · skipper.

Tracy Edwards is the central figure in Maiden , the documentary feature about her successful effort to compete in the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race skippering the first all- female crew.

Cook, Videographer

“When we were on Maiden we didn't really take much notice of the negative things that were being said. Even when it was said that we could die and that would be a tragedy— we agreed it would be and no-one had any intention of dying!”

Marie-Claude Kieffer Heys

As First Mate she played a key role in Maiden ’s intensive six-month tear-down and refit project and devoted two years to preparations for Maiden ’s Whitbread campaign.

Watch Captain, Diver, Engineer

As Watch Captain on Maiden , she and her co-captain Michèle Paret traded shifts on deck command while Skipper Tracy Edwards typically focused on strategy and navigation. Dawn’s physical strength also served her as Driver and Engineer.

Michèle Paret

Watch captain and helm.

Michèle met and raced with Marie-Claude Keiffer in France, joined Maiden with her, and took Marie-Claude’s position when she left the team. She became one of the two watch captains under Tracy.

Helm, Safety Equipment

"It took a lot of skill and physical strength to keep that boat going fast in the right direction in some very heavy sea and wind conditions."

Maiden was Jeni’s first experience of professional sailing. She did go on to complete the Whitbread Race again four years later.

Foredeck and Sailmaker

In addition to her jobs as bowman and sailmaker, Tanja brought a dental emergency kit onboard as she was already a professional dentist. She also helmed, and did some of the video filming and still photography.

Watchwoman, Helm, Deck Hardware

Mikaela is the only sailor to have taken part in all three of Tracy Edwards’ sailing ventures: the ’89 Maiden campaign; the 2001 Maiden catamaran outing; and the launch of the Maiden Factor.

Claire Russell

Sail trimmer, medic.

When Claire heard an-all female crew was being put together and needed a doctor she signed up straight away.

Amanda Swan Neal

Amanda’s 335,00 miles of ocean sailing include two Sydney-Hobart Races, numerous international regattas and seven Cape Horn roundings intermixed with a ten-year involvement in tall ship sail-training.

Nancy Harris

Sail trimmer, deck hardware.

"When we screened the film, it was good to show my family a part of my life they really didn’t know much about."

Angela Heath

Sail trimmer.

A chance encounter with Tracy Edwards in a bar in Cork led to her competing in the Fastnet Race with the Maiden team.

Sarah Davies

Reserve crew member.

Having spotted a small advert in Yachts and Yachting for crew wanted for Maiden , with leave of absence granted by the Army, she joined the team as reserve crew nine months before the race.

Howard Gibbons

Project manager.

The all-female Maiden crew actually had several men as well as women on shore crew, led by Howard Gibbons, who managed project planning and land operations from the very start of the campaign.

• Directed by Alex Holmes
• Executive Producer James Erskine
• Screenplay Alex Holmes
• Cinematographer Chris Openshaw
• Editor Katie Bryer
• Music Rob Manning Samuel Sim

Alex Holmes Director

Alex is a Bafta-winning filmmaker with extensive experience in producing, directing, and writing acclaimed documentaries and dramas. His work as a writer-director includes searing documentary STOP AT NOTHING: THE LANCE ARMSTRONG STORY for BBC’s Storyville, which Variety magazine described as “riveting... devastating... thought-provoking”, as well as Emmy, Bafta and RTS-winning factually-based dramas HOUSE OF SADDAM, DUNKIRK and COALITION. Last year Alex directed the horror influenced revenge drama for BBC 2 which the Telegraph called “Harrowing, brilliant and superbly directed.” Alex most recently directed the theatrical documentary MAIDEN, which tells the epic story of Tracy Edwards who, through sheer grit and determination, successfully skippered the first ever all-female crew in the Whitbread round the world yacht race.

Katie Bryer Editor

Katie Bryer initially trained as a drama editor, first at the National Film and Television School in London and later at the BBC. Katie started working on documentaries in 2010 and has worked on many award-winning features with subjects ranging from forced marriage, to human trafficking, from Mount Everest to the moon. Her first feature documentary was the snowboarding movie WE RIDE, before she went on to co-edit the Oscar-nominated VIRUNGA, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel. In 2014 she returned to her drama roots and edited the award-winning romantic-comedy SUPERBOB, directed by Jon Drever. The film was described as a 'modern romantic classic' by Ricky Gervais. In 2015 she worked with Orlando again on MOON SHOT, a series of short documentaries for J.J. Abram’s company Bad Robot. In 2016 Katie edited BRUCE LEE & THE OUTLAW, a film built from footage shot by the photographer Joost Vandebrug over the course of 8 years. In 2017 Katie made two more feature docs: MAIDEN, an archive- based feature about the first ever all-female crew to take part in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, and as additional editor on ‘EVELYN. Orlando von Einsiedel’s heartbreaking journey into his own family’s history with suicide.

Chris Openshaw Cinematographer

London based Director of Photography Chris Openshaw has been involved in documentary and drama for 25 years. His wealth of experience draws on his creative abilities in lighting, composition and technical knowledge to deliver exciting and original images. His CV reflects the vast array of projects he has been involved with. He has travelled to many countries and his proven creativity and reliability in all extremes and environments has led to international recognition and many awards. His most recent works include ONE STRANGE ROCK, an extraordinary documentary series in which Astronauts tell the story of the earth from their unique perspective, and MAIDEN, the epic story of the first ever all-female crew to compete int he Whitbread round the world yacht race.

Victoria Gregory Producer

Victoria has a wealth of experience in producing both documentary and drama at a high level. After working at the BBC making factual dramas like Space Race and Dunkirk, Victoria also worked on the critically acclaimed drama Last Resort directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Since leaving the BBC Victoria has worked as part of the producing team on the BAFTA award winning feature documentary Senna and co-produced the Oscar winning Man on Wire. Since forming New Black films with James Erskine in 2009 Victoria has produced all of New Black Films‘ output including Pantani, Battle of The Sexes, The Ice King, and MAIDEN in 2018. Victoria is currently producing Billie, a moving portrait of the greatest jazz singer of all-time: Billie Holiday.

James Erskine Executive Producer

James is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose work as a writer/director/producer includes, in addition to his New Black Films projects, VANISHING OF THE BEES; OIL STORM, an award-winning TV movie for FX; and EMR, a theatrically released independent feature, and winner of several film festivals including Raindance. He has also directed several episodes of popular BBC dramas Robin Hood, Torchwood, Holby City and EastEnders , among others. In 2017 James directed SACHIN: A BILLION DREAMS, a feature documentary about the life of Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, the film went on to smash box office records in India. His most recent film, THE ICE KING, tells the story of John Curry, the Olympic gold medallist ice skater who challenged norms in both art and sexuality. The film was released to critical acclaim in the UK earlier this year and has gone on to be sold around the world. As well as developing New Black Films’ current projects, James is currently directing , a portrait of the greatest jazz singer of all time, Billie Holiday.

Sam Brayshaw Associate Producer

A key member of the team at New Black Films since 2016 Sam has a background in both documentary and drama, working as an assistant on various shows including the feature documentary STOP AT NOTHING: THE LANCE ARMSTRONG STORY, Channel 4’s RTS winning political drama COALITION and BBC 2’s horror influenced drama series PAULA in 2017. More recently Sam associate produced on Channel 4’s thrilling documentary HUNTING THE KGB KILLERS about the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko on British soil and MAIDEN, a feature documentary that tells the story of the first ever all-female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round the world Yacht Race

Tracy Edwards MBE · Skipper

Tracy Edwards is the central figure in MAIDEN, the documentary feature about her successful effort to compete in the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race skippering the first all- female crew. In 1990, Tracy was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) by HM Queen Elizabeth II; the Royal Jordanian Air Force Wings by HM King Hussein of Jordan; and became the first woman in its 34-year history to be awarded the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy. Her memoir of the race, Maiden, was Whitbread Sports Book of the Year and on the Times bestseller list for 19 weeks.

In 1998, Tracy put together the first all-female crew to attempt the fastest non-stop circumnavigation by sail. Her 92-foot catamaran broke five world records. Her second memoir, Living Every Second, was published in 2001. Maiden II in 2001 saw Tracy create and manage the world’s first ever mixed gender fully professional racing team which broke many world speed records in their 120ft catamaran. In 2005, Edwards created and managed the first ever round the world race to start and finish in the Middle East.

Tracy retired from sailing in 2005 and worked for CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) as Project Manager for their International Youth Advisory Conference. During 2009 - 2012 she studied at Roehampton University and graduated with a 2:1 Degree in Psychology. Currently, Tracy has combined these passions for sailing, female empowerment, and youth advocacy with her Maiden Factor Foundation, named for her original sailboat. She rescued Maiden from a dilapidated condition, restored the 58’ monohull to its former glory, and is organizing round-the-world fundraising and awareness tours for her foundation. Maiden , an iconic part of British maritime history, now has a new life as an Ambassador and fundraiser for girls’ education.

Tracy Edwards on fighting sexism

“30 years ago, it may have been easier for us to have the battle than I think it is for young women today, because when we came up against sexism it was in your face. It was—Bam! It was something you could fight. You know, that you could see and you could take hold of it. And you could shout and fight. Now it's insidious. No one would dare to be overtly sexist now or misogynistic; it's kind of gone under the radar. And I think that's really worrying. It’s a new conversation—the discussion hasn't gone away. It's just taken a different form. So, with The Maiden Factor we’ve decided to engage men more within the project, including sailing on the boat for the first time.”

Jo Gooding Cook, Videographer

Jo remains one of Tracy’s closest friends having known each other since their childhood in Wales. But the pair couldn’t be more different; in stark contrast to Tracy’s high energy, go get ’em attitude, Jo is perennially calm, shy and insightful.

Before Maiden , Jo was working in a pub in her hometown and had lost touch with Tracy, but out of the blue Tracy gave her a call and told her about the idea for competing in the Whitbread Maiden . Jo had never sailed competitively but immediately answered Tracy’s call to become the cook on board. She also served as the principal videographer though she also shared filming with other crew members.

Post Maiden Jo went back to the Isles of Scilly, working in the local hospital and volunteering in the school. She moved back to the mainland and worked in various caring roles including Adult Mental Health and children and young people with learning and physical disabilities.

In 2002, Jo trained as a Counsellor and in 2006, set up her own business working with children, adolescents and adults. She completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Education in teaching in 2008, and now delivers courses, workshops as well as health and well-being programmes.

Jo Gooding on doomsayers:

Marie-Claude Kieffer Heys First Mate

Marie-Claude was born in the seaside town of Brest, Brittany, France, to parents who enjoyed yacht racing as a hobby. She started sailing school at the age of 7, participating with family in races on her parents’ boat. By 16, Marie-Claude took charge of her father’s 28-foot sailboat for cruising and racing with friends, bringing early lessons in responsibility and freedom. To further her dream of someday competing in the Whitbread Race, she learned sailmaking, boat building, and every aspect of yacht racing, and supported herself as a professional sailor from a very young age.

In 1983, she entered the single-handed Figaro race, a key race for gaining media coverage and, subsequently, sponsorship. This also proved to be a key race in developing her confidence in her own abilities. She competed in this race again in 1987, 1990, and 1991, with respectable results. She skippered female crews for the Tour de France à la Voile in 1985 and 1986.

At the age of 25, Marie-Claude completed her first victorious transatlantic race: Monaco-New York on Lady Elf with a crew of 7 women and 5 men. She used her prize money on another mode of transportation, buying a motorcycle from another crew member.

When she heard about Tracy Edwards’ campaign to bring an all-female crew to the Whitbread Race, she immediately sent Tracy her CV, eventually bringing two of her sailing comrades, Jeni Mundy and Michèle Paret, onboard the Maiden team with her. As First Mate she played a key role in Maiden ’s intensive six-month tear-down and refit project and devoted two years to preparations for Maiden ’s Whitbread campaign.

The leadership conflict with Tracy Edwards that led to her sacking shortly before the start of the Whitbread Race is captured in the Maiden documentary feature. Although she was angry and disappointed that she missed the chance to race the Whitbread with Maiden , she went on to complete the race twice: in 1993 on board Heineken (invited by skipper Dawn Riley), then again in 1997 on EF Education . In 2011 she again sailed Heineken in the Volvo Alicante regatta with a 12-woman team made up of representatives from all 4 previous all-girl Whitbread/Volvo campaigns. Marie-Claude and Tracy have been able to settle their differences and sustain a long-term relationship of cordial respect and friendship.

