The ocean's always trying to kill you. It doesn't take a break.
The probability of just not making it is high.
You're on your own.
There is no hope if anything happens.
We're rolling. If you want to...
- Come on, smile. - Oh, sorry.
Smile.
Hello, I'm Tracy Edwards, the skipper of Maiden,
the first all-female challenge in the Whitbread Round the World Race.
Oh, shit.
What it takes to sail around the world is you have to be a bit crazy.
You have to be different than the normal girl.
- Let's try it again. - Hi, I'm Tracy Edwards,
the skipper of Maiden, the first all-female Whitbread Round the...
That IS my smile!
Let's join Lisa out on the start line.
This is the scene in the Solent
just a few minutes before the start of the fifth Round the World Race.
And at 33,000 nautical miles, it is the longest race on earth.
How many times were we told we couldn't do it?
"You're not strong enough. You're not skilled enough."
"Girls don't get on."
"You'll all die."
She put everything on the line.
She risked everything for it to happen.
There wasn't a choice. It was just something I had to do.
My early years were idyllic.
A world of magic and make-believe
and two wonderful parents
and a kind of semi-wonderful brother.
My mum was... Oh, she was amazing.
She'd been a dancer, she'd been a rally driver,
she was the first woman to ride a motorbike on the Isle of Man TT Course.
She met my father when she was driving go-karts.
He was her engineer.
My father was an entrepreneur and he designed loudspeakers.
He always had something on the go.
My parents instilled in me
a sense of determination.
"If you want something, persevere. You can't give up."
So that determination comes from them.
My early years couldn't have been better,
but, unfortunately, that all came to an end when I was ten.
One night, I was asleep and I heard a commotion.
I thought I heard my mum screaming, but I wasn't quite sure.
I remember thinking "Something really, really bad is happening".
I sat up in bed and I pulled my covers around me.
After a while, Mum came in.
She said: "Daddy's had a heart attack. The ambulance couldn't get here in time".
"And, uh, he's died."
Sorry.
That night would change my life forever.
My mum tried to take over the running of his hi-fi business.
It was a very male-dominated industry. There were just no women anywhere in it.
In the end, really, she was pushed out.
This was my first experience
of understanding that women didn't... work in a man's world,
especially at that time.
She had to do something to support us.
Unfortunately for us, she then met the man that she would marry.
We sold the house in Reading and we moved down to Wales.
Oh, the earliest memory, I suppose, is seeing her on the school bus
when we were... 12?
It was only a small village. You didn't see new people around very often.
And she was little, like me, I suppose.
She was quiet, initially.
I can't believe I'm saying that about Tracy Edwards.
Both of us had a rough journey through school, so we were really drawn together.
When you are teenagers, your friends are your family, really.
They're the ones you trust.
I know that her relationship with her stepfather was quite volatile.
This man was an abusive alcoholic.
He hit me a few times.
I thought I'd asked for it because I punched him first or kicked him
or... exploded in some way.
I just remember one occasion being there
and it became really physical,
you know, and I was just shocked at that.
I turned from a happy, probably quite delightful child
into an absolutely vile teenager.
Angry, aggressive...
I hated everyone.
I was suspended 26 times before I was expelled.
My mother went in to beg for me to be able to take my O Levels,
but then which I didn't turn up to.
Instead of asking for help, I'd run away.
I went as far away as possible.
I remember her going.
I remember really worrying about her
but it was a real struggle to know what to do
at 15, 16 years old.
Exactly three years from today
the most gruelling yacht race in the world will begin.
The Whitbread was... THE race.
27,000 miles divided into stages.
Sailing in those days was a man's sport.
Mad men and adventurers. They were pioneers.
We're sailing on the edge of disaster.
One false move spells trouble.
A challenge like that as a yachtsman, going around the world,
was something you had to do. It was a hell of a challenge.
It attracted the great sailors
who wanted to prove something to the world.
As a sailor, that was what you had in front of you if you wanted to succeed.
I ended up in Greece, working in a bar.
I didn't know anyone particularly well.
My only contact with other human beings was going out and getting drunk.
I do remember feeling quite lonely.
I just wanted to go home. But I wouldn't let myself.
One night a guy came into the bar and said: "I skipper one of those charter yachts.
My stewardess has left me in the lurch. Do you fancy working as a stewardess?"
And the next day we left to go to Rhodes.
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.
I didn't see my skippers as men. I saw them as father figures, I think.
I spent my first transatlantic learning how to sail properly.
Sailing though my first storm, where they had to tie me to the wheel.
The wind was so strong, they thought I was gonna be blown overboard.
Puking into a bucket next to the wheel.
But loving it.
For me, sailing was about freedom.
Freedom of everything. Leaving everything behind.
Everything that happened since my father died.
We didn't cross paths during that time.
I knew that she was sailing, I knew that she was over in Antigua,
and I heard little pockets about her.
There was a bit of jealousy, you know.
Travelling was something I always wanted to do as well.
I was sitting on a friend's boat, looking through his books,
and I pulled one out and opened it up.
I went: "What's this?"
He said: "That's the Whitbread Round the World Race".
I said: "This is absolutely incredible".
I wanted to be part of this.
I knew it was just something I had to do.
The next day I went
to ask for a job as a cook on a Whitbread Round the World Race boat.
I remember going to the skipper: "Are you looking for a cook?"
And he went: "We're not having a girl".
"We're not gonna be the only professional racing team with a girl on the boat."
"Girls are for screwing when you get into port."
And then I went back and rejoined the boat.
Oh, I was so upset.
Then I was told we had this really important charter.
We see this party coming down the dock.
Someone said: "That's King Hussein of Jordan".
And after I'd served lunch, I went down below to do the washing-up.
I sensed this presence beside me and I turned round and it was King Hussein.
We started chatting.
He said: "I'm fascinated with this world that you live in".
"You're like a Bedouin, travelling from place to place."
"What are you doing next?"
I said: "I really want to do the Whitbread Round the World Race".
He said: "That's amazing". I said: "They don't want a girl on the boat".
And he just said: "You must do it. You must do this".
And within an hour I was completely convinced.
I had no doubt in my mind that I could absolutely make it happen.
And the next day I went back and I said to the skipper:
"I've got to be on this boat".
