February 2005 Qatar Today 59

part of a team in school, never reallyplayed any team sports... but that expe-rience really raised my self-esteemabout a 100 levels, because it was rockbottom at that point. I thought I wasworthless, valueless... Couldn’t stick toanything, couldn’t achieve anything...didn’t seemed to have pleased anyonein my life... this was my first opportuni-ty really to be a part of something thatwas good.

From stewardess to skipper?

I guess I was very lucky and had goodmentors on the boats I worked on. I hadskippers who saw something in me thatI didn’t really see in myself, and whoreally pushed me.

So after few years of being a stew-ardess, I meet a guy who says you cando so much more, why don’t you learnto navigate, and I learnt to navigate.And the next person said ‘you can be areally good sailor’... and then one of myskippers said I should get into long dis-tance racing and that I would be reallygood at it.

So I went and did my first round theworld race when I was 21.

How many women were on the crew?

Only me, with 17 men. Becausewomen did not, simply did not, sail on

big boats at that time. There were 250crew in that race and only three of them women.

It was tough. They did not want meon the boat. I think for them it washugely embarrassing to have a womanon the boat and all the other guys tookthe mickey out of them.

But I didn’t really see things fromthat point of view, and I saw thingsfrom my point of view. And I wanted tobe on the boat, and I thought I shouldbe allowed to. It was not an ideal situa-tion, but it taught me that I was capableof doing that, and if I was capable ofdoing that, then other women werecapable as well.

I finished the race and started to putMaiden together when I was 22, in1986, which was the first all femalecrew to race around the world. When Iskippered the Maiden I was 24, andwas the youngest skipper to have donethe Whitbread. I was the first femaleskipper and we were the first femalecrew – there were 12 of us.

Was it tough to get 12 women?

We had over 400 applications. We cut itdown to about 100. And then we triedto mix and match. Went sailing withpeople. In the end, what made the teamwas personality. And team spirit.

Rather than qualifications. None of uswas qualified. None of us really had aclue what we were doing.

That in itself was an advantage,because we had no one in the boat say-ing ‘I have never done it like thatbefore; I’ve always done it like this.’

We had none of that. What we hadwas ‘How should we do this? Shouldthis work? Lets try that...’

It was much more of a democracy onthe boat.

There were times, having said that,when you had to have a dictatorship onthe boat, where the skipper’s word waslaw. Because if you are in the southernocean and you’ve got 50ft waves and80knot winds, and everyone is afraidthey are going to die, the last thing theyneed to hear is the skipper saying,‘What do you thing we should do now.’

We had the best crew, what we lackedin experience, we made up for in com-mitment, excitement, drive and theunderstanding that we all had to get ontogether, and also a lack of egos on the boat.

How different will Oryx Quest be

from the other round the world races...

From the navigator’s point of view itwill be interesting, as this route has notbeen done before. Because the tacticswill be different. It will start in Dohaand go down through the IndianOcean... and this bit of ocean has neverbeen raced before, at least by theseboats. It will go down to the bottom ofthe world, turn left at Australia, goround the Antarctic and underneathSouth America, Cape Horn. The nextbit again will be interesting. Normallywe turn left and go up to the UK, butthis time we go round the Cape of GoodHope and back to Doha.

How many female crew members do

you expect in this race?

None on the other boats. ‘Qatar’ boat(earlier owned and managed byEdwards) may have a mixed crew.

Brian Thomson will be the skipper ofthe ‘Qatar’ boat, whom I think is thebest multi-hull skipper in the world.And Brian has two women on his crew.He said to me when he took over ‘Areyou going to interfere with the crew?’ Isaid absolutely not, but it must be amixed crew.

58 Qatar Today February 2005

P e r s o n a l i t y

ABy Vani Saraswathi

After her first time at sea with herfather, a totally seasick, sevenyear old Tracy Edwards, vowed

never to get on a boat again. Ten yearslater, she found herself on a yacht, inlove with the ocean and the sailor’s life.Soon she was breaking and settingrecords at ease.

In 1998, Edwards brought togetheran all-girl crew for an attempt at theJules Verne Trophy – the world recordfor a yacht circumnavigating the globe.Tracy and her crew were on course tocapture the record when after 43 gru-

elling days at sea, their catamaran losther mast in the most treacherous oceanin the world. Now retired from sailingand involved in managing yachts andracing events, Edwards says she will goback and complete the unfinished busi-ness of her record circumnavigation.