After retiring from professional sailing Marie-Claude married a fellow sailor and moved to Hamble in Hampshire, where Maiden was based all those years ago. She now runs a company importing and brokering boats, Key Yachting, and sails year-round with customers and friends.

“Overall it is still tough for the girls. Girls who train hard and earn their stripes are now seen at all level of campaigns and have gained respect. However, the imbalance of weight and strength, plus stereotypical mindsets, still makes it a man’s world in many types of boats. The boat designs have become more and more extreme, requiring fewer crew but more brute physical strength—so if you need to take the strongest people, obviously that won’t be the women. Now the Volvo race requires two women on every crew—otherwise there probably wouldn’t be any.”

Dawn Riley Watch Captain, Diver, Engineer

Dawn Riley, the only American on the Maiden team, began sailing as a young girl with her family in Michigan on Lake St. Clair (“nothing yacht-clubby”) and has supported herself on and around boats since age 14, putting herself through college boat-captaining. The Great Lakes trained her well in extreme conditions and heavy seas. She jumped at the chance to join a Whitbread team with Maiden , intrigued to see what an all-female team could achieve.

Within 36 hours of Maiden crossing the finish line in 1990, Dawn was back in New York appearing on the David Letterman show, snatched up by the producers as the American rep on the high-profile team. She had graduated from Michigan State in Advertising before the race and this served her well as her career went from strength to strength in the sailing world. In 1996, as CEO and Captain of America True, Dawn was the first woman to manage an America’s Cup sailing team. She has raced on four Americas Cup campaigns and two Whitbreads (now Volvo Ocean Race). In the 1993-4 race she was Skipper of Heineken , joined on her team by several former Maiden crew members.

Dawn is a former president of the Women’s Sport Foundation, founded by Billie Jean King, and is active in many public service and political activities. Dawn serves as a board member of the NGB – US Sailing and the SCS Democratic Club. She was co-author of Taking the Helm, an autobiographical story of her Round the World Race experiences.

Dawn is a television commentator and experienced public speaker, on topics ranging from entertaining adventure stories to motivational seminars in team building and personal success She considers herself to be a well–rounded, accomplished businesswoman, community leader and youth sports advocate, author, speaker, TV commentator and committed philanthropist. Most recently, Dawn created and runs Oakcliff Sailing Center, a unique training and coaching center that is “Building American Leaders through Sailing.” Dawn believes that this center will prove to be significant in creating leaders inside and outside the marine industry.

Dawn Riley on the audacity of the Maiden challenge:

“I’m quoted in the documentary saying I didn’t believe there were any other really good female sailors in the world. I didn’t say that to be snotty—though it sounds a little that way. I was underscoring how absolutely radical an idea Tracy’s campaign was, and what a fantastic opportunity it was for really competitive, ambitious women like us.”

Michèle Paret Watch Captain & Helm

French sailor Michèle Paret has always been an active sportswoman, devoting her youth to wind surfing, climbing and mountain biking until she discovered sailing. She met and raced with Marie-Claude Keiffer in France, joined Maiden with her, and took Marie-Claude’s position when she left the team. She became one of the two watch captains under Tracy.

She spoke no English when she came aboard Maiden —the first vocabulary she mastered was the names of tools. She quickly picked up the language.

After the race she met her partner in sailing, racing, and life Dominique Wavre and the pair continued sailing together, achieving a successful 3rd place in the Quebec to St Malo Transat. In 2007 they placed 3rd in the Barcelona World Race.

Michèle continues to sail and has over 170,000 sea miles on the open seas with vast experience of crewed and solo ocean regattas. Due to her almost continuous travel we were unable to find a time to interview Michèle for the film.

Michèle Paret on how women collaborate:

“I discovered onboard Maiden a different way of women working together to achieve the same performance as men, a typically feminine and caring solidarity amongst us. Approaching the finish line, I simultaneously felt a huge joy mixed with a huge pain, mixed up with tears... All the girls were in the front of the boat but I couldn’t go up there. The finish line marked the end of this great adventure, but the beginning of many others.”

Sally Creaser Hunter Helm, Safety Equipment

Scotswoman Sally Creaser (now Hunter) came from a sailing family and raced extensively in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. She took a job working in a boatyard, heard about Maiden early on, and wanted to join up. She traveled down to Hamble and was hired by Tracy on the spot because of her experience and sense of humour.

Onboard Maiden , Sally worked mostly in the cockpit, at the helm or winches.

After the ‘89 race Sally continued sailing until 1991 when she finished second in the ‘Azores and Back’ race. She married in 1995 to Iain Hunter and set up her own company, Hunter Yacht Deliveries, as well as a swim school in her local Scottish town, Arran. Her two sons are both professional sailors; the older, Neil, sails for Ben Ainslie’s Americas Cup campaign. Sally is still heavily involved in the sailing world.

Sally Hunter on physical strength and skill:

“A lot of credit for how well we did should go to the girls who were so good at helming the boat, in the Southern Ocean especially. It took a lot of skill and physical strength to keep that boat going fast in the right direction in some very heavy sea and wind conditions. Every one of the helms suffered from tendonitis in our wrists from the constant movements necessary.”

Jeni Mundy Foredeck

Jeni finished university with a BSc in Maths with Philosophy and in need of an adventure. She had grown up sailing and racing dinghies on the Thames with her family, and spent a couple of post-bac years in the Caribbean where she met Marie-Claude Kieffer and advanced her sailing skills. Marie-Claude connected her with Tracy’s Maiden crew search.

Maiden was Jeni’s first experience of professional sailing. She did go on to complete the Whitbread Race again four years later. It was during the preparation for the 1989 race that Jeni realized a talent for electronics when laying the cables in the refurb of Maiden .

After her stint sailing, Jeni gained a Masters in Electronic Engineering and became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineers. She worked in New Zealand telecommunications in various Engineering roles before joining Vodafone as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and leading the Enterprise Product Division for Vodafone Group. She has also worked with Auto Trader, the UK’s largest digital automotive marketplace, as an Independent Non-Exec Board Director.

Jeni is currently Regional Managing Director for UK and Ireland for Visa, the credit card giant.

Jeni Mundy on endurance:

“Human beings are amazing. We can achieve and endure so much more than we think. We’re amazingly resilient. During the Southern Ocean crossing we lived in extreme conditions, minus twenty with the wind chill, lucky to get two hours sleep, exhausted but two hours is better than no hours. The definition of a team is having confidence that every single one is fully braced to take on whatever happens. We were that kind of team.”

Tanja Visser Foredeck and Sailmaker

A childhood sailing in her native Holland gave Tanja a passion for sailing and when she had finished her studies in both dentistry and photography she jumped at the chance to make a career change into professional sailing for a while. When she joined Maiden she became the first Dutch woman to have taken part in the race.

In addition to her jobs as bowman and sailmaker, Tanja brought a dental emergency kit onboard as she was already a professional dentist. She also helmed, and did some of the video filming and still photography. During the race she met her husband, a watch captain on board ‘Merit’. Tanja was the first of the Maiden crew to have a child, so their daughter is the first child to be born to parents who both completed the Whitbread.

After the ‘89 race Tanja continued sailing until the early 2000’s, meanwhile setting up her own dental surgery outside Amsterdam. Tanja also breeds dressage horses and owns her own studfarm where she lives with her two children and six dogs.

Tanja Visser on the Maiden experience:

“For all of us it was a big dream that came true. The trust and respect for each other, the strong sisterhood of my Maiden friends makes me feel strong in difficult times. It’s part of ourselves and I carry it with me always. If you believe in something, go for it, work hard, and never give up.”

Mikaela Von Koskull Watchwoman, Helm, Deck Hardware

Originally from Korpo, in the southwestern Archipelago of Finland, Mikaela inherited her love and respect of nature and sea, from a long line of seafarers in her family. She started her career graduating as Radio Officer from Mariehamn Maritime Institute, working on merchant ships, followed by ship ́s purser on passenger ships. Slowly she gained sea-miles and experience to follow her real dream: to become a professional yachtswoman on sailing yachts.

As well as crewing on Maiden in 1989, Mikki participated in the next Whitbread on Heineken ’s all-woman crew skippered by Dawn Riley. She is the only sailor to have taken part in all three of Tracy Edwards’ sailing ventures: the ’89 Maiden campaign; the 2001 Maiden II catamaran outing; and the launch of the Maiden Factor. Mikki has also participated in both the Jacques Vabre and Jules Verne race events and on the Multihull circuit. Having spent so many miles and years on fast, extreme yachts, both in the Northern and Southern Hempishere, she now enjoys being part of similar expeditions (although on somewhat slower ships).

Since 2009 she has been working as a tour guide, mainly in Europe and Africa, as well as zodiac driver in Svalbard and Greenland; she is drawn to places that offer both vast open space and astounding nature. When not enjoying her two favourite areas, the North and the South Pole, Mikaela enjoys being at home on her small farm in Portugal, riding her horse or hiking in the Alentejo countryside.

As another world traveler difficult to pin down, Mikaela could not be interviewed for the Maiden film.

Mikaela Von Koskull on Maiden ’s dream fulfilled:

“Having been brought up in a country that was rather equal-opportunity, I had decided, many years before Maiden , that racing big boats across the ocean was the thing I wanted to do—not because I’m a woman, but simply because it was my dream. We all just wanted the opportunity to do it. Maiden was really my steppingstone for a lifetime in sailing. Tracy made that happen.”

Claire Russell Sail Trimmer, Medic

Born in Birmingham, England, Claire studied medicine at the Royal Free Medical School in London. She began sailing as a university student, so was a keen but somewhat inexperienced sailor relative to the Maiden crew. When Claire heard an-all female crew was being put together and needed a doctor she signed up straight away.

During the race Claire showed incredible grace under pressure when two men fell overboard into the Southern Ocean on board ‘Creighton’s Naturally’. With Maiden being the closest boat to Creighton’s, Claire took to the radio and talked the crew through emergency care for the two men once they had recovered them from the fatally cold ocean. Through Claire’s instruction the Creighton’s crew were able to save the life of one man, Bart Vandendway, but tragically were unable to save the other, Anthony Phillips, who perished on board.

Claire also met her future husband during the race, Peter Warren, a New Zealander who was racing on ‘NBC Ireland’. In the years following the Whitbread, Claire continued to sail, travel and practice medicine, eventually specializing in Accident and Emergency Medicine in the UK.

After their daughters were born in 1997 and 1999, Peter and Claire moved to New Zealand and Claire worked as a Rural General Practitioner and primary response doctor, also becoming a Fellow of the New Zealand College of General Practitioners.

Claire is presently a senior staff doctor in an ‘Urgent Care’ centre in Hamilton, New Zealand; a facility providing 24-hour accident and medical care to the population of Waikato area.

They run a small equestrian facility and Peter runs a farm contracting business. Their eldest daughter Jessica is in her third year at Wellington University, NZ, and Leah is in her second university year in the United States on a sports scholarship.

Claire Russell on facing danger:

“If you send a whole load of 20-year-olds round the world doing high-profile dangerous sport, for lots of reasons there’s potential that people could die. In truth, any doctor could have done what I did, talking the other boat through hypothermia treatment. We were close to Creighton’s, we knew them. I had friends on that boat. So, my voice on the radio gave them permission to act. I was a step distanced from their desperate situation and awful emotions because I was on the end of a radio. A lot of medicine is just support. When we reached port, Bart came up and gave me a box of chocolates—it was wonderful!”

Amanda Swan Neal Rigger

Amanda grew up in Auckland, New Zealand and sailed to North America as a teenager aboard a 38’ sloop that she helped her parents build. She has spent her life on and around sailboats.

She was rigger aboard Maiden , then in 1994 joined her future husband John Neal aboard Mahina Tiare II for a series of sail-training expeditions from NZ to Cape Horn and Antarctica. They still own and operate Mahina Expeditions, leading ocean sail-training expeditions worldwide aboard Mahina Tiare III and also present instructional sailing seminars at major boat shows worldwide.

Amanda is author of The Essential Galley Companion and Marine Diesel Engine Essentials - A Coloring and Learning Book created to help demystify engine systems, and since 2005, she has written the monthly Galley Essentials column in 48 North magazine. She and John write for four sailing magazines and submit cruising images to yachting journals.