I begged.
I was dictating my copy in a telephone booth
and there was this slip of a girl in the next booth to me saying:
"Mum! Mum, I've got a ride on a Whitbread boat. I'm gonna be cook".
Part of the programme is coming live from Gosport,
where tomorrow 15 yachts set sail in the Whitbread Round the World Race.
Last minute preparations are hectic,
not least for one of the youngest crew members, the cook.
Let's meet that cook. It's Tracy Edwards,
the only girl on a British boat on the Round the World Race.
Now, Tracy, what is the responsibility of a cook on a boat like this?
Uh, first responsibility is to keep them healthy.
Second one is to keep them happy.
Um... You decide how many calories they need a day,
how you can split that up into different meals
and still keep it nice so they enjoy what you're giving them.
You're really a major part of the crew, aren't you?
Without you...
It's, um, two weeks out at sea.
Uh, food seems to become a very important part of your life.
Thank you very much and good luck around the world.
She was there to do the cooking and cleaning, basically.
Everyone made it perfectly plain to her.
As soon as the race started, that was her role.
Clear the line between HMS Glasgow
and TS Royalist
to allow the start to take place.
Ten, nine,
eight, seven, six,
five, four,
three, two, one, go!
There's the gun for the start of the fourth Whitbread Round the World.
There were only four girls on that race.
230 crew and four of them were girls. I was one of them.
I don't think she wanted to cook at all.
But she did because it enabled her to go round the world on a boat.
Oh, it was awful. I was treated like a servant.
They did not make life easy. At one point they wrote on the back of my thermal underwear:
"For sale. One case of beer".
But I've never wanted anything so much as to fit in with those guys.
That was a nice, depressing thought.
The cooking was horrendous,
but I loved the sailing.
Well, when they let me up on deck.
Then we won the leg.
It's just jammed
as people have thronged down from the eastern suburbs
all over Auckland to see Atlantic Privateer.
There goes the gun and there's a tremendous roar.
Horns going off across the Waitemata Harbour
and Atlantic Privateer has taken the gun
from nine others in the second leg of the fourth Whitbread...
The guys on the boat have been really, really good.
They're very, very nice guys.
A few of them had a little bit of reserve about having a girl on the boat,
even though they're friends, but they put up with it gallantly.
I thought: "I'm not going to put up with this anymore".
I wanted to go around as a proper sailor.
I didn't want to go around again, cooking for a boat full of men.
If they weren't going to let me do that, I had to make it happen myself.
And that's when I made the decision to put an all-female crew into the race.
After we got off the boat, I called my mum and I said to her:
"What do you think about me putting an all-female crew in the next race?"
She sort of took a pause and then she said:
"I think if you were truly committed, you would do it".
"But you've never stuck at anything in your life."
Four days later at the Southampton Boat Show, I made the announcement.
Go to any boat show and you'll meet people dreaming of great adventures.
There was such a girl at the Southampton Boat Show today.
Her name is Tracy Edwards and her dream is to compete
in the world's toughest yacht race with the first all-girl crew.
Why do you want an all-woman crew?
Um, people are going to argue. Men are going to say that they can't do it
and women are going to say that they can do it until time ends.
So someone has to do it to prove either way.
OK, looking at me.
OK, smiling.
Of course Jo was the first person I called.
That was my dream when I was a teenager.
It didn't matter that the only role I could have was cook
because I didn't have the racing experience.
So, I came down and I said: "I can do that".
And she said: "Yep, I know you can".
"How do you know? How do you know?"
And then I met Howard. I met Howard Gibbons.
He became my project manager.
She had a great idea,
but how was she going to pull it off?
You know, that was the big question.
So, we met in the pub, back of a beer mat
we wrote down: "How do we do this?"
We interviewed very few people. I mean, I interviewed Sally,
but she walked in, laughed, told a joke and I thought: "She'll be on the boat".
I really wanted to do it. I was gonna do everything I could to do it.
It was a very good idea,
but it didn't have anything apart from a good idea.
I didn't want a real job, I wanted adventure.
- I don't know. - What do you mean, you don't know?
Being a cook was the only way onto a boat.
Pff. That wasn't me. It was never gonna be me.
That was a compromise too far, as far as I was concerned.
They were looking for a girl who could sail, a doctor who had no ties,
and I thought: "That would be fantastic".
A friend said: "There's an all-women's boat going around the world".
And my first reaction was: "Are you kidding me?"
"I don't wanna sail with women. I'm the only one that's any good."
And she literally said: "Come on, don't be so arrogant".
I happened to meet Tracy Edwards in a bar in Cork,
as only the Irish can do.
I just thought: "God, I'd love to do it with them".
I was finally realising a dream.
Being a girl is like being disabled in the sailing world.
You can't join a male project.
That's impossible. It's as simple as that.
If I would have been a man, I would have done it at least once already.
It took ten years to get to a boat that was going to do the Whitbread.
Marie-Claude was an extraordinarily experienced sailor
with a great reputation.
- What is your position on this boat? - I am the first mate, or...
I am in charge of the sailing side of the boat.
I am the one who has to make the boat go fast.
I have selected a crew of nine dedicated, professional
and highly-skilled women sailors.
This was not an easy choice.
There are many women from all over the world who are quite capable of doing this race.
I, like many others, know that we will succeed in our venture.
Are you a feminist or...?
Not at all. I hate that word. I hate the word "feminist". Um...
I like to be allowed to do what I want to do.
I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to sail because I'm a girl.
It's about time men realise that women enjoy sailing just as much as they do.
And they're just as good at it.
Because we were doing something that we believed in
and we were taking very seriously,
but the world around us didn't really see us that way.
Like most people, we all pooh-poohed it.
We had a bit of a chuckle about it and didn't really take it seriously.
We were a kind of rather unusual sideshow.
- There were sceptics in the press. - "Where are you gonna get the money?"
"How are you gonna get a boat and how are you gonna get it in the race?"
I think we felt... patronised.
Um, you know, we were: "Oh, the little ladies".
"They're gonna be there, having a little scrap."
What about the packing allowances? Lots of Vaseline for chapped lips.
- No waterproof mascara. - That's right.
There's the physical side.
We were told they were looking for brute strength and ignorance.
The emotional side.