Now the director of QuestInternational Sports Events, preparingfor the first major ocean racing eventQatar will host – Oryx Quest, Edwardstakes time off to chat with Qatar Today.

From hating the sea to a record-break-

ing sailor, how did that journey come

about?

I got expelled from school when Iwas 15 and my mother thought travel-ling might be a very good experiencefor me. After backpacking aroundEurope, I ended up working in Greece.And someone I met asked me if I wouldbe interested in working on his boat. Tobe a stewardess, do some washing andcleaning. I tried that, and just fell inlove with the ocean.

I was 17 then, and there were sevenof us on the team. And for me that wasthe first time anyone had ever trustedme with responsibility and the firsttime I had ever been included in a teamof people. I have never really been a

QPassion for the Ocean

&

February 2005 Qatar Today 61

you have to know more than everyoneelse. It is more confusing now. I stilllove navigating, with my sextant andmy charts... I could find my way fromanywhere in the world, with just thoseitems. And now it’s a laptop, and anelectronic chart and GPS... for me it haslost a huge appeal that navigating had.

But that’s what makes the boat gofaster, so we use it. You have to be onestep ahead of everyone else. Thingabout technology is that you can’t keeprunning to catch up. You have to beleading it... you can’t wait till anotherboat gets it and say I wish I had that.

The work of the skipper and naviga-tor has become much more complicatedthan it ever used to be.

What kind of team building exercise

do you do before setting out on a race?

Team building almost becomes a natu-ral state. You are in a crew house

together, you travel together, you traintogether, you work together, you stress,you worry, you get excited... all thesethings build you together as a team. Bythe time you get to the start line, youknow each other extremely well. Youcan’t predict a 100 per cent how peoplewill react in a stressful situation. Thereis nothing you can do about that.

Team dynamics are an extraordinarything. You always seem to end up witha leader, couple of followers, the joker,the really annoying person, and a per-son who will fade into the background,but who will really stay staunch andtrue. It always fascinates me that everytime I put up a team, this is true. Maybethat’s the way we unconsciously choose people.

Physical training?

For these type of races you don’t neces-sarily need brute force or strength. You

need stamina. We also try and build upbody fat before we set out, you areprobably likely to lose 10 per cent ofyour body weight by the time you fin-ish. As soon as you start the race, yourbody starts to deteriorate. Becauseeverything you do from now is bad foryou; extreme physical conditions, onlyexercising from your waist up, you arecramming calories down. We need tobuild a layer of body fat before youleave and you need a nutritionist andtrainer to help you do that.

Is food the heaviest pack you carry

on board?

No, it’s the spares. But we carry abouttwo tonnes of food.

The food we carried on board used tobe horrible, everything freeze dried.But it has greatly improved. And thereason it has improved is not because ofsailing but because of mountaineering!

But you really start to crave fruits andvegetables. When I am at sea I reallymiss milk and I crave it and dreamabout it...

Food becomes a huge focus on the boat.

What is the most beautiful sight you

have ever seen out there?

Dawn. When we were on the Maiden, inthe Whitbread (race) on the second leg.And we were in the lead... and we wentthrough the most horrendous storm Ihave ever been in. And it was the longestnight – it seemed to last about ten years.And no one could sleep, we were all ondeck all the time. The boat was prettyuncontrollable. It was totally dark andthere were huge waves. And the personsteering was just doing it by skill and feelof where the next wave was coming from.

We were totally blind, and as wewere sailing, everything is black andthe tone of the sky changes to alighter black, and to a grey, and youstill have not realised that dawn iscoming, till you see the tiny littlespeck of silver light. And then youknow everything is going to be ok,because the dawn is like someonethrowing you a lifeline.

And the dawn of the next morningwas the most beautiful thing I haveever seen, because I didn’t think I wasgoing to see it. n

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P e r s o n a l i t y

Because otherwise what have I beendoing for the last 30 years. And he hassailed that boat for the last two yearswith a mixed crew. And he knows thesegirls are awesome sailors.