Amanda’s 335,00 miles of ocean sailing include two Sydney-Hobart Races, numerous international regattas and seven Cape Horn roundings intermixed with a ten-year involvement in tall ship sail-training. Amanda and John recently sailed from 80 degrees north, above Spitsbergen, to New Zealand. Mahina Tiare will be based in the South Pacific for the next five years.

Still based in New Zealand, Amanda enjoys introducing women to the joys of the cruising lifestyle and her personal interests include Celtic step dancing, photography, triathlon training and sewing.

Amanda is not interviewed in Maiden .

Amanda Swan Neal on the job of rigger:

“For me Maiden was a dream come true. I was the first woman in New Zealand to complete a sailmaker’s apprenticeship and first woman rigger in the Southern Hemisphere, so it was fantastic to work and race aboard Maiden and hone my skills. My job as rigger on Maiden entailed taking care of the mast and rigging. I was responsible for keeping the mast up, ensuring that the standing rigging helped keep the mast up and that the running rigging was in order for controlling the sails. This entailed daily trips to the top of the mast for rig inspection and broken or tangled halyards. I’m proud I personally stuck the course, we didn’t drop the mast, there were no major incidents, and that we were the first woman crew to race around the world—no one can ever take that away from us!”

Nancy Harris Sail Trimmer, Deck Hardware

Born and bred in Hampshire, England, Nancy grew up in Hamble, the hub of England’s boatbuilding and professional sailing circuit. Nancy began sailing singlehanded boats in her teens before beginning in offshore sailing.

In 1988 she had a chance meeting with Howard Gibbons on board a bus and she went along to meet Tracy Edwards that day and joined Maiden .

After the race finished, Nancy remained in Hampshire and enjoys life in the countryside with her husband, two daughters and several horses.

Nancy Harris on the joys of dry land:

“When we screened the film, it was good to show my family a part of my life they really didn’t know much about. It was wonderful to see how well everyone was, and to follow Tracy’s projects, but I am happy with my feet on the ground and looking after my animals and garden. I’ve tried to instill in my children the values I learned from Maiden : don’t give up. There is always a way of overcoming anything.”

Angela Heath Sail Trimmer

Irishwoman Angela worked as a secretary/receptionist in National Board for Science & Technology and six years in an insurance company until in 1989 a chance encounter with Tracy Edwards in a bar in Cork led to her competing in the Fastnet Race with the Maiden team. Tracy then invited her to join Maiden as Sail Trimmer for the 1989 race.

She continued to work in various administration roles until 1994 when she became a mum of two boys.

From 2001 to 2006 Angela worked as Office Manager in Viking Marine, Clothing & Marine Specialists, Dun Laoghaire.

A change in career direction led her to join a doctor as Practice Manager in a newly established GP practice. She remained in the medical industry until early 2017.

Angela lives in Dublin Bay with her family and friends. She also loves gardening, hill-walking, piano, snow-skiing and pottery.

Sarah Davies Reserve Crew Member

Sarah served with the Woman’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) from 1982 and before going to Sandhurst to train as an Army Officer.

Having spotted a small advert in Yachts and Yachting for crew wanted for Maiden, with leave of absence granted by the Army, she joined the team as reserve crew nine months before the race. She completed one leg of the race from New Zealand to Australia in place of Sally Creaser.

After the race, Sarah continued to race with the Army offshore team and racing a variety of other boats including their Nordic Folkboat.

She has lived and worked in Kiel, Germany, London, Suffolk and Cyprus. A brief foray away from sailing saw her working with one of the City of London Livery Companies, the Worshipful Company of Saddlers, which only served to encourage her two daughters’ passion for riding, and she now spends her spare time, along with Simon her husband, as groom and horse transporter.

Sarah has three children, two who have sailed in the GBR Junior and Youth teams and the third who prefers to be on horseback.

Howard Gibbons Project Manager

Before he met Tracy Edwards, Howard was a journalist working for a local newspaper in Southampton. Having been close to the sailing community for some time he had some experience of helping to organise professional crews. When he heard the idea for Maiden he was the first person to encourage Tracy to go for it.

He became the project manager before the team was in place and used his press connections to push the idea to a wider audience. He motivated Tracy to speak publicly and front the project and gave her extensive media training. Howard was also Tracy’s rock and was always there, right beside her, if doubt ever set in.

After the ‘89 race Howard went on to project manage Heineken in the 1993 race (skippered by Dawn Riley and crewed by several Maiden alums). He also managed Tracy in the early 2000’s with her Maiden 2 catamaran campaign.

Howard still lives in Hamble and has been helping manage the refurbishment of Maiden throughout 2018. He has also served as the project manager for the Volvo Oceans Legends Race.

Howard Gibbons on a once-in-a-lifetime experience:

“Every so often a sporting first comes along that transcends sport itself to become world famous for a whole set of reasons. Tracy’s determination to make it happen against all the odds, and gathering such a wonderful crew and support team around her to make it so, was, and still is, an epic achievement, and to say it changed perceptions of women in sailing is an understatement. It was unprecedented, challenging, great, wonderful and a lot of fun. We had the time of our lives.”

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Tracy Edwards on What It Took to Race Around the World

The new documentary Maiden tells the story of the first all-female sailing team to finish the Whitbread Round the World Race. We talked with the crew's skipper about the historic feat.

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Maiden , a riveting documentary from director Alex Holmes about the first all-female sailing team to race around the world, opens with a somber voice-over from protagonist Tracy Edwards: “The ocean is always trying to kill you.” In fact, the mighty seas were just one obstacle the young skipper—then just 27 years old—and her crewmates faced while completing the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race (which later became the Volvo Ocean Race ). During the nine-month, 33,000-mile voyage, spanning England, Chile, and Australia, the crew also had to overcome skepticism and sexism with courage and perserverance.

The film, which hits select theaters today, intertwines archival footage from the race and one-on-one interviews with crew members recounting their experiences surviving everything from monstrous waves in the Southern Ocean to the day-to-day challenges of sharing such tight quarters. It also illuminates gender inequality in the male-dominated world of competitive sailing, which Edwards broke into by talking her way onto the crew of a boat competing in the 1985–86 Whitbread. That year she was one of just four women sailors in a field of 23 boats and 230 crew members. “I had to fight to get onto a boat, but when I did, it was just the best thing,” Edwards, now 56, told me.

The experience inspired Edwards to put together an all-women team for the 1989–90 Whitbread. But as the documentary chronicles, she soon met another challenge: nobody wanted to sponsor her. That is until she reached out to the late King Hussein I of Jordan, who she’d met years prior during a yacht charter. He organized funding for the purchase of the 58-foot secondhand yacht that would eventually become known as Maiden . Edwards and her teammates refurbished her for months before the race kicked off. Holmes, a veteran documentary filmmaker, turns the ensuing voyage into a rollicking ride on the big screen. The team won two legs in its division, and while we won’t spoil its overall finish, it was the best result for a British boat since 1977 and still remains the best finish for an all-female crew.

The aftermath of the race wasn’t always easy, not least the media frenzy following the team’s historic feat. But a couple of decades after Edwards retired from sailing, Maiden is back in her life. In 2014, around the same time Holmes was raising money for the Maiden film, Edwards got word that her beloved boat, which was sold after the Whitbread, had been abandoned in the Seychelles. So she raised money to refurbish her again, this time from Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, King Hussein’s daughter. “She was in an absolutely terrible state when we got her back, so there was a lot of work to do,” Edwards says. The boat is currently sailing around the world once again, this time promoting the Maiden Factor Foundation , a nonprofit Edwards founded to advocate for gender equality and educational opportunities for girls.

Ahead of the Maiden film’s theatrical release, we spoke with Edwards about how she learned to sail, the impact of the Maiden crew’s accomplishment, and why she’s OK with not helming a yacht anymore.

On how she got into sailing: “I got my first boat when I was 17, growing up in England, and learned as I went, with no real direction or plan of any kind. I just fell into each job and the next boat and the next boat. My first Whitbread experience completely changed my whole view on sailing, which up until then had been a job. It then became a way of life, my whole reason for existing.”

On what it was like being the only woman on an all-male crew: “Very smelly! That was my initiation to the joys of not having to wash and not caring what people think. I looked awful most of the time. There’s nothing glamorous about this type of sailing around the world.”

On the crew’s attitude toward her: “I don’t think they were being sexist, but they just didn’t want a girl on the boat. It was just, ‘No one else has got a girl. Why do we have to have a girl?’ But then we won the leg coming into New Zealand, and I went from being a nuisance to their lucky charm. They were suddenly all very protective, and then it was, ‘We’re the only professional crew with a girl on the boat.’ So it changed into something good.”

On meeting King Hussein : “I was doing day work in Newport, Rhode Island, and someone asked if I wanted to do a crewing job for the day. The guests turned out to be King Hussein and Queen Noor. Their son, who’s now King Abdullah, was graduating from Georgetown University, and they took the boat out for the day. I guess because I was 21 and didn’t really know who he was, I just treated them like I would treat anyone. I think he liked that. We spoke for a long time, and he was fascinated with my lifestyle. Over the years, we formed a very special friendship. He was an extraordinary human being who changed the course of my life.”

On the process of refurbishing Maiden for the race: “We had to literally take her apart and redesign her to make her more effective for women to sail, strength-wise. We opened up the interior, removed all the heavy wood, and replaced it with carbon fiber, honeycomb boards, and resin. We begged and borrowed tools and parts. When we launched, she was perfect.”

On the criticism the all-women team faced from the media and male competitors: “What is shocking to me now is that we just accepted that was the way things were and pretty much ignored it. Some were openly laughing at us, and that really hurt. It just proved how much we had to do and how important it was to succeed, because if we didn’t, it would be harder for women the next time.”

On the skills she needed to skipper a team around the world: “I’m not the best sailor in the world. But I pick great teams. I pick people who are better than me. I’m a good leader and a good navigator. I’m just fascinated with navigation and finding my way and using, in some cases, equipment that was used hundreds of years ago. I love that element of it.”

On where the original footage of the 1989–90 Whitbread came from: “One of the rules of the Whitbread was that everyone has to take a camera. We felt it was really important to document what we were doing. So we sent Jo, the cook, on a camera course, and she ended up doing a lot of the filming. Also, we were the only boat that had a camera affixed to our radar mast.”

On the challenges of being aboard a boat for weeks at a stretch: “The constant deprivation of normal living conditions. Having to steady your body all the time and be aware of every single movement you make. Women have great stamina, so we just got used to it. I think also taking care of each other was something I had never seen on a big racing boat with men.”

On the toughest leg of the race, through the Southern Ocean: “It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s miserable, it can be horrifying. But then the sailing is absolutely amazing, and that’s the payoff. By the time we left to go into the Southern Ocean, we’d done so many miles together. We’d done a lot of training. We really felt very strong as a team.”

On Maiden ’s reception at the end of the race: “All the ships were around us blowing their horns—it was just amazing. People were throwing flowers onto the boat. Fans had heard that we were starving at that point, because we’d run out of food the week before. A boat came out with hamburgers in a basket. But we couldn’t accept them because that’s taking outside assistance, so we could smell this gorgeous food and we couldn’t accept it.”

On the impact of her Whitbread accomplishment: “I don’t think we knew how important it was when we finished—we just went on and did the next thing. But when I had my daughter, Mackenna, in 2000, everything suddenly became so much more relevant. I wasn’t just fighting the fight for me and other women, it was for her next generation. I don’t want her to have to go through what we went through. You can say, ‘Oh, things have changed,’ but not enough.”

On how much sailing she does today: “None. After surviving the whole Whitbread without one single injury, in 1992, I was kicked in the base of my spine by a horse and broke some vertebrae and did some serious damage. I ignored it over the years as I was sailing, and I’m paying for it now. My back injury is so bad now, sailing would just be stupid. But I love running the Maiden Factor Foundation, and I’m happy to provide the vehicle for everyone else to sail her now. And I’m also happy to be warm and dry.”

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Film Review: ‘Maiden’

An all-women crew’s entry in a fabled around-the-world yacht race gets a lively retelling in this exciting, inspiring documentary.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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Shattering a glass ceiling has rarely been more engrossing — or grueling — than it is in “Maiden,” named after the ship that was the first crewed by an all-female team to compete in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Condescendingly little was expected of the “girls” who dared to crash this particular boys’ club nearly three decades ago, but their respectable showing during the intense nine-month race changed the sport’s hitherto extreme gender bias for good. Alex Holmes ’ documentary has more than enough human interest to grip viewers with no prior interest in sailing. Its potential as a non-fiction commercial breakout got Sony Pictures Classics’ attention at the Toronto festival, with their theatrical release (and doubtless awards campaigning) plans as yet TBA.