If you accept that the two genders do have differences.
If you don't, then you're in hot water if you start promoting these ideas.
You gotta be very careful.
Yeah.
Months of design go into a new Whitbread boat.
Preparation has been the key to winning past races.
Money tends to follow men.
The bottom line of the project
for this fifth running of the Whitbread was close to $6 million.
The problems start when you've got to find the sponsorship to raise £1 million.
Yes.
How do you get that sort of money out of businessmen
when you are this gorgeous slip of a young girl?
- Um, with great difficulty. - Mm-hm.
It has been very difficult,
not only to convince companies that an all-female crew can do this,
but that also it's something they want to do,
that it's something that fits into their policy of sponsorship.
We went to hundreds of companies and got absolutely nothing back.
No one was interested.
The project is geared to winning on our own boat.
It's heartbreaking seeing the plans of the boat and we haven't started building it yet.
There was that sort of unspoken fear
that we weren't gonna be able to cope with it.
We were a high-risk crew.
You want the rudder to go up?
Some of the letters we got back were extraordinary.
"The thought of 12 of my wife sailing round the world fills me with horror".
We had one saying: "We really love this
but it's just too much of a risk with adverse publicity
if something were to happen".
It would be a tragedy,
but we weren't doing it with the belief that we were gonna die,
we were doing it with the belief that we could sail around the world
and do it competitively, you know.
Someone will step forward. This is too good an opportunity.
I spent two years looking for the sponsorship.
We just couldn't raise the money.
She was honest and said: "We're living day to day".
Actually, it was borderline whether we were gonna make it.
I knew something had to change.
We were bashing our head against a brick wall.
There wasn't even a crack.
I was asleep one night,
woke up two o'clock, sat bolt upright in bed and I thought:
"We've got to buy a second-hand boat".
Everyone went: "And how are we going to do that?"
I went: "I'm gonna remortgage my house, borrow the money and get the boat".
"If we have to do a refit, we'll remortgage the boat to pay for it."
She put everything on the line. She put her home on the line.
She risked everything, really, for it to happen.
The ship came in and we were on the dock
to see this quite scruffy-looking boat.
I thought: "Bloody hell. Would you look at the state of that?"
I had a lot of convincing to do.
That's what we could afford, so that's what we had to get on with.
It was a bit of a: "Holy hell".
"OK, this is one hell of a project."
I said: "OK, get your overalls, we've got work to do".
You don't see women working in a boatyard,
so this was another first.
I wanted a role, so I learned plumbing.
I mean, if there was anything I could do, it was cope with bodily fluids.
I pretty much ran almost every cable in that boat.
Coming from the racing world and having built racing boats before,
I had some experience, so I was quite confident.
The challenges were more the relationship with Tracy.
As the time went on, it became more and more difficult.
We were like treading on eggs a bit.
"Is she going to be in a bad mood or a good mood?"
Tracy was not a comfortable person at times to be around.
We had no idea how much pressure she was under.
There was negativity coming from the outside
and the struggle for money was becoming really wearing.
But it was my own insecurities
that really were my biggest problem at that time.
Inside, all I was thinking was: "Am I the right person to do this?"
I was so full of doubt and fear.
I was trying to deal
with anxiety, panic attacks, waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
I guess... Oh. Yeah.
I guess things used to get thrown and stuff like that, you know.
I remember us being out and she was angry, shouting at everyone, and it was like:
"For goodness' sake, these people are your friends".
It did feel self-destructive.
But she'd always had that anger.
It really was... That was a really dark time.
This 58-foot aluminium racing yacht
is currently called the Maiden Great Britain,
but the crew still need £940,000 over the next year.
No sponsor has yet come forward
and the project could be in jeopardy.
Without a major sponsor, the girls have to go back to their jobs
and this incredible British venture will never happen.
If we fail, it won't happen again.
This was the point that I, really in total frustration,
called King Hussein.
King Hussein arrived in Britain
for a sinus operation at a private London hospital.
He looked fit and relaxed at the Southampton Boat Show.
We'd kept in touch.
I would not have asked for his help if I could have seen any other way
of getting to where we were supposed to be getting.
He said: "For goodness' sake, you've come so far, you can't stop".
"Royal Jordanian Airlines will sponsor it."
Title sponsorship, finally, of our project.
God bless her and all who sail in her.
Today the diminutive Tracy Edwards launched the 58-foot yacht
with still the yachting fraternity doubting Maiden's ability.
People were scathing.
I went out racing with some guys that I hadn't met.
One of them said to me: "So, when does the race start?"
I said: "September".
He said: "And when will you be back?"
I said: "The following May".
He went: "Ha! More like October, dear".
So, that's the way they saw it.
The further we got, the nastier this stuff would get.
They said it was impossible for us to get a boat.
We've got the boat and the crew and now we're going to go racing.
We just have to prove we can go racing.
With only a matter of days to go, half the entries line up for a dress rehearsal.
The Fastnet Race was the big sort of curtain raiser
because it was only a very short amount of time
between the finish of that race and the start of the Whitbread.
By that point
I... was having huge problems with Marie-Claude.
Ten seconds left. The fleet races for the line.
Five seconds and all eyes are on the flag.
The race starts the instant they dip.
No! Get the other ready!
Marie-Claude was in charge.
No two ways about it, Marie-Claude was in charge.
I'd pushed Tracy into sailing
in an area where she was completely out of confidence.
It was like she held a mirror up and I kept seeing myself as this person
that couldn't skipper the boat.
Outwardly, I was agreeing with her and: "OK, fine, yeah, we'll do it like that".
But I knew it was building up in me.
It was making Tracy question her leadership.
We were just about to get to the Fastnet Rock.
The atmosphere was crackling with tension.
I went down below to look for a sail
and the boat jerked
and I fell and put my hand out to stop myself
and I broke my wrist.
Claire came up on deck and said:
"Jo's broken her wrist, we need to go back".
And I went: "Well, no! We're nearly at the rock".
You know. "Morphine and strap it up. That's what we got the medical kit for."
The full kit and the splints weren't on board cos I'd been told to take them off.
I went: "You haven't got the kit?" She said: "Marie-Claude told me not to bring it."
I went: "Who is in charge?"
