"The Surprising Thing I Learned Sailing"
Spending that much time at sea does interesting things for one's mind, and since her return from that journey, Ellen MacArthur was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Continuing her sailing career until 2010, and now running an extremely successful charity, she has received countless awards and accolades from the who's who of the world, and in what some would consider a trivial achievement in comparison, held the record for the fastest lap of Top Gear's racetrack in a Suzuki Liana ('the reasonably priced car').
In March, this incredible woman gave a TED talk in Vancouver. She described what it was like to sail a multi million dollar trimaran around the world in 71 days.
"It was Christmas Day. We are forging ahead of a huge storm. Within it, there was 80 knots of wind, which was far too much wind for the boat and I to cope with. The waves were already 40 to 50 feet high, and the spray from the breaking crests was blown horizontally like snow in a blizzard. If we didn't sail fast enough, we'd be engulfed by that storm, and either capsized or smashed to pieces. We were quite literally hanging on for our lives and doing so on a knife edge."
It's an incredible recount of how Dame Ellen MacArthur became to be in a position to break the around the world record (it's since been beaten, but that's beside the point). Check it out below.
Cunjurong Pt, NSW