The main protagonist here is Tracy Edwards, the Maiden’s English skipper and the driving force behind its fabled run. Her path to sailing was unorthodox: A problem child after her father’s death, she ran away from home as a teen and landed in a seaside town where she eventually talked her way into jobs on yachts.

Holmes might’ve spent at least a little time detailing how Edwards accumulated the sailing experience that allowed her to even consider entering a major race. As is, the film suggests by omission that she practically went from cook to captain in one fell swoop. But understandably, the director is in a hurry to get to the Maiden, whose saga is full of drama. In the mid-’80s, Edwards decided the Whitbread contest would only begin to lose its participatory imbalance (less than 3% of crew at the time were women) with the involvement of a high-profile, first-ever all-female ship. She set that plan into motion three years ahead of the 1989-’90 event, drafting a multinational crew and overseeing their DIY refurbishment of a beat-up old vessel to approved specifications.

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Even then, the Whitbread (which since 2005 has been redubbed the Volvo Ocean Race) was a hugely expensive undertaking. Sponsors proved resistant — none wanted association with what was expected to be a pathetic or tragic distaff showing. In desperation, Edwards finally begged assistance from King Hussein of Jordan, whom she’d befriended while a lowly deckhand some years before. With funding in place, the Maiden could actually commit to racing.

Nevertheless, the press persisted in treating the team as a novelty at best, and ludicrous stunt at worst. The seriousness with which other crews were interviewed about their technical factors and challenges was entirely absent from coverage dwelling on the “ladies’” looks, emotions, and assumed in-fighting. (In fact, Edwards did have a power struggle with her most highly qualified personnel, Marie-Claude Heys, resulting in the latter’s early departure.) Few expected them even to finish the first of six trip legs. But they did — then they placed first within their class for the next two, which included the particularly arduous and dangerous stretch from Uruguay to Australia. Under brutal conditions that included temperatures down to -20 ° , that passage cost another boat one crew member’s life.

While our protagonists suffered enough setbacks later in the 33,000-mile voyage to disappoint themselves with their finishing status, they were surprised to be greeted at the terminus as conquering heroines. Their effort had ceased being popularly trivialized months before, earned grudging respect from the sport’s establishment, and was now treated as a triumph for women in general.

There’s a great deal of archival footage, both of the you-are-there and in-port sports-network type, that makes this journey’s perils quite visceral for the viewer. The Maiden’s gobs are all still around to comment on the experience decades later, as are various journalists and experts (some of whom still reek a bit of sexist ‘tude). But it’s the plentiful on-board material, excitingly structured and paced by doc veteran Holmes with editor Katie Bryer, that lends “Maiden” great immediacy, suspense, and rooting value. Other assembly elements are straightforwardly pro.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (TIFF Docs), Sept. 12, 2018. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: (Documentary — U.K.) A Sony Pictures Classics release (U.S.) of a Dogwoof presentation of a New Black Films production. (Int'l sales: Dogwoof, London.) Producers: Victoria Gregory, Alex Holmes. Executive producers: James Erskine, Oil Harbottle, Anna Godas.
• Crew: Director, writer: Alex Holmes. Camera (color, HD): Chris Openshaw. Editor: Katie Bryer. Music: Rob Manning, Samuel Sim.
• With: Tracy Edwards, Sally Creaser, Angela Farrell, Jo Gooding, Nancy Hill, Jeni Mundy, Michelle Paret, Claire Russell, Dawn Riley, Tanja Visser, Mikaela von Koskull, Mandi Swan, Marie-Claude Heys.

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When Men Said It Couldn't Be Done, This All-Women Crew of Sailors Said 'Watch Us.' The Whitbread Round the World yacht race's first all-female crew is profiled in the new documentary 'Maiden.'

By Joan Oleck May 2, 2019

"The ocean's always trying to kill you. It doesn't take a break."

Those are the words Tracy Edwards says at the start of Maiden , a new documentary that relives the inspiring, sometimes terrifying story of the Whitbread Round the World Race of 1989-90 and the plight and ultimate triumph of one yacht crew in particular.

That would be the famous race's first all-female crew, skippered by then-24-year-old British sailor Tracy Edwards.

During the course of the race, Edwards, a kind of nautical entrepreneur and CEO, oversaw a crew of 12, helping them to overcome such challenges as 32,000 miles of open sea, life-threatening 50-foot waves, fund-raising nightmares and a near-mutiny. Not to mention the barrage of personal and media attacks the crew endured as they attempted to stake a claim in the "man's world" of competitive sailing.

Related: #Shepreneurs: Women Leaders Are Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Choosing Unconventional Professions

"The ocean's always trying to kill you."

"I think what I meant by that is that the ocean's very honest," Edwards, now 56, told Entrepreneur in an interview last week, discussing the film Maiden , which had its Tribeca Film Festival premiere this week. "It's not talking behind your back or gossiping against you. As long as you understand that and have respect, and you've reduced the elements to their smallest parts, you feel that you deserve to be there … it's you and the elements."

At that time in in the late '80s, the human elements were almost as insurmountable as the physical ones, judging from this documentary by filmmaker Alex Holme s, who intercut old and new interviews with the crew, and footage luckily captured by on-board fixed and hand-held cameras.

Some of the earlier footage captured shows how Edwards grew up in Reading, England, in difficult circumstances: After her father died, her mother married an antagonistic alcoholic Tracy couldn't stand. She acted out in school. She was suspended 26 times and was expelled. Finally, at 16, she fled to Southern England's coastal resorts where she fell in with the "misfits and nomads" of the sailing world.

Applying to join a crew of a Whitbread yacht, Edwards was told her only role could be cook ("We're not having a girl!") She hated that job but loved the overall experience so much that she became determined to form her own crew to compete. "It wasn't a choice; I had to do it," Edwards says in the film.

Why all women? Men and women do race together, Edwards acknowledged. "But [with men aboard], a woman sailing with me will never be recognized for her skill, her achievement. I thought the only way we'll prove that women can do this is if we have an all-female crew.'"

The men weren't buying this, however, and clearly felt threatened. From the pubs to the newspapers -- Guardian yachting writer Bob Fisher dubbed Maiden's crew "a tinful of tarts" -- the women endured misogyny and jeering. "Oh, my god, I was so angry!" Edwards still remembers. "It became an obsession among the guys; guys who didn't sail in particular were quite aggressive towards us…it made me more determined."

She would need that determination. For two years, Edwards tried and failed to raise the £1 million needed; she approached hundreds of companies, but none would invest in an all-women team. One year to race day, Edwards remembers in the film, "It was doubt and fear, panic attacks."

Then came financial salvation from an unlikely source: King Hussein of Jordan . The king was a yachting aficionado and he liked her spirit. "Within an hour, I was completely convinced to help her," the late monarch says in archive footage.

With smooth sailing at last, Edwards made another unorthodox move: She founded a limited liability company to organize the project; it was even VAT registered. "We were methodical and logical, all the things men thought we weren't," Edwards said.

Still, her male critics weren't convinced. "Everything we achieved, they'd go, "Well, there's that. What about that ?'"

Another challenge was renovating the weathered (and Whitbread veteran) yacht Maiden Edwards had purchased. At her direction, the boat was parked in a Southampton shipyard where the crew stripped off weight-bearing items like wood paneling and made the vessel sleek and fast -- as well as designed for women sailors' bodies. "Women use power differently," Edwards explained. "We have different positions and points of power than men. So, we redesigned the deck. We redesigned the interior."

The race begins.

On Sept. 2, 1989, the race commenced from Southampton, with 23 competing yachts representing 13 countries, all vying to successfully finish the most grueling course in the world, a course in which they would actually circle the world in six punishing legs.

Maiden won two of six of those legs, the best showing by a British boat in 17 years. She finished the final leg second in her class and placed second in the Whitbread overall.

Finally, Edwards's naysayers were silenced: She was awarded the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy, the first woman to receive it, and was made an MBE .

The salty road to that royal honor had been fraught with failures and challenges in some ways familiar to land-locked entrepreneurs: First up was the funding problem. Then came a difficult staffing decision. After Edwards and her first mate Marie-Claude Kieffer clashed on leadership, Edwards fired Kieffer even before Maiden left the dock.

The crew strongly disapproved and relations became so tense it was questionable whether they could work with their skipper. ("Tracy was not very comfortable to be around," Maiden' s medic, Claire Warren, comments in the film's 1989 footage.)

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In the interview, Edwards reflected on those days -- and on her teammates' more recent decision to be absolutely truthful with the filmmaker about those tensions. Her own take on that honesty: "I want girls to see [that success] can be messy and ugly and hard work. You can't always be perfect.

"My decision to sack Marie-Claude at the start was a really hard one because I knew it was my fault and I had not handled the situation well. I let her down pretty badly; I was pretty cruel, but I knew I had to do it."

With that personnel change, instead of a first mate, Edwards wound up with two watch captains to supervise two sailing teams, working exhausting shifts of four hours on, four hours off. "We'd modeled ourselves on a male crew," Edwards commented. "We're not a male crew. Women don't work well in these hierarchies." The watch captains, it turned out, spread the leadership duties out, making things easier for all.

Other difficulties arose: During the intense Southern Ocean leg and those frigid temperatures and 50-foot waves, a competing yacht, the Creighton's Naturall y, suffered tragedy: Two men were swept overboard; both were recovered from the ocean alive, but suffered hypothermia; one later died. Maiden 's medic, Claire Russell, talked Creighton 's crew through those tense resuscitation efforts over the radio.

Another life-threatening risk: During the leg from Auckland to Punta del Este, Edwards felt her feet getting wet, only to discover a serious leak. Because the crew had renovated Maiden from start to finish, they knew every inch of the vessel and were able to find and repair the problem.

Finally, on May 5, 1990, Maiden sailed into the end point of Southampton, second in her class behind Belgium's Rucanor Sport. In the documentary's most powerful moment, the yacht is escorted by an enormous flotilla of private yachts and dinghies and is met by the cheers of thousands on shore applauding the amazing accomplishment of this all-female crew.

"I never set out to break these barriers for women," Edwards, in the interview, reflected about that acclaim. "I was annoyed that I had to be a cook on this [earlier] race boat!"

Recently, Edwards related, she rescued Maiden , which had been abandoned in the Seychelles and was about to be scrapped. She then raised £5 million pounds via crowd-funding for the yacht's restoration and funding for her foundation, The Maiden Factor , which supports charities addressing girls' education in the developing world.

"I'd love to say, "I stood up for women and fought the fight.' I mean, it ended up with us doing that," Edwards said. "I just thought, "I want to sail around the world as a sailor. And I have to put together an all-female crew to do that."

Related: After Sexist Comments, Tennis Tournament Chief Raymond Moore Resigns

She continued: "I then realized how angry that made so many people. So I just went, "Right, we see this has to be done.'" And so she did it.

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‘Maiden’ Review: An Inspiring Voyage with an All-Female Yacht Racing Crew

Alex Holmes’ documentary may not hold many surprises, but it tells a crowd-pleasing story of human perseverance and combating sexism.

[ This is a re-post of my review from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Maiden opens today in limited release. ]

I’m a sucker for documentaries like Alex Holmes ’ Maiden . Give me a good story of competition in the face of adversity featuring likable people, and I’m pretty much on board. With Maiden , Holmes tells two, intertwined stories. One is about a crew of sailors trying to win a yacht race around the world in 1989 (although “yacht” tends to carry the connotation of wealth, these boats were simple sailing vessels powered by wind and currents). The other story is how this crew was comprised entirely of women, and no one thought that women could work together or handle the physical rigors of the competition. Led by skipper Tracy Edwards , Maiden shows how this crew overcame both social and environmental obstacles to prove the world wrong.

Although Maiden includes interviews with most of the crew of the Maiden, the ship led by Edwards, she is the true protagonist of the story. Fleeing from an abusive stepfather when she was a teenager, Edwards discovered a love of sailing and became enchanted with the idea of participating in the Whitbread Round the World Race. In the past, the closest she came to this kind of participation was as a cook, but she was determined to prove that she could sail as well as any man. Edwards then works her ass off to assemble a crew, find sponsorship, and set out to not just compete in the Whitbread, but to win the race.