And she went: "Quite frankly, Tracy, we don't know".
So we had to abandon the race
and go back to Plymouth.
I still remember how angry I was. I was so angry I was crying.
I just... I wanted to... I wanted to rip her throat out.
That was the final straw.
We got off and I said to Marie-Claude: "I can't have you on the boat".
And I fired her.
And it was too late to rebuild.
I'd been involved for two years by then.
We were three weeks before the start.
I was destroyed I wasn't going to do the race,
but I was relieved because it wouldn't have been easy.
It was like the media was waiting for this moment.
Some of the crew wanted to leave. They had no faith in me.
Marie-Claude was a critically important person
to me and to a lot of us.
Marie-Claude was a big loss.
I must admit I did take a big breath in
because then I just thought: "Oh, my God, who's gonna steer this boat?"
I begged. I begged them to stay.
"If you do the first leg and don't think I can do this, I'll fly you home,
but please, please, don't break the team up now."
I thought maybe she was right that I couldn't skipper this boat.
But I couldn't pull out.
I just have to keep going forwards cos I have no other choice.
That's how we set off on the first leg.
It was me pretty much on trial.
Town Quay, Southampton, 7am,
and the dawn of the fifth Round the World Race.
To actually wake up that morning and think: "OK,
today we have to set off and sail round the world"
is a little bit of a daunting morning.
I didn't sleep much the night before, I remember.
Driving down to Ocean Village and walking into this overwhelming mass
of noise and people and movement,
if you're not on edge already, you are then.
Welcome to the Solent where we're minutes away
from one of the most spectacular sights in sports,
the Whitbread Round the World Race.
You're ready and raring to go, I bet.
Yes, it's definitely time to go now. This has been three and a half years.
This time last year we really didn't think we'd be here on the start line,
so we're all pretty emotional, yes.
I didn't want everybody hugging each other and waving
and cheering.
I just wanted to go.
We'll talk again but the atmosphere is really building
because the boats are now leaving Town Quay.
This is the bow of Fisher & Paykel.
Just coming up to Rothmans, the British entry skippered by Lawrie Smith.
Steinlager 2 of New Zealand, one of the favourites to win.
A load of us left at the same time. You're looking left and right, going:
"Oh, there's Steinlager. There's Fisher & Paykel".
With all these legendary skippers.
On board Maiden, the helmswomen looking over there
at Fisher & Paykel, the New Zealand ketch.
The tension's starting to build now.
You've never done this before.
It's monumental.
They're manoeuvring for the start with just three minutes to go.
This is a very tense time for any racing helmsman.
If people couldn't heard my heart, it would have been amazing.
My T-shirt was moving, it was pounding so hard.
The girls doing their best.
They look like they're going for yet another spinnaker.
They're trying as hard as they can.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Gun! They're off!
The fifth Whitbread Round the World Race is underway
on the first leg from Southampton, England, to Punta del Este, Uruguay.
And it's Fortuna from Spain and Fazisi from the Soviet Union
who have got the best starts.
On board Maiden is Tracy Edwards, cool, calm and collected.
Nearly four years of hard work.
6,000 miles to Punta.
That's a sight they won't see for another nine months
until they get back to the Isle of Wight,
having gone right round the world, 33,000 miles in all.
One by one the boats peeled off.
The last support boat with all our friends and family on
was one of the last boats to leave us and then they finally waved.
And you wave to everyone.
The last thing that happens is
the land disappears and then it's just you.
When they left Southampton
and all the press are gathering in their watering holes,
somebody started a book: "How far do you think the girls are gonna get?"
Well, we didn't think they would even finish the first leg.
The closest to home
was that they would only get as far as the Needles.
Then some people thought they might get as far as the Canary Islands.
But none of them thought they would get to the end of leg one in Uruguay.
Well, it was an all-woman crew.
Yes, I'm not surprised people were prepared to bet against them.
There was nothing to show
that they would ever be really acknowledged for anything other than failure.
The first leg takes the fleet across the North Atlantic, south to Uruguay.
Is she ready to drop me? I'm gonna take this out.
They had divided the fleet up into different groups
so that similar-sized yachts were competing in classes
rather than everybody going out in one division.
We were in a class with
Rucanor Sport, L'Esprit de Liberté and La Poste.
Everyone was hugely competitive.
I'm not sure they were that happy about us being in their class, if I'm honest.
You know, it was in 1989.
They decided to come up with a full team of girls.
It's not an easy one.
We know about the fact that it was hard for the girls from Maiden.
We'd just lost Marie-Claude. Jo wasn't there because of her wrist.
Yeah. I was gutted, absolutely gutted.
So it wasn't quite what we were all expecting.
Don't point that thing at me.
There were 12 of us.
Tracy as the skipper and navigator was out of the watch system.
Cook was out of the watch system.
So the ten of us were split into two teams.
And we did four hours on and four hours off,
religiously, come hell or high water.
Four hours on, four hours off. Four hours on, four hours off.
The best thing was just to keep racing because that kept you sane, actually.
It's a distance race, it's an endurance race, that's the game.
I was working so hard, trying to find the wind,
trying to prove that I could do this.
Tracy lived in that cubicle.
I made a couple of very stupid choices very early on.
And so we lost time.
But finally the wind came in, the spinnaker filled...
...and we were off.
All of a sudden, other people that weren't necessarily allowed to step up
stepped up
and were incredibly good.
Our fear that we couldn't get somebody that could helm the boat in terrible conditions
was completely misfounded.
Team spirit was very good and became stronger and stronger.
♪ Happy birthday, dear Angela
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
Blow the candles.
Woo!
By the time we got to the equator we were doing really well.
Welcome to Punta del Este in Uruguay
for the spectacular Whitbread Round the World Race.
Early morning on day 26.
Steinlager 2 first into Punta del Este.
Seven boats finished within seven hours of each other in the night of the maxis.
Eventually, after 36 days,
the all-female crew finished in third place in their class.
Maybe they have a chance of finishing this marathon.
This was a real surprise to us all when they came in
and we thought: "Blimey".
Coming third into Uruguay was actually a real disappointment.
Well done, girls!
And we were gutted.
Everyone else was happy we were alive.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
It's been a long two days. It's taken a long time. The wind dropped.