Is 12-15 the average size of a crew?

Looks like team Daedalus is going tocope with eight. That is an extraordi-narily low number. But they are toughguys. They will push the boat toabsolute limits, and collapse after that.It is a very self destructive way of doingthings. Because you will suffer enor-mously. But by cutting the numbersthey will cut down on weight of men,weight of stuff... it is all about how lightyou can make the boat.

What is the ideal weight of a boat for

racing?

When the boat is built, that is its opti-mum weight. Everything you put on itafter that slows it down. When youstart thinking like that, you start look-ing at everything you put on the boat.

Before we went sailing, we did thisexercise at a warehouse where all ourstuff was. We made each member layout all that they were taking and wemade each member stand explain whatevery single item was for and howimportant it was. Slowly we startedeliminating stuff we ‘really’ didn’trequire.

You would be half way throughexplaining something and realise that

that is not really important. You get to apoint where you start sawing a tooth-brush in half. That is how crucialweight is.

What are the dimensions of the boat?

Our boat - the Qatar boat - is 110ft longby 60ft wide (like two and a half tenniscourts), two hulls and the mast is 125fthigh. The sail area is 10,980 sq.ft.

What speed can be expected?

Her top speed is 46 knots (54mph onland), which is faster than most speedboats. The only power boats that gofaster than our kind of boats, are theones that Sheikh Hassan races –Formula 1. We can go faster thanFormula 2.

Everything about these boats isextreme. Everything is being pushed tothe limit: technology, the materials usedto build the boat, the electronics, thenavigation, the way the crew are con-stantly trying to update and improvethe performance of the boat.

The other really good thing you canthink about these boats is that there isno class. They are not a class of boats,there are no restrictions. You are onlylimited by your imagination. And wecontinue that tradition with this event,by having no rules.

The great thing about these boats isthat they are all owned by ‘mavericks’,people who don’t like rules and regula-tions and are who are just driven by

their passion.

Which will be the toughest part of

the route?

After you pass Australia and NewZealand, further south. The worst bit iscoming up to Cape Horn. What youhave got here is where two oceans meetand two weather patterns meet. Highpressures are dominant in a weathersystem, it dictates what happens. So ifyou’ve got a high pressure system. Allthe low pressures (which gives you thenasty winds...) will have to movearound them. What you’ve got in thatarea is two high pressure systems thatfollow all the low pressures through avery narrow gate. And mixed up withthat you’ve got the worst tidal systemsin the world and different temperaturesbetween the two oceans. You just haveeverything that can possibly go againstyou.

The race will skim the areas that were

recently affected by the earthquake.

What is the worst that can

happen there?

You can get some quite severe weather.But we will avoid most of that. There isa small possibility of typhoons there.You don’t want to get caught in the baysouth of Australia, as the Tasmanian seacan be nasty. The other thing you haveto watch out there are driftnets. Whichare illegal, but people still do it. You get60 ft long thick steel hoses held about 3-four feet under water, without buoys.And if you don’t see the buoys you gostraight into it and it sinks your boat.They are dreadful things. They losethem as well and they float through theocean killing everything in their way –all wildlife, all sealife. Which is themajor problem. Hitting sunken contain-ers or an iceberg is also a problem.

Does technology make it easier to do

this than when you started off?

It is a double-edged sword really. Yestechnology makes its safer, we knowmore, we understand more, and tech-nology gives us the ability to race fasterand avoid nasty weather, dangeroussituations.

But from a navigator or skipper’spoint of view, technology can be a realpain in the neck. Because you have tokeep up with it constantly, to win a race

The Boats

Daedalus: Skipper Tony Bullimore Geronimo: Skipper Olivier de Kersauson Cheyenne: Skipper David ScullyQatar: Skipper Brian Thomson

Yes, It’s That Tough

The race is 24,000 miles long

All sailors on board need to eat 6,000 –8,000 calories per day in order to survive.That’s equivalent to 42 mars bars a day

Despite all these calories crew memberswill lose an average of 22.4lbs during thecourse of the race

Crew members only have five hours sleepa day, and sometimes less

For most of the race, the yachts will be2,500 miles from the nearest land

It costs $8 million to build each megamulti-hull yacht and it takes 12 months tobuild a racing catamaran