What I love most about Maiden is that it’s not a hagiography of Edwards. It doesn’t try to hold her up as some impossible ideal that us mere mortals cannot hope to emulate. Instead, the film acknowledges and embraces her faults. The film notes that at times her crew was divided against her in the run-up to the competition or how she could have a short temper due to the enormous pressure of trying to put together sponsorship for the Maiden. Maiden recognizes that hard things are hard, and that while talent and opportunity is all well and good, a large part of achievement is the inglorious work behind the scenes. It’s nice to think that sailing around the world is all about adventure, but someone has to figure out how to get the boat and how to pay for everything. Edwards put it all on her shoulders, and her crew acknowledges that she worked herself to the bone to make this dream a reality.

If putting together a ship to race in the Whitbread wasn’t tough enough, Edwards and the crew of the Maiden also had to endure sexism from both their peers and the press. It may seem surprising today that not a single brand would want to sponsor the first all-women yacht racing team, but it’s less surprising when you consider the era. Furthermore, the press looked at the Maiden not as a team of competitors but as a novelty act that would likely drop out before they even finished the first leg of the journey. Although all the ways the sexism presented itself is unsurprising, it’s no less of a motivator for the crew of the Maiden.

Maiden is about as straightforward as a documentary can get. There are clear goals, there are clear obstacles, the good guys and the bad guys are clearly delineated, and you know that at the end this will be a story about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. But Holmes puts it all together so well that you don’t really mind the predictability. Not every documentary has to upend the genre or feature some shocking revelation. Sometimes it’s enough to just have incredible people tell their story.

I walked out of Maiden feeling like I too could do something incredible like sail around the world before remembering that I have no sailing experience and would likely die a horrible death in the heart of an angry, unforgiving sea. But watching what Edwards and her crew accomplished lets me live vicariously through their achievements and cheer them on. Maiden is the best kind of crowd-pleasing documentary and shows what competitions can be at their best when everyone gets a chance to compete.

Dark waters: how the adventure of a lifetime turned to tragedy

The Clipper round the world yacht race was created for amateurs seeking the ultimate challenge. But did they underestimate the risks?

O n 18 November 2017, Simon Speirs, 60, a retired lawyer from Bristol, was hauling on his waterproofs below deck on a yacht in rough seas in the Southern Ocean. For nearly three months, he’d endured cold, cramped quarters, soaked clothing, sea sickness and very little sleep. As one of the crews competing in the Clipper Round the World yacht race, Speirs had completed more than 13,000 nautical miles since leaving Britain, but the wild remoteness of the Southern Ocean was more challenging than anything he had experienced before.

Speirs had a hacking cough and a heavy cold, but as leader of the watch he had to get out on deck. The race had so far taken them across the northern Atlantic Ocean to Uruguay and back across the southern Atlantic to South Africa. Two months in, he’d asked for a break. But after only a week his replacement had fallen out of his bunk and hurt his wrist, and Speirs had to resume his role.

By 2pm, the wind was getting stronger; the yacht lurched up and down waves the size of steep hills. The captain ordered the crew to change the headsail to make the boat easier to control. Speirs made his way to the foredeck, but, at that moment, a massive wave hit, sweeping him over the side.

Speirs was still attached to the boat with a tether. For several minutes he was dragged behind the boat in the roiling waves, while the crew tried to haul him back in. Then the clip on his harness snapped, and he lost contact with the yacht. It took three attempts and 32 minutes to pull him back on board, by which time he was dead.

Simon Speirs is exactly the sort of person Robin Knox-Johnston, the veteran sailor, had in mind when he founded the Clipper Round the World yacht race more than 25 years ago. At that time, the only people who got to race boats around the world were professional sailors. Clipper was designed for ordinary people: offering training and the opportunity to join a mixed-ability crew, it would enable customers to achieve the ambition of a lifetime.

The race is held every two years. Eleven yachts, each with a paying crew of 16-22 amateurs, led by a professional skipper and a qualified first mate, start from an English port, and take up to 11 months to cover 40,000 nautical miles. Paying crew can choose to do one or more legs of the journey, and it isn’t cheap. To take part in the whole race, over seven or eight legs, costs around £50,000. The route takes in some of the world’s most treacherous seas, but you don’t need any sailing experience to participate. According to Clipper Ventures, the company that runs the race, around 40% of participants are complete novices. Since it began, the race has become hugely popular.

Clipper Ventures is not the first outfit to sell an iconic and dangerous challenge to amateurs. On 23 May 2019, 354 climbers made it to the top of Mount Everest in a single day . This included a dentist, an architect, a surgeon, a CEO and a housewife, who had each paid between £33,000 and £100,000. The oldest was 64. The commercialisation of extreme adventure has been made possible by advances in technical equipment like satnav and portable oxygen metres, and turbocharged by a hunger for personal growth and fulfilment. But it has also been accompanied by accidents and tragedies. May 2019 was one of the deadliest seasons on record: 11 climbers died on Everest in nine days . According to reports, overcrowding and underprepared climbers were partly to blame.

There have been other fatal accidents on the Clipper race, too. On 4 September 2015, Andrew Ashman , 49, a paramedic from Orpington, south-east London, was standing in a known danger zone in the yacht’s cockpit area when he was struck by the boom and suffered a fatal neck injury. Six months later, on the same boat, Sarah Young , 40, an entrepreneur from London with no previous sailing experience, died after being swept overboard by a wave. She was not clipped on.

According to a report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) into Speirs’s death, published in June 2019, 17 people fell overboard from Clipper yachts between 2013 and 2018. Just over two weeks before Speirs went overboard, a Clipper yacht ran aground and had to be abandoned in a “very serious” incident just off the coast of South Africa. An MAIB investigation into that incident published in June 2018 concluded that the inexperience of the crew was a factor: “With only one professional, employed seafarer on board, the Clipper yachts were not safely manned for the round the world race.”

“If you read Clipper’s material, you’d think their number one concern was to keep people safe, but they have failed in so many ways,” said Margaret Speirs, Simon’s widow, when we first met in 2020. “I believe the company is compromised by their desire to make money out of these races.”

Knox-Johnston has strongly denied such claims. “Safety is a core principle of the Clipper Race, ahead of the racing element of the event itself, and therefore the most important part of the training of its crew,” Clipper Ventures said in a statement to the Guardian. The company says it has made investments in safety gear, becoming “the first ocean-racing company to introduce personal AIS beacons into its lifejackets to aid recovery of a man overboard”.

After the deaths of Ashman and Young in the 2015-16 race, the future of Clipper looked uncertain, a source who works at Clipper Ventures told me. “I thought, nobody is going to want to sign up.” But, in fact, applications increased. People are drawn by the chance to do something exceptional – and the risk is part of the attraction. Many customers, the source said, tend to think: “This is really dangerous! This is something I’ve got to do!”

T he founder of Clipper Ventures, Knox-Johnston, became the first person to sail solo around the world , without stopping, in 1969. In the memoir he published soon after his return, he describes the hardships he endured. His boat leaks, his water supply gets polluted, his steering gear is smashed, he shoots a shark when it comes too close, and suffers what was later diagnosed as a burst appendix. He carries on, undaunted. This, it seems, is the Knox-Johnston way. At the age of 68, he became the oldest person to race solo around the world. He had got irritated with people saying he was past it.

In the autumn of 1995, the same year he received a knighthood, Knox-Johnston placed newspaper ads to see how many people would be willing to pay to become part of a round-the-world crew. The response suggested that there may be a viable business in the idea. William Ward, a former property developer, who became CEO of Clipper Ventures, invested £1.8m.

Knox-Johnston commissioned eight new boats – Bluewater 58 sloops – from Colvic, a shipyard near Chelmsford, Essex. The company set up a base in Plymouth, Devon, and Knox-Johnston recruited friends from the sailing world, many ex-servicemen, as skippers. As soon as the boats were completed, they began training crew, taking on additional skippers as they went.

On 16 October 1996, the first race left Plymouth with the eight boats. The race was a success, and over the next few years Clipper built itself into an international brand. Major companies started to sponsor the boats (Garmin, Nasdaq), as did charities such as Unicef, and, from 2002, British cities such as Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow. “Since the first race in 1996, the event has been transformed from a low-key amateur sailing race into a major, and highly profitable, international event attracting the interest of the world’s media and business leaders,” wrote Ward in Clipper company accounts in 2007. In the following years, the company continued to grow.

After the 2011-12 race, the company upgraded its yachts, and launched the new Clipper 70s, manufactured in China. They were longer and faster than the previous yachts, reflecting Clipper’s ambitions for more exciting racing. In 2018, Clipper expanded its business to Asia with the launch of a China-based division, Clipper China. In 2019, the company made a profit of £3.2m; by 2020 it had a staff of 86.

The man at the heart of this success, Knox-Johnston, is, in the words of the Daily Mail , “a patriotic Englishman of the old school”, who “embodies the spirit of the stiff upper lip”. He has little time for what he sees as unnecessary bureaucracy. In his autobiography, he criticised the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), the government department that enforces safety at sea and sets standards for the Clipper race. Knox-Johnston complained about its ridiculous and “inappropriate” rules for small racing yachts.

Knox-Johnston sees the race as a life-changing opportunity. Ben Bowley, a skipper and chief instructor, who worked for Clipper Ventures for nine years from 2011, was impressed by Knox-Johnston’s vision and belief. “He has drive, passion and his ability to convey the awesomeness [of the race] is quite captivating.” Having completed the race, Knox-Johnston wrote in his autobiography, people “usually feel confident to take on greater challenges”. He continued: “They have painted their lives with bright colours, not pastel shades, and that brightness is like a drug and they want more of it.”

T he moment Simon Speirs decided he was going to sail around the world came in 1992, when he was in his mid-30s. Watching the first TV footage of the Whitbread Round the World race, he was entranced by the huge seas of the Southern Ocean. “It then became more a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’,” he later wrote on his blog. Ocean sailing was his wife’s idea of misery, but she understood his obsession. “Simon was excited about it. It was his retirement dream to do it before he was too old, too infirm,” she said.

Speirs, a senior partner in a Bristol legal firm, was meticulous and thorough. He liked to-do lists and DIY, and had a dry sense of humour. He also had an adventurous side. Every two years he would take on a challenge to raise money for charity: he had climbed the Three Peaks (the highest mountains of Scotland, England and Wales), cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats, run a 66-mile race in the Lake District.

Speirs originally signed up for the 2015-16 race. But he deferred his place because work was busy and his oldest son was getting married. Better to wait until the next race, 2017-18, when he would be 60 and newly retired. He kept fit by cycling six miles a day to work.

Speirs was a keen amateur sailor. He kept a couple of dinghies on a reservoir in Chew Valley, Somerset, where he had “sailing Sundays” with his children. He had a son and a daughter with his first wife, who died in 1991, and two sons with Margaret, whom he married in 1996. He had skippered chartered yachts on family holidays in the Mediterranean. “But that in no way compares with the experience of these huge racing yachts in these wild oceans,” said Margaret.

Training for the Clipper race consists of four courses, levels 1-4, each lasting a week. This process, which is compulsory for participants, covers basic sailing techniques – headsail changes, tacking, gybing, helming; as well as race strategy and safety. Trainee crew also sail offshore, mostly in the Solent, and later spend a few nights in the Channel. “The Solent and the Channel are widely recognised as one of the best sailing grounds in the world for training,” said a spokesperson for Clipper Ventures, because “of the complexity of tides, shipping, navigational hazards and inclement weather”.

The people who sign up for the Clipper race tend to be middle-aged men of means. Many are at a turning point in their lives: just divorced, promoted, retired, bereaved, recovering from illness. Nathan Harrow, then 43, a business consultant, decided to sign up as a round-the-worlder in the 2017-18 race after a period of stress and depression after redundancy. “Clipper was me drawing a line under the old me and getting my confidence back,” he told me.

Mary Morrison, a mentor for troubled children, from south-west London, was 65 and perfectly content with her life, when she did the 2015-16 race. “One of the guys I was sailing with said, ‘You’re the one least after change, but you’ll probably change the most’, and that was probably true,” she says. She gained new friends, an appreciation of the scale and sheer beauty of our planet, and a sense of how we need to look after it more. “And it gave me a lot of confidence,” she said. Another woman in her 60s, who did the third leg of the 2017-18 race, told me it was the best thing she had ever done.