It seemed like someone didn't want us to get here very much.
We saw ourselves as a professional sailing team
who had entered a race with the goal to win it.
The world saw us as a human interest story.
"Oh, haven't the girls done well for even arriving?"
I was embarrassed that there were Beefeater girls and balloons and stuff.
I'm like: "Really?"
You were very clever to come in the daylight because the pictures are that much better.
If you looked at the questions or the articles
written about us at the time,
they were always digging for stories on whose boyfriend, girlfriend...
"Are you lesbians? Are you're sleeping around?"
"Surely you're not getting on that well."
"A bunch of women on a boat that size, there must be a lot of squabbles."
What about the crew? A bunch of girls, how do you all get on?
Remarkably well.
You never saw them ask the guys those questions.
They would be asked about tactics, challenges, you know, sail...
Sensible sporting questions.
We almost never got asked those questions.
Why?
Everybody's got on very well.
We've sailed the boat. We're all very happy with the way we've sailed the boat.
Wish we could have come in better placed,
but everybody's got on very well together.
A few people were giving you a hard time in the media
in the week leading up to the start.
Are you just happy to keep sailing at the moment?
If I listen to what everyone said about me, I wouldn't be here now.
The people that count think this is a good thing, I think it's a good thing,
and I'm just really pleased that we've been allowed to do it.
A very well-known yachting journalist referred to us as a tin full of tarts, initially.
Uh...
It seemed to me an all-girls crew fitted the bill quite well
and I was very scathing about that.
My coverage wasn't quite as chauvinistic as Bob Fisher's in The Guardian,
but there was an edge to it, certainly.
And third on elapsed time, Maiden.
What the press attitude did was it galvanised me and it focused me.
And when we left Uruguay...
...I have never felt more ready in my life to take something on.
We all were. We were absolutely determined.
Sailing in the Southern Ocean is like nothing you've ever experienced.
Nothing will prepare you for it.
It's not a place that takes prisoners.
Some people call it "the sea of certain death".
You're on your own. There is no hope if anything happens.
If you go over the side,
your chances of being rescued are next to zero.
How are your crew feeling about it?
I think, obviously, they're a bit apprehensive. I think you'd be silly not to.
You have to have a healthy respect for the Southern Ocean.
But I see them all very confident, very strong and ready to go.
It just goes on. Day after day of hard, physical work.
And the guys are pretty fit.
To a man they'd be much fitter than the other crews.
Is everyone now looking forward to the Southern Ocean leg?
No.
Well, I don't know. Um...
A certain amount of trepidation is inevitable.
What do you see as your main priority on this leg?
Well, my priority in the whole race, really, is...
I don't wan to hurt anyone or lose anyone. That would take it out of me completely.
- Have you got Jo back on board? - Yes, Jo's back, arm's mended.
And she's very happy to be back.
I was there with my bag, ready to go.
Take me to the Southern Ocean.
The second marathon leg to Western Australia
charts the Southern Oceans
which threaten constantly changing, stormy weather,
freezing conditions and icebergs.
Everyone's a little bit nervous at the moment
because we know the ice is well north.
Where are the icebergs? Nobody knows that for sure.
It's a case of seeing who's the boldest, who's gonna get in amongst the ice.
The weather down there is very severe. I've seen a few weather maps.
I haven't seen lows like that before in the Southern Ocean.
I don't think we'll see boats going very far south this time.
I was very clear that I was going to take a really southerly route,
go as far south as possible.
The fleet are given a rousing farewell
as they chart the new course.
If you imagine the world,
"as far south" means that you're almost doing a straight line,
and that's the shortest route.
There's always a risk in every decision,
especially if it's opposite to what everyone else is doing.
Where are we going, Tracy?
We're here.
And we're going right over there.
There, where it's warm.
It was the most extreme, debilitating temperatures
you've ever lived in.
Minus 20 with the wind chill.
That is really hard.
We've seen four icebergs so far.
We didn't see the first two on the radar.
When you're doing 14 knots at night, that is a bit frightening.
I'll never forget doing bow watch.
When it was really foggy, you did need
a sacrificial victim at the front of the boat
that would just hit the iceberg first.
You'd be strapped on. You'd have three face masks on.
You could barely last 20 minutes up there.
Big, white chunks of skin would start flaking off your face.
It took the girls half an hour to get dressed and half an hour to get undressed.
By the time you got into your clothing, you didn't have a lot of sleeping time,
so you were getting quite sleep-deprived.
On Creighton's Naturally there's an early problem
which cost them several days.
The waves are huge.
All you could see was a bank of water that you were going to sail.
You get picked up. You feel like you're looking vertically down at the tip.
And then you just start surfing, like you're on a surfboard.
A big rooster tail at the back as you surf your way down.
I mean, it's absolutely exhilarating.
I did really relish the hard adventure.
I loved that.
I love those big seas. I love surfing.
You know, you can get overconfident and you can... think you know it all.
Uh, Creighton's Naturally. Creighton's Naturally, Maiden.
I remember
Nancy waking me up and saying there had been a horrendous accident.
Uh, can anyone hear Creighton's Naturally?
Uh, yes. Creighton's, Rucanor...
Tracy took the call on the radio.
John Chittenden, the skipper, had a situation on deck.
They'd lost two crew members over the side.
You would have minutes before hypothermia sets in.
You've got to turn these huge boats round and get to people,
which in itself is an incredible feat of skill.
Seeing a tiny little head dot in the dark
is incredibly difficult.
Equity & Law, Maiden.
John said they'd been recovered, but they didn't have a doctor,
so Claire came to the radio and talked them through saving the life of one of them,
Bart van den Dwey.
We sort of knew that there were two people involved...
...but we were only helping one.
Anthony Phillips hit his head as he went over.
He was floating face down on the water when they got to them.
Yeah, that was devastating.
So devastating that he lost his life.
The ocean's always trying to kill you.
It doesn't take a break.
We couldn't afford to make mistakes. We were harnessed on
from the minute the hatch was open.
The whole time you are aware this tragedy has unfolded on another boat
and they're still having to cope with it,
um...
and keep yourself safe and work your watches
and try and make the boat go fast.
Things just keep going and you just do it.
And that's what we did.
It was a tough leg, for sure. I think it took five weeks.