Crew are assigned to each yacht a few weeks before the race. The aim is to balance experience and ability across the fleet. Whether everyone gets on is a matter of pure chance. “It’s one big social experiment,” said a crew member who did the race in 2007-8 and again in 2017-18. “If you’re lucky, you have a good time. It’s partly to do with the characters involved.”

Each boat is certified for 24 people including one skipper, who in 2017 was paid about £38,000 a year, plus £150 a day for six months of training beforehand. (“We ensure that our skippers share Clipper Ventures’ ethos of safety above all else,” said Clipper Ventures. “Anyone who fails safety standards is dismissed.”)

For many years, Clipper were required to have two professional sailors on board during the race, under the MCA’s small commercial vessel code. However, a freedom of information request shows that in 2010, Knox-Johnston lobbied the MCA to allow him to replace the second qualified person with a trained-up member of the fee-paying crew. The MCA refused. In 2012, with the MCA under new leadership, Knox-Johnston tried again. “We have tried to make the system of having two qualified people aboard each boat work,” he said in a meeting with the MCA on 1 August, but, he said, it is “not financially sustainable”.

Knox-Johnston had a subsequent meeting with the MCA at Clipper’s base in Gosport, Hampshire, at the end of September. Details of the meeting were not released. A year later, in October 2013, the MCA granted Knox-Johnston’s wish. From that point on, it wouldn’t be necessary to have two professionals on board. All that was required was one fully qualified skipper, and a second person who had successfully completed the company’s coxswain training course.

The Clipper coxswain’s course lasts 12 days, and is paid for by Clipper. The company aims to have two people on each boat who have taken the course, which covers use of radar, reading wind direction and force from a chart, calculating tidal flow and ocean currents, and manoeuvring the yacht safely into a berth in a port or harbour. Some sources I spoke to were sceptical about whether this training is really a match for hands-on experience. “As a professional sailor you’re trained to look and see things that are going wrong ahead of catastrophe,” said one skipper. “You’ve got to have this ability to stand back and look at the whole picture, all the time.”

After the deaths of Ashman and Young in the 2015-16 race, the MAIB urged Clipper to review its manning policy. “The special nature of the Clipper Round the World yacht race places a huge responsibility on one person to ensure the safety of the yacht and its crew at all times,” the MAIB wrote in April 2017.

Four months later, the 2017-18 race started without a second paid professional on board any of the boats.

T he race was not quite what Speirs had imagined. Seven weeks in, he described the trip on his blog as “acute discomfort mingled with elation and awe”. High points included the “beauty of the sky at night”, the “soft swish” of the boat through calm sea, the camaraderie of the crew and an encounter with a pod of dolphins. Less enjoyable was the sea sickness, the cold and the lack of sleep. Speirs had dropped two trouser sizes since the start of the race, a fact he attributed to the physical effort of sailing. Pulling ropes. Grinding winches. “I miss you very much,” he wrote in a letter to Margaret, on 10 October. The experience, he said, was “not a barrel of laughs”. But he still planned to complete all eight stages. “I am too stubborn to drop out,” he wrote on his blog.

Not all of his fellow crew members were so reluctant to quit. Mark Tucker, then 40, had signed up to do the whole Clipper 2017-18 race and was assigned to Great Britain, the same boat as Speirs. (The boat was sponsored by the British government, as part of a marketing campaign to attract tourism and investment; on 2 August, the crew were photographed outside 10 Downing Street .) However, Tucker left after the first leg because of his concerns about safety. He felt that there was insufficient time before the start of the race for maintenance and repairs to the boat. At the time, he wrote a resignation letter to skipper Andy Burns, explaining his thinking, but he wasn’t able to speak candidly in public because he’d signed an NDA. “In retrospect,” Tucker told me, “I view them very much as a media/PR company that happens to do a bit of sailing, rather than the other way around.”

By the end of the second leg, Speirs was exhausted. At the end of the 10-day stopover in Cape Town, South Africa, he wrote on his blog that he had used the layover to “repair and recharge”. He went to bed early and ate healthily. He got his haircut and met up with his daughter, Katherine, and her husband. She gave him a fruit cake baked by her mother-in-law.

On 31 October 2017, the Clipper boats began the third leg of the race: Cape Town to Fremantle, Australia. A journey of more than 4,700 nautical miles, it would take about 23 days and pass through the Southern Ocean, one of the world’s most dangerous waters. An area of almost constant high wind and frequent gales, it is where one of the highest ever waves was recorded – 120 feet.

For this third leg, the crew had dropped from 20 at the start of the race to 16. The average age was 50, but the overall sailing experience was greater than on the previous two legs. Tim Jeffery, then 56, an architect from London who had sailed small boats for 15 years, had signed up for the first leg “to get to know people”, and the third leg for the Southern Ocean. “It is the most remote place in the world,” he told me. “The sea is dramatic. It’s challenging because of the size of the waves. You also get very fast sailing and it’s hard work.”

The crew was divided into two groups operating a system of five watches a day: two shifts of six hours from 8am; three shifts of four hours from 8pm. Everyone was given a job: engineer, medic, treasurer. As well as head of his watch, Speirs was the nominated sail repairer. He became known as “Tailor of Gloucester” on account of the hours he spent at the sewing machine with glasses perched on the end of his nose.

Speirs was also the Clipper coxswain, regarded as the skipper’s second in command. Great Britain had actually started the race with three paying crew members who had completed the Clipper coxwain’s course: one was Tucker; the other, apart from Speirs, was Jon Milne, then 50, an IT director, who was injured at the time of Speirs’s accident. A common theme of Speirs’s blog was that he felt overworked.

Everyone on Great Britain was delighted with their captain, Andy Burns. Then 31, Burns had started sailing as a schoolboy in Lincolnshire. After working on superyachts and for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, he joined Clipper Ventures as an instructor in 2015. This was his first race as skipper.

Speirs regarded Burns as an ally. Both were good with people, patient, enthusiastic. Burns prioritised safety over speed. He “assessed the abilities and limitations of his crew to the extent that, during leg two, he made the decision not to race competitively, but to sail conservatively”, according to the June 2019 MAIB report.

Once the boat was sailing through the Southern Ocean in extremely cold weather, the shortage of experienced hands became a problem. Speirs wasn’t able to rest as there was no one to take his place. “The boats are set up for a certain number of crew,” according to a source at Clipper Ventures. “You need that many people to be able to work the boat. If you’re one or two people down that’s very problematic, and of course it makes the rest of the crew tired.”

After the 2014-15 race, a fitness test became part of the interview. Crew have to show they can climb on to a top bunk (not so easy when the boat is listing at 45 degrees) and get on the boat without using a ladder. The source said they felt Clipper Ventures’ vetting process needed to be tougher. Being at sea can be petrifying. “People become frozen with fear and start behaving out of character and become very difficult because they’re frightened.”

One person, who did not want to give his name, signed up for leg three on Great Britain in the 2017-18 race. In the final week of training, the boats raced down to France and back. “The weather was hideous. We had 18 people on board and there was probably only four or five of us that managed to keep the boat sailing. The rest were incapacitated downstairs. I was burning myself out covering for other people. When we pulled up into the dock, I packed my bags and I said, I’m done, it’s not safe.”

The dropout rate among round-the-worlders is 40%, wrote Speirs on his blog. Things must get very bad, because crew are liable for 100% of the fees if they drop out during the race. “People remortgage homes and invest significant amounts of money in the adventure,” said one former crew member. “Sometimes as much as £100k if you include insurance, food, accommodation, flights, kit etc. It’s going to take something pretty serious to knock them off course.”

A part from injuries and fatigue among the crew of Great Britain, a major concern was the condition of the boat. In an email to Clipper’s management on 3 July 2017, six weeks before the start of the race, Speirs had pointed out that Great Britain was leaking. “Still working hard to keep water out. Not easy job and pretty hairy when boat kicking around. This should have been sorted out at refit before handover. It’s a safety issue,” Speirs wrote in his blog on 12 August.

The boat was still leaking when it left Liverpool on 20 August 2017. Within two days the generator packed up. The water maker, which turns salt water into drinking water, didn’t work for three weeks. “Andy [Burns, the captain] was spending his entire time dealing with maintenance issues on a boat that was three weeks into a year-long circumnavigation,” said Mark Tucker. “If he’s down below sorting out why the water maker doesn’t work or the generator doesn’t work, he’s not on deck coaching people, making sure the boat’s being sailed safely.”

As part of its investigation, MAIB singled out an issue with the guardrail and supporting stanchions, which may have been partly responsible for Speirs’s death. The guardrail, which was designed to keep crew from falling overboard, was damaged in rough seas on 4 November, 13 days before Speirs’s accident. The crew managed to lash up the guardrail by wrapping rope around it. “The repair was not great,” said Tim Jeffery. “We had to be extra careful on the foredeck after that.”

The MAIB report identified a series of problems with Great Britain. “The cumulative effect of the defects was to increase workload for the crew, contributing to their fatigue, lowering morale, and distracting from sailing and gaining sailing experience,” it stated.

There were problems on other boats. Unicef had to be bailed out every four hours, on legs one and two, according to one round-the-world sailor. Unicef started the race with a broken fuel pump. The generator failed on the first leg. Two crew members who had signed up to do the whole race left Unicef after leg two, saying they were unhappy with the number of problems with the boat that needed attention.

Staff at Clipper put the malfunctions down to normal wear and tear. The boats had been around the world twice at that point, they say, as well as being used in training and for corporate events. “Some people believe that because they are paying to go around the world, the boat should be like hiring a car,” said Lance Shepherd, skipper on Liverpool during the 2017-18 race. “Everything should be immaculate, ready to go. But that is not how boats work. They are much more fickle and difficult to maintain.” Clipper’s management was prudent, he said. “They put safety first and foremost.” The boats “get stripped right back and overhauled” at the end of every race.

But there were also problems with the Clipper 70s from the outset. Clipper Ventures first discovered an issue in 2013, when the new hulls were shipped to the UK from China. There were gaps in the layers of fibreglass-type material, which could “make the boat more prone to cracks in extreme seas”, a marine surveyor told me.

Clipper had the entire fleet surveyed in February and March 2013. They had the “bad parts” cut out of the new boats and relaminated, according to Knox-Johnston. Not an easy job, given the scale of the problem, or the time frame in which repairs had to be done. The 2013-14 race was due to start in just over six months’ time. It couldn’t be delayed. Sponsors were signed up, the jamboree of corporate backers, supporters and families was already planned in each port.

Crew members later expressed concerns that there were too many problems to fix in the short time before departure. Garmin crew member Kira Pecherska, an experienced and highly qualified sailor, said there was no time for proper sea trials. “If you send a boat on a transatlantic journey, especially with beginners on board, who have no experience in sailing at all, at least these boats must be trusted. And you can only trust your boat when you test it.” (Clipper Ventures said: “Clipper Race yachts are well built, well tested and maintained by a dedicated and highly skilled maintenance team who travel to every port of call on the race route.”)

The source who works at Clipper Ventures told me there was anxiety about reporting problems: “There is a fear culture, that prevents a lot of that. They [skippers] are thinking, I’m going to get crucified for letting that happen.”

According to Clipper Ventures, on stopovers Knox-Johnston and Ward have “been accessible to all sailing staff and crew for any questions or concerns. They created a culture of openness and this continues with all Clipper Ventures staff today.”

A t about 2pm on 18 November 2017, Simon Speirs came up on deck, wearing a foul-weather jacket and salopettes. Conditions were rough: his fellow sailors had never seen such massive seas. His wedding ring was tied around his neck on a leather shoelace: jewellery was considered a safety hazard on board. He was one of five crew on the foredeck lowering the headsail. He was attached to the deck with a safety tether.

At 2.14pm, Great Britain was hit by a huge wave. The yacht dropped into a trough, slewed violently, and Speirs was thrown into the water. One crew member, who did not want to be named, saw Speirs with his lifejacket inflated, being dragged alongside the boat. He leaned over to try to grab him, but Speirs was just out of reach. He tried pulling on the tether, but the boat was going too fast. He could see Speirs was struggling as the water buffeted him. “He was constantly being hit by the waves. Never able to gather his breath.”

The crew member managed to hand Speirs a rope with a lifting hook to attach to his lifejacket, in order to winch him out of the water. Speirs tried to clip the rope to his lifejacket, but he was getting exhausted. “Water was going over his face and he was being bashed against the side of the boat.” As Speirs was dragged through the sea, his clip bent out of shape. At 2.22pm, it snapped open.

“My immediate thought was, thank God, he’s not going to drown by being dragged along by this boat,” said the crew member. “We can get the boat under control and go back and get him. We’ll get him in two minutes. It’s not dark. It will be fine.” But turning the boat around in strong wind and very rough seas was not easy. It took three attempts to retrieve Speirs from the sea. Finally, at 2.54pm, 40 minutes after he fell in the water, six crew lifted Speirs on board Great Britain. His lifejacket was cut off and crew carefully carried him below deck. He was already dead.

After Speirs’s body was brought aboard, the skipper radioed to the Australian coastguard. Clipper tried to contact Margaret, but when they couldn’t get through they called the family home and broke the news to their son Toby. “They told him his father had died,” said Margaret. “A 17-year-old lad who is on his own at home. Toby is a sensible lad but I’m sure it has scarred him for life. Clipper did wrong by us, very wrong by us.”

“We tried to contact Mrs Speirs, Simon’s emergency contact. Unfortunately she was not at home and her mobile phone was switched off,” said Jeremy Knight, then chief operating officer at Clipper Ventures, in an email to the crew of Great Britain, after being informed that the Guardian was investigating Speirs’s death. “This decision to break the news to Simon’s son has proved difficult for the family, and we understand that,” Knight wrote. “But the alternative, holding off and risking the family finding out through the media, was much worse.”

At 7pm that evening, the race director called Margaret and told her that her husband would be buried at sea in eight hours. “He was not giving me any options. He told me they had come to that decision for the benefit of the crew so that they wouldn’t have to travel with Simon’s body on board. And they told me the burial at sea would be at three o’clock in the morning our time. And by three o’clock in the morning we did have some friends and family gathered. The vicar came and we read the service at home that they were having in the Southern Ocean as if we were sharing it.

“The burial at sea has robbed me and my family of the opportunity of laying Simon to rest at a place of our choice and allowing us to say goodbye to him in a way that we would have wished to,” she continued. “It has also deprived our family of the opportunity for a coroner’s inquest. We didn’t get a chance to put questions, hear the responses, to help us understand what happened.”

Burns quit Clipper Ventures at the end of leg four. “Andy didn’t enjoy a second on that boat after Simon died,” said the crew member who had tried to rescue Speirs. Jeffery didn’t do the final leg, as planned. After Speirs’s death, he did not feel right leaving his wife and two daughters.

After Speirs’s death, the MCA would not allow the Clipper boats to sail with only one professional onboard. Clipper Ventures had to recruit a second qualified mate for each boat in the fleet for the rest of the 2017-18 race.

The MCA investigation into the death of Simon Speirs was closed in 2020. “The MCA received strong legal advice that the evidence was not enough to bring a prosecution,” stated a spokesperson. The MCA referred the case to Hampshire police to follow up an allegation of fraud in the certification of the boats, and they concluded that there were no grounds to pursue an investigation.

Ward was awarded an OBE in 2018 for his services to the economy and to the Great Britain marketing campaign. Knight retired from his role as COO of Clipper Ventures in April 2022 and is currently a magistrate. When we contacted Knox-Johnston in November 2022, he was at sea.

One bright morning last month I spoke to Speirs’s sons Mike and Toby on Zoom. For more than two years, the family had been fighting a civil action against Clipper Ventures, charging the company with an “immature safety culture”. They wanted to make Clipper Ventures answer for some of the failings that had led to their father’s death. “If you offer a service that is dangerous you have a responsibility to make it as safe as is reasonably possible and I don’t think that was done,” said Toby.

At the end of February, Clipper Ventures paid the family the net sum of £140,000 to settle the case. The family believe the timing of the settlement was no accident. Clipper Ventures is up for sale. In settling the case, the company admitted no wrongdoing. But the family felt vindicated. They donated the money to the RNLI.

Nothing can make up for the loss of their father. Toby is a student at his father’s alma mater, Queens’ College, Cambridge. “I just wish I could talk to Dad about that,” he said. Mike longs to tell his father about the grandchildren he never knew.

For Margaret, the settlement has brought a sense of relief. “I can hang up my sword and put all things to do with Clipper Ventures behind me,” she told me recently in an email. Simon Speirs had always been a loving husband and father. Now they could once again remember him not just by the way he died, but as the remarkable man he was.

This article was amended on 11 May 2023 to correctly refer to the Solent, rather than the “River Solent”.

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Queen hails 'brilliant' all-female yacht crew after round-the-world race victory

The Maiden crew became the first all-female outfit to triumph in the race earlier this month.

Monday 29 April 2024 22:08, UK

The Queen has praised the endeavours of a "brilliant" all-female yachting crew after they won a global race in a world first.

The Maiden team from the UK crossed the finish line at Cowes, Isle of Wight, earlier this month having sailed for 153 days in the Ocean Globe Race.

They had passed through South Africa, New Zealand and finally Punta del Este, Uruguay, before making a beeline back to British shores.

Camilla welcomed the crew to Clarence House, saying: "You're doing a brilliant job, keep on doing it - that's really important."

Captain Heather Thomas, one of the five Brits on board, said: "It was incredible after we'd found out we'd won.

"It's a pretty historic moment for women's sailing, I'm really happy with the result, the girls all worked really hard for it - so we're proud of ourselves."

The winning yacht was sailed by an international crew that included women from South Africa, Costa Rica and the Caribbean.

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As well as the triumph, the women are part of a project promoting the education of women and girls in countries where access is difficult.

Najiba Noori, who admitted to having no experience of sailing, told Sky News's Mark Austin one of the main reasons she joined Maiden was because she could give "a voice" to the women of her country, Afghanistan , as she also captured the voyage on camera for a documentary.

Ms Thomas told Sky News of the Maiden relying on traditional sailing methods of celestial navigation instead of using GPS, as modern technology is banned according to the race's rules.

She added: "The biggest thing for the crew is that we didn't have any digital music so we had to use cassettes instead," confessing ABBA's greatest hits album was their go-to.

Read more from Sky News: Queen meets father's regiment for first time as patron 'Hardest Geezer' finishes challenge to run length of Africa

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Maiden was the brainchild of veteran yachtswoman Tracy Edwards, who skippered the boat during the 1989-90 Whitbread global yacht race with an all-female crew.

The 58-foot yacht had been abandoned in the Indian Ocean until Ms Edwards launched a campaign to resurrect it as part of the Maiden Factor Foundation, which was completed in 2018.

Ms Edwards said the organisation's patron Whoopi Goldberg had challenged her to find a diverse crew.

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She said: "For me, this is the end of a 45-year fight for the equality of women within sailing and sport generally and actually women's empowerment.

"And when Whoopi Goldberg became our patron, she looked me square in the eye, and when she went 'change it'. I went 'okay' so we did. So we put this incredible crew together because we want to change the face of sailing."

The 2023-24 Ocean Globe Race, marks the 50th anniversary of the first edition of the Whitbread round-the-world race, and featured 14 boats representing eight countries.

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Full circumnavigation.

It is one of the biggest challenges of the natural world and the supreme endurance test; 40,000 miles on an ocean racing yacht, circumnavigating the globe.

You will have sailed in all conditions from warm trade winds, through winter storms, tropical heat of the Doldrums, traversing the Equator twice and crossing the International Date Line.

You will have been becalmed, battled through 100-knot gales, struggled through squalls of stinging rain, snow flurries, sleet and fog. You will have experienced the emotions of untying your lines and saying goodbye to loved ones as you head to the drama of your first race start in front of the world’s media and tens of thousands of spectators.

You will have learnt to live life at a permanent angle, cooked meals to keep up morale when the going got tough, seen wildlife that few are privileged to see, sailed under a canopy of stars that took your breath away and watched dawns and sunsets that revealed our planet at its most beautiful.

You will have visited a number of different countries and been welcomed ashore with all the fervour deserving of long distance sporting champions. You will have celebrated at prize-givings, shaken hands with the great and the good, made friendships that will last a lifetime and achieved things that you never thought possible.

You will be fitter, healthier and more alive than you can imagine. You will have joined an elite club and, as you return to the point of departure and cross your outward track in the world’s longest yacht race, you’ll head home with a set of experiences that will live with you forever.

You will have become a circumnavigator.

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is the only event of its type. Anyone, even if they have never stepped on a boat before, can join the adventure.

Weeks at Sea

Whether a marathon tactical battle across the world’s oceans or a drag-race sprint from start to finish, this is the number of days you can expect to be racing.

Countries Visited

A drag race sprint from start to finish line or a marathon tactical battle across the world’s largest oceans enduring weeks at sea; each of the 14 races provides a unique challenge to each and every crew member.

“The Weekend Sailor is a new feature documentary about the unexpected victory of the Mexican yacht Sayula II in the first crewed sailing race around the world in 1974. The most demanding sailing quest in history”

In 1973, the United Kingdom organized the first head to head sailing race around the world, inviting expert crews from Europe and other countries against each other. The Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, today the prestigious Volvo Ocean Race took the sport to its limits. The British Royal Navy purchased six yachts to train 800 man and chose the best four 10-man crews for each of the four legs of the race, yet, an inexperienced Mexican man also signed up. In his fifties, with a crew that included his wife, son, family and friends. His name, Ramon Carlín. A weekend sailor. And he beat every competing nation. In Mexico, Ramon lived the working man’s dream, turning a door to door sales job into a million dollar company through flawless work ethic and a sheer effort. He married the love of his life Paquita and formed a family. His rebellious teenage son, Enrique, wanted to marry to his 14 year-old girlfriend, so Ramon sent him to school in Ireland to keep them apart. It only made things more extreme on their life. While visiting Enrique in the United Kingdom, Ramon noticed an ad on a magazine for a sailing race around the world. He’d been sailing casually for two years in Acapulco and saw this race as an opportunity to teach his son some discipline and a real life experience.

Ramon Carlín

Mexico. Accomplished businessman and a yachtsman. He was the Captain of Sayula II, the winner of the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973-74; the first crewed sailing race around the world. He also secured second place in the Bermuda Race in 1976. He was the only Mexican skipper who has ever competed in the race and the only one to win an international sporting cup in Mexico’s history. He was also a successful Alpine mountaineering and a worldwide snow skier. In 2016, Ramon passed away at 92 years old. He had 10 children (-2) and was retired and living in Mexico City with his wife Paquita and with all of his family.

Francisca “Paquita” Larios

Mexico. A great wife and loving mother. Strong follower of her husband. She was a crew member of the winner Sayula II, in the first leg of the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. The Sayula II yacht is named after the town where she was born, Sayula. She lives in Mexico City with Captain Ramon and she is devotedly dedicated to her house and her family.

Enrique Carlín

Mexico. He is an accomplished businessman, a yachtsman and he studied Business Management. He is also an accomplished singer, musician and composer and an excellent skier. On top of all those achievements he is a highly proficient Charro. Enrique was watch captain in the winning boat, Sayula II, in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. He also achieved second place in the Bermuda race in 1976, incidentally, when he was on his honeymoon. Enrique who now lives in Mexico is a grandfather, he is still married to his teenage sweetheart and he still sails in Sayula II.

Adolfo “Cantis” Orenday

Mexico. He is the first officer of the Sayula II, sailor, master fisherman, chef, marine engine expert. He was a crew member in the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973-74. Cantis still works for the Carlin family, sails and lives in Acapulco.

Roberto Cubas Carlín

Mexico. He is both a sailor and a businessman and has held several positions in state office and as a member of State Congress where he worked in Public administration. He was a crew member of the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973-74. Roberto now works for the private sector and lives in Mexico.

Francisco Reyes Carlín

Mexico. He is a sailor, an academic social worker, an university professor and Director of Human Studies in the University of Anahuac. He was a crew member of the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973-74. Francisco was the youngest sailor of all the 19 yachts of the race. Today he has a family and works as a social worker trying to improve conditions for the young people of Mexico where he now lives.