We do not sail five weeks anymore in the Whitbread or the Volvo Ocean Race.
Five weeks was long.
What I discovered in the second leg is that, as a human, you can go
much further than you think.
A race like that is won and lost on its navigation.
You could see other boats hadn't taken their big sails down
and we had, early, and they'd catch up with us,
but the wind would kick in and we'd be able to control it and take off.
That's when I thought: "Crikey, we actually could do really well here".
As we were coming out of the Southern Ocean up towards Australia,
you're starting to see blue sky, the colour of the sea starts to change.
It's like being reborn.
Land smells.
You can smell it days and days out, particularly Australia,
all the eucalyptus and this deep hot earth smell.
The final few hours coming out of the Southern Ocean
we haven't got any of the positions.
As we were sailing to the finishing line, the boats were coming out to meet us.
That's when we realised...
...we've won.
We've won this leg.
I mean, it was mega. It was absolutely mega.
For the first time in 12 years
a British boat has won a leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race.
As they crossed the line the elation was obvious
as the crew celebrated the victory many had said was impossible.
Soon afterwards they replaced Maiden's sails
with a battle flag that summed up the spirit of female defiance.
French boat L'Esprit de Liberté isn't due into Fremantle
until tomorrow morning.
That was the leg we were all meant to fail
and to have won it so convincingly was more than anything.
I turned round and David Pritchard Barrett
handed me the Beefeater trophy.
I'd followed the Whitbread Round the World Race since 1974
and I'd seen these Whitbread trophies being waved around.
And all of a sudden, one of them was presented to our boat.
And I couldn't have been happier.
That was like doing cartwheels.
That's what that was like.
The girls say their victory is a victory for all women sailors.
If you're a woman, you're told you have to look like this,
use this, use that,
you can't have spots, you have to wear the right things...
On the Southern Ocean you don't have to wash,
you don't have to dress properly or do your hair.
It's great. We loved it.
It was amazing.
- What's the first thing you wanna do? - Get drunk.
Get drunk and eat a bacon sandwich.
My mum was standing there
with this massive, beaming smile on her face.
It's fantastic.
I hope my mascara is not running because I've just been crying and crying
with pride.
I'm just going to burst, I'm sure.
I can't believe that that little horror grew up to do this, I really can't.
She was right.
I never stuck at anything, gave up at the drop of a hat...
This was the first time in my life I had stood up for something I believed in.
And the harder it became, the more I wanted to do it.
For her.
The guys from Rucanor, they were not very happy.
They didn't like to finish behind us.
The Belgians on Rucanor are heard to say Maiden's win was a fluke.
We were beaten by Maiden in that leg.
They managed to perform well and pushed the boat hard.
And I'm sure we said: "OK, the chicks won".
"Let's try to beat them the next leg."
These girls were beating the guys on the water
and they were looking a bit sheepish.
A lot of people wanted to dismiss it as a one-off.
"Lucky leg, yeah, yeah."
I don't think we were seen as the boat to beat.
I remember thinking: "Why wasn't it taken seriously?"
Maiden entered the Whitbread to prove women can do things as well as men.
What the aggression against Maiden did
was it made me realise maybe I am actually a feminist.
I'd begun a fight I didn't realise I was having.
Two seconds, one...
There's the gun and it's a really good start.
The next leg started a couple of days before Christmas.
Rucanor is nine miles behind. Esprit is nine miles behind.
- And La Poste is 86 behind. - Oh!
It's Christmas Day and it's time to get up.
This is better than being at home.
I know. I didn't get any stupid underwear that Mum always gives me.
- Cheers! - Happy Christmas!
- God, this is nice. - It's good, isn't it?
Lucky we've all got one.
The third leg from Fremantle to Auckland is the shortest.
3,400 miles is quite a short hop.
Now it's down to tactics, not my strong point.
When you're racing boat against boat and can see each other,
it's that: "They've tacked, we need to tack".
It's all quite tense.
Luckily Dawn and Michèle and Miki
were all really hot on tactics.
I think we were so focused on doing well.
Knife-edge stuff. In these conditions
one mistake could mean disaster.
At one point, we were match-racing Rucanor
and we could see her.
We were close to each other all the time.
I especially remember along the south shore of Australia
where we were downwind, gybing and crossing.
When there is another sail on the horizon of one of your competitors
you will always find an extra gear.
She was in front of us and we spent all day overtaking her.
But Esprit de Liberté was still ahead of us.
You can see the writing of Liberté.
Very intense, very focused. You are doing everything you can
to squeeze the last bit of boat speed out of that boat.
There's this constant stress.
I slept in the nav station. It seemed pointless going back to my bunk.
Most of us didn't sleep the last two or three days.
Just couldn't.
For the last few hours
we were match-racing down the coast of New Zealand.
And then it got dark.
Then we didn't have any more positions.
There is nothing more scary than ghosting through the darkness,
not knowing where they were.
We thought by the time we got in, midnight on a Sunday,
no one's gonna be out and about.
As we were coming in, Dawn said:
"Is that loads of little birds on the top of that wharf over there? What is that?"
Then we realised it's people. It's people!
Thousands of people.
We crossed the line.
That's when we realised Esprit was an hour behind us.
Just after midnight Maiden slipped across the line
an hour ahead of arch-rival, the French yacht, L'Esprit de Liberté.
To win such a long Southern Ocean leg
and then to go and do the tactical one...
- Have some champagne, come on! - OK, give me a chance.
Yeah, that was really the icing on the cake now.
Nobody believed that we were going to do as well.
By the time we got to Auckland, we were walking tall.
Everybody was beside themselves.
It proved that the all-women winning the previous leg was no fluke.
They were quite simply the best crew, male or female.
The sideshow sort of started moving into the main circus tent.
You look pretty tired. You've been trying hard with these men coming at you from all directions.
Oh, yeah. Uh...
We're a very competitive class.
Uh, they wanted revenge this leg
and we were determined they weren't gonna have it.
They've pushed us hard, we've pushed them hard.
We've all enjoyed it.
And we feel that this leg they accepted us as equals
and raced against us as such.
In Division D at the halfway stage,
Maiden leads L'Esprit de Liberté by 16 hours.
The public reaction was overwhelming.