Butch Darylmple-Smith

England. He is an accomplished businessman, a yachtsman, a naval architect, an engineer and a yacht designer. He built his first boat at the age of 16 years old. He has been a designer for Ron Holland and the chief designer at Camper & Nicholson. Butch has been a professor of Naval Architecture and the history of yacht design at the European Institute of Design in Venice, supervising the yacht design master course. He has raced in the Admiral’s Cup in 1963, 1965 and 1967. He also won the One Ton Cup for Australia in 1978. He participated in the 1973 Congressional Cup in Long Beach, and was also a crew member on the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race 1973-74. He has been a coach for the Spanish Admiral Cup team and has masterminded World Championship wins in the Quarter and Half Ton classes. He has won a large number of regattas sailing maxi yachts, multihulls and many smaller classes; all on yachts designed by himself and his partners. He lives in the South of France.

Keith Lorence

USA. Is a businessman, yachtsman, and an expert sail maker. He founded Watts Sails. He has been a sailor since he was 8 years old, racing in the dingy class. Keith survived the dangerous 1979 Fastnet Race. He has sailed in more than 7 Trans – Pacific races, and has raced in Europe. He was a watch captain and a sailing master in the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. Keith lives on a yacht in California.

David Bowen

Australia. He is an accountant, sailor, single handed ocean rower, boat mechanic and marine engine expert. He participated in most of the Australian yacht races like Sydney to Hobart or Hobart to Auckland in New Zealand. He was a crew member of the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. David holds the record for being the first person in history to row single-handed from Australia to Tasmania through the Bass Strait in 1971. He is retired and lives in Melbourne.

USA. He is a sailor and an accomplished businessman and research engineer. He worked in the Aerial Space industry for more than 40 years. He founded his own enterprise for test propulsion, rocket research and manufacture. He participated in several Trans – Pacific races, also sailed the Victoria – Maui Race. He was a crew member of the winning Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973 and he wrote a book about Sayula’s journey. He is now retired and lives in Washington State.

Ray Conrady

USA. A sailor, Navigator, radio operator and merchant seaman. He has participated in many Trans Atlantic crossings, the Master Marines regatta, the SORC in Florida and also on the Bermuda Race. He had a sailboat delivery business. Ray was the main navigator for the Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. He is now a volunteer for the maintenance of historical marine vessels. He is retired and lives in San Francisco, California.

Tjerk Romke de Vries

Holland. A businessman, yachtsman, author and chef. Has been a sailor since he was 6 years old, racing in the dingy class. He participated in more than 6 Fastnet races, in most European oceanic races, the 2 men Round Britain Race, the Admiral Cup and the Bermuda race in 1978. The World Cup 12M class in 1979, the Rotterdam to New York in 1982, Tour de France a la Voile, King’s Cup in Thailand, Singapore to Phuket. He was a crew member of the winner Sayula II in the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. Tjerk is now retired, and lives in Colijnsplaat, Holland and he still sails.

Sir Chay Blyth

Scotland. He is an accomplished businessman, professional yachtsman, transatlantic rower and renowned author. He is a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and recipient of the British Empire Medal. He joined the British Army Parachute Regiment at 18 years old. In 1966 Sir Chay (with John Ridgway) rowed across the North Atlantic Ocean in 92 days. He participated in the Sunday Times Golden Globe race in 1968. Then in 1971, with only 3 years experience in yachting, he sailed single handed, non-stop, westwards around the world against the prevailing winds and currents, taking 292 days and becoming the first person in the history of yachting to do it that way. In 1997, he was created a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to sailing. He was the founder of the Trans-Atlantic Rowing Race and the BT round the world yacht race under the auspices of his company The Challenge Business. Sir Chay still sails.

Franck Cammas

France. He is a professional yachtsman, winner of the Route du Rhum, 5 ORMA World Championships, the Transat Jaques Varbe among many other off shore international competitions. At the age of 24 years old he won the Solitaire du Figaro. He is one of the most talented and respected sailors in the Ocean Racing Multihull Association, breaking records in many trans oceanic competitions such as the North Atlantic crossing, Round Britain and Ireland, the Mediterranean crossing and The Jules Verne Trophy in which he went around the world non stop in 48 days. He is also the winner of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12 with Team Groupama. In 2007, Franck sailed from Miami to New York in one single day. Lives in Brittany, France.

Lionel Péan

France. He is an accomplished businessman, a professional yachtsman. World champion, winner of many off shore competitions including the Whitbread Round the Yacht World Race in 1985-86 when he was 29 years old. Also winner of the Solitaire du Figaro and The Fastnet Races in 1975 and 1985. He also holds records for North Atlantic crossings and round Corsica. Named honorary citizen of Saint Malo. The Yachtsman of the year 1987. He is the founder and director of many Mediterranean Regattas, founder of French sailing teams and has participated in more than 50 off shore races in all 4 oceans of the world completing more than 350, 000 miles of ocean racing. Lives in South France.

Torben Grael

Brazil. He is an accomplished businessman, a professional yachtsman and Olympic medalist. He is the athlete with more Olympic medals in the history of Brazil (Gold Athens 2004, Gold Atlanta 1996, Silver Los Angeles 1984, Bronze Sydney 2000 and Bronze Seoul 1988) also the professional sailor with more Olympic medals in the world. He was the winner of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 and more than 30 Brazilian, South American and World Sailing competitions. Named the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the year 2009. Lives in Brazil.

Knut Frostad

Norway. He is an accomplished businessman, professional yachtsman and Scandinavian champion. He has participated in a wide range of world sailing championships like the Nokia Oops Cup. He has represented his country twice in the Olympic Games in windsurfing. From 1993 to 2006 he went 4 times around the world competing in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race & Volvo Ocean Race, twice as skipper. He has been a director and advisor for international companies and is now the CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race.

Anthony Churchill

England. He is an accomplished businessman, economist and yachtsman. He is the founder of the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. He has participated in many trans oceanic sailing competitions. In 1969, he was the main navigator in the winner yacht Morning Cloud in the Sydney Hobart Race, with Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath. He is also a financial journalist, publisher and founder of Sea Horse magazine among many others. He is the person who first conceived the idea of an international round the world crewed sailing race in 1972. Lives in England.

About the narrator, Simon Le Bon

England. Songwriter, musician, lyricist and producer, and the lead singer of the iconic British rock band Duran Duran. Over the course of their rich and colorful career, the band have been awarded seven Lifetime Achievement Awards, two Ivor Novellos, a number of Grammy, MTV and Brit Awards, a Star on the Hollywood Walk a Fame and more. Now ready to launch their 14th studio album (Paper Gods) on September 2015. Today, Duran Duran, continues to play to sell-out arena audiences around the world.

Alongside Le Bon’s acclaimed 35 year career as the front man for Duran Duran, Simon is also a very successful yachtsman. Competing regularly whenever his schedule allows, he is an offshore racer and champion of many international sailing competitions. These include the Seahorse Maxi Series 1985, the Round Ireland Race 1986, the Antigua Race Week 2009 and the Antigua Panerai Classic Yacht Challenge 2014. In addition, he has raced in the renowned Fastnet Race (in both 1985 and 2005), the Nioulargue Series (1994-1996), the subsequent Le Voiles des Saint Tropez (2001-2012), the Maxi World Series (2010-2013), the Florida classics Miami Grand Prix, the Key West Regatta, and the Whitbread Round the World Race (1985-86). Most recently, Le Bon joined the crew of Sir Ben Ainslie’s Landrover BAR AC45 as “6th man” for one of the two “Louis Vuitton Americas Cup Challenge” races in Portsmouth Harbour. Without a doubt, Simon has earned the title of “Best competitive sailor in Rock ‘n Roll history”.

Director:  Bernardo Arsuaga Director of Photography:  Adrian S. Bara, Mateusz Golebiewski Editor:  Christopher John Malanchen Original Music:  Pietro Amato Producers:  Bernardo Arsuaga, Erik Virtanen Executive Producers:  Jaime Romandia, Lawrence Elman Associate Producers:  Enrique Carlín, Eduardo López Frias, Christopher John Malanchen

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Top 10 must-see sailing documentaries

• Stef Bottinelli

From Deep Water to Maidentrip, these must-see sailing documentaries will keep you glued to the screen. Watch the trailers here

Released in 2008 and nominated for a prestigious Cesar Award for Best Documentary Film, Tabarly is based on the life of  French yachtsman Eric Tabarly who lost his life after falling overboard from his Pen Duick boat off the coast of Wales in June 1998. He was en route to the Fife regatta in Scotland.

Released in 2013, Maidentrip tells the story of New Zealand-born Dutch teen Laura Dekker, who set out to become the youngest person to sail around the world single-handedly. Dekker had to fight a Dutch court to be allowed to pursue her dream at such a young age. Finally, in August 2010, she set sail on her epic journey onboard her two-masted ketch and arrived, 5,600 nautical miles later, at Simpson Bay on St Maarten in January 2012 – breaking the world record. She was only 16 years and four months of age.

Racing Around the World Alone

This exhilarating 2010 documentary follows 30 hopeful skippers who take part in the 2008/2009 Vendée Globe race, the single-handed, non stop race around the world without assistance.

Red Dot on the Ocean: The Matt Rutherford Story

This inspiring 2014 documentary tells the story of Matt Rutherford, once a rebellious youth, who bought a sailing boat on the internet without inspecting it first, learnt to sail by himself and at the age of 21 attempted the dangerous voyage to become the first person to sail alone and nonstop around North and South America. Matt’s adventure started in Annapolis, Maryland, where he returned having achieved his goal 309 days later. The documentary is available to buy on Amazon Prime, Vimeo and Apple iTunes.

Robin Knox-Johnston: A Force of Nature

This BBC documentary was broadcast in June 2018 to mark 50 years since  Sir Robin Knox-Johnston set sail from Falmouth to win the original Golden Globe Race thus becoming the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world half a century before. With interviews and original footage, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston: A Force of Nature is a fantastic documentary about one of the most legendary British sailors of all times. 

Jean Du Sud Around The World

1984 film Jean Du Sud Around the World tells the story of sailor Yves Gélinas’s solo 28,000 miles circumnavigation aboard his Alberg 30 sloop, Jean-du-Sud. He sails from France to Quebec via the Roaring Forties of the Southern Ocean and Cape Horn.Gélinas shot the 16 mm film in order to share his experience with fellow sailors, especially the use of his self-steering gear. The film was awarded the Palme D’Or twice and has now been re-released in HD.

Taking Flight: Britain’s America’s Cup Challenge

Sir Ben Ainslie wants to bring the America’s Cup to Britain. Credit: Lloyd Images

The documentary, shown on the BBC on 23 July 2016, follows Sir Ben Ainslie and his Land Rover BAR team as they prepare to try and win sport’s oldest international trophy – the America’s Cup . Narrated by presenter Clare Balding, the screening of the documentary coincided with the America’s Cup World Series Portsmouth on 22-24 July.

Narrated by Tilda Swinton and using original 16mm footage, tape recordings and interviews this brilliant 2006 documentary recounts the story of Donald Crowhurst and his fatal attempt to win the first Golden Globe Race in 1968.

Not a skilled yachtsman, Crowhurst entered the race with his boat Teignmouth Electron,  intending to use the prize money to support his failing business. As the weeks went on, he eventually abandoned the race and reported false positions to race organisers, leading everyone to believe he was winning the race, when really he was in last place. His yacht   was later found drifting and recovered logbooks indicate that he’d suffered a mental breakdown due to the pressure and the sailor had jumped overboard. The race was eventually won by Robin Knox-Johnston who donated the prize money to Crowhurst’s widow. Available on YouTube and Amazon Prime.

School teacher Dee Caffari and Spanish veterinarian Anna Corbella join forces in fulfilling the dream of a lifetime: becoming professional sailors. Beyond 360 documents their story as they team up to compete in the Barcelona World Race 2010. Available on Amazon Prime.

Released on 8 March 2019 to coincide with International Women’s Day, Maiden  is a feature length documentary on Tracy Edwards.

The film tells the story of 24 year-old Edwards, a cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.

Tracy Edwards had her first Whitbread Round the World Race experience working in the galley of the boat Atlantic Privateer. She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to take part as a skipper and three years later she bought the 58ft yacht Maiden. Edwards put together an all – and first – female crew and entered the race. The crew went on to win two of the Whitbread legs and came second in class overall.

Tracy Edwards documentary ‘Maiden’ to be released nationwide on International Women’s Day

'Maiden' tells the story of Tracy Edwards and her all-women sailing crew racing in the Whitbread Round the World Race…

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