We were like gods. It was really cool.
They were heroines. Well, heroes they were.
Because they were regarded as men by that time.
- What's your name? - Jason.
- What's your name? - Helen.
- Sorry? - Helen.
You felt like a pop star, but you aren't.
People in the street say: "Hey, Tanja".
We didn't know that people knew us like that.
"To Maiden. Girls are a lot, lot better than boys."
All of a sudden it dawned on us that actually we could win.
Even I became competitive, cos I'm not competitive at all.
And even I was saying: "Yeah, we can do this".
Kids come down to the boats and they know everyone's name.
They know all the crew, what we do, what job on the boat. It's really good.
I should have been now supremely confident that we could win the next legs.
But actually I was gripped by fear.
I thought: "If we lose now, I've lost this for us".
The lowest bit in the middle.
I was now more terrified of not doing well
than I ever had been at the start.
These ladies had the idea of: "We're gonna just get around the world"
and now they're winning their division and they wanna prove they can do something.
There's the gun.
And the Whitbread fleet is on its way.
We weren't naive. We knew it was gonna be long and wet.
We knew it was gonna be hard.
Smile!
And you could feel the jitters. I could feel the jitters in all of us.
At this point we were towards the end of the race.
The idea was that you'd build up a big lead,
then you'd take your chances at Cape Horn.
Often I just sat there on my own in the middle of the night,
the glow of the instruments, everyone's on watch,
other people are asleep, regoing over everything.
"I'll have another look at that weather chart, have another think about this."
I overthought it, basically.
I put us in a bad position to come up towards Cape Horn.
Nine days and we haven't reached 11 knots.
I'm pissed off cos there's no fucking wind.
She just got more and more stressed, really.
And was permanently sleeping in her chair.
You know, she was exhausted.
As we came up to Cape Horn,
I could see the other boats doing well.
25 February and we're ten miles away from Cape Horn.
We've got not that much wind, the wind dead behind us,
but we should be able to come up pretty soon.
Um, Esprit is 55 miles in front of us.
Hopefully, we'll get enough wind to get us round the Horn.
We went round Cape Horn and then there was the possibility
of some options opening up for us to...
...be able to pick up some ground, so I decided to go for it.
Turning up and going up past the Falklands,
it got a bit... busy.
There's only been a few times in my life that had been that rough.
Often on a boat you find the shortest distance is straight into the wind.
Boats don't sail into the wind, so how far off do you go?
It's like hitting a brick wall in a car without your seatbelt on every ten seconds.
It's just relentless. There's a lot of slamming.
Boom, bam! Boom, bam! It takes a lot out of the boat.
Sorry, station calling Maiden...
I was in the nav station and I realised my feet were wet.
I went up on deck and said: "Could you have a look at this water?"
And by that point it was up to the first bunk.
We couldn't figure out where the hell it was coming from.
We had to stop the boat.
Your mind starts racing.
"Aluminium boat, cracking mast, maybe there's a crack in the hull."
"Is there a possibility we're splitting the hull on these waves?"
"Are we pounding that much?"
And you've got to fix it.
You don't have a choice about:
"OK, we've done our best, let's call the repair people".
There are no repair people.
At some point, clearly, your focus has to shift to:
"OK, do we need to do something more serious?"
At one point we called the Falkland Islands
and they scrambled an RAF Hercules.
They were on standby for a Mayday.
When you've rebuilt it with your own hands, it gives you an intimate knowledge of the boat.
In the end it was coming in through the mast
because the boat had taken such an uphill pounding.
Eventually we sorted the problem out.
And we got moving.
That really scuppered their chances of doing anything in that leg.
Esprit de Liberté, Esprit de Liberté, Maiden.
We'd had an overall lead of 18 hours
and we were now 16 hours behind.
She took on the job as skipper and navigator
and most skippers will blame the navigator and most navigators blame the skipper,
so she really took on a huge responsibility herself for that.
She got more and more isolated from the group, if that makes sense.
You cannot lie in offshore sailing.
It's impossible to lie.
When you are three weeks, four weeks at sea...
...there's no chance. You have to be yourself.
You learn a lot. You don't know you're leaning,
but at the end you realise that you learn and you're a different man.
I was pretty down in the dumps
and finding it quite hard to get myself out of that.
I... actually had to pull her up,
bring her back into the moment and say:
"Right, this is what we're dealing with now".
We were very conscious of the fact that when we came into Fort Lauderdale
there would be criticism of our performance.
We talked about distracting the press a little bit
from the fact that we'd done so badly.
You could call this shaving.
You could also call it shearing or carving.
All of the girls would have one clean set of clothes
and basically that was put on just before the finish line.
Tracy comes up and says:
"How about we put on those bathing suits?"
"Oh! Well..."
"Which colour will I have, the grey or the white?"
Tracy, here!
We were looking and they had these very, um...
uh, these extre...
really wonderful-looking swimsuits.
We were all up for it. It'd be a bit of a laugh.
In hindsight, we didn't really think that through enough
with a, you know, media-savvy hat on.
It had quite an effect.
It was the most syndicated sports photograph that year.
I still felt awful. I mean, really awful.
Everyone else wants you to be happy, so you smile.
- Whose idea was the bathers? - Huh?
- Whose idea was the costumes? - We thought: "If we can't win, wear swimsuits".
You have a responsibility
to your shore team and to everyone that's come to see you in.
Sorry?
Then you go to your hotel room, you burst into tears
and you drink a lot of alcohol.
Tracy admits she's made wrong decisions on this leg
and yet it seems that the women stand by her and don't make a fuss.
No. Oh, she's the skipper and what she says goes.
We'll always stand behind her.
We've been together for a long time now and we're very close.
We know each other very well and it's...
It is a special crew.
- You've known Tracy for even longer. - I have, yeah.
- How long? - Uh, 15 years.
We worked it out the other day.
It's quite a long time. Since we were 12.
When you were 12, did you ever talk about this?
No. No, you wouldn't think anything like this was gonna happen.
It's just amazing to think that you're doing what you want to do.
Sailing around the world.
Amazing.
The things that used to get talked about,
the expectation of how we'd be, that we'd be a bunch of bitches
or we'd be, you know, pulling each other's hair out
and arguing all the time
just wasn't a true reflection at all.
Actually, we were a great team.
We won together as a team and we lost together as a team.
But that didn't make it any better.
I still felt miserable.
What she was thinking was: "Oh, we can't win this race now".
What I and others were trying to say to her was:
"Anything could happen to any boat like it's just happened to us".
You are only allowed one bag.
We were very conscious of not taking any excess weight.
We were gonna go for this.
One bag. And that is really it. It's very strict.
Sorry. We can't afford anything more than that.
The mood was definitely right. This is it.
This is our last shot.
Five, four, three, two, one.
It should be a spectacular and all-action start
as the fleet head down Fort Lauderdale beach
to the turning mark around six miles away from here.
We had a good start.
We thought: "Right, we are going to win this".
"We're not just here to be the first girls, we're here to be the first girls that win."
The optimism faded extremely quickly.
Wind. There was no wind.
This was a long, slow leg.
There were very few opportunities to do anything different from the other boats.
The disadvantage of being heavier.
So far we've been out here
an awful lot longer than we expected.
It's a very elongated leg.
We are all finding it a little bit hard to believe
we are actually ever gonna get there.
You cannot change the wind.
You cannot change the direction, so we had to deal with it.
It's not over till it's over. All sorts of things can happen.
So you never stop racing until right up to the very end.
Ils sont un peu fatigués aussi, ils ont passé quatre mois dans le container à Punta au soleil,
ils sont un peu en mauvais état.
We were very, very close to England.
We knew they were behind.
We are two miles ahead of Maiden,
with three knots and the current with us.
Maiden are just setting the spinnaker.
We were against the current.
We decided to go as close as we could to the banks
and suddenly bang!
We hit the banks.
We could see Rucanor up ahead. It was stuck on a sand bank.
We had the full crew on the boom to heel the boat
and I could hear the noise of the sand and everything
and the current on the keel and we were hitting that.
We realised that we had the chance to overtake.
They could have stuck there for a while. We were creeping up behind.
But the wind kept dropping on us. The gods were not in our favour.
We managed to get moving again so we were quite happy.
We could relax.
It was in the last few days that we realised we couldn't make up the time.
We weren't gonna be first.
I was heartbroken. I was just...
...absolutely devastated.
I felt like we'd achieved nothing.
I'd seen a glimpse of what we could do.
We could have won.
I was absolutely dreading the end.
Oh, I just didn't want to go home.
We spotted the Needles at sunrise.
It was a really calm day, calm on the boat.
Everybody was doing what we do.
By that time we didn't need to talk to do the manoeuvres.
We thought each other's thoughts before we realised we were thinking them.
I didn't feel the need to speak or say anything at all.
It was just the closeness.
That was the special thing.
We respected each other. We trusted each other.
There was never an argument.
I remember thinking:
"What a... huge journey we've all been through".
That amazing adventure would be over, you know.
And I'd miss those girls deeply.
We saw a boat on the horizon coming out.
A little tiny dinghy appeared with a couple of kids in it.
Kids not very old, maybe 12-ish.
Nancy said: "There must be a race".
And we said: "Isn't that fantastic? They're starting early".
And they just came alongside and we said: "Hello".
They said: "Hello".
"Are you gonna come up with us?" They went: "Yeah".
Then we saw another boat.
We thought they were going to motor past
and then they sort of turned round and started
motoring alongside us.
And then more and more and more boats turned up.
There was no inkling. I mean, it was just surreal.
The whole thing just kept getting bigger and bigger.
We didn't know. Nobody told us that it would be like that.
I remember the boats with all the photographers.
"Is that all for us?"
It didn't make any sense to me.
I thought there must be somebody more important coming up behind us.
Because it just didn't make any sense.
It's just that thing of disbelief.
You're looking around at all these people that have come out to see you.
One of the boats has got all our families on board.
I'm getting emotional now.
Sorry, I wasn't expecting that.
Um...
It was brilliant.
No one cared that we hadn't won.
There was a bigger picture than winning.
We had done so much more than what we had set out to do.
We were doing something that we were told that we couldn't do.
And...
...we were doing it anyway.
I think if you believe in...
...in everything that people tell you you can't do...
...what would humankind have achieved?
Right?
As Michèle was handing the wheel over to me,
all the ship's horns in Southampton docks went off
and all the boats around us blew their horns.
And the noise was...
Sorry.
The noise was just...
It was completely overwhelming.
It just really cemented that moment in everyone's heads.
You know, that moment was... there forever.
We came around the corner into Ocean Village and it was...
just wall-to-wall people.
That was without doubt
one of the great welcomes that any crew has ever had
in the Whitbread race of all time.
We arrived in Southampton
in front of Maiden,
hundreds, thousands of people on the dock.
They were not there for us.
It was a first step that Tracy had made to show the world
that girls could do a fantastic job.
And it was an open door to other girls after.
I remember being deeply proud of Tracy, actually,
and what she had achieved
to get us there.
She did it. She got us there.
Fair play.
Let's face it, without Tracy there would be no Maiden.
Tracy Edwards is the first woman to be named Britain's Yachtsman of the Year.
Look at the little dot, ladies and gentlemen! This is Tracy Edwards!
Very, very, very, very well done from the rest of the world.
The experience of sailing around the world with this...
Sorry.
...amazing...
...group of women...
...just took everything to a whole new level in my life.
They had a skipper that was learning on the job and they taught me so much about myself.
They allowed me to be who I was.
You know? And I have some horrendous flaws and they...
...didn't matter. Didn't matter.
Ladies and gentlemen, the first ever woman to receive
the Yachtsman of the Year trophy, Tracy Edwards.
Uh...
I don't quite know what to say.
Which is unusual for me.
Uh...
All I can say is that, uh...
...this should be a reward for not only myself but for...
...uh, for the marvellous crew which I sail with,
without whom none of this could have happened.
Um, it doesn't just take a skipper, it takes a brilliant crew,
and that's what I've got.
And I'd like to say thank you very much to them
for believing in me enough to do the race with me.
I've worked with young people
who... have a dream, but they don't believe that they can achieve it.
And I say: "What if I tell you a story about
a young girl who had a dream about sailing round the world?"
And they go: "Pff".
And I go: "OK. What if I tell you that it did happen?"
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