22 June 2005

A couple of weeks ago I was honoured to be permitted some time to talk to Ellen MacArthur, the day in fact that her record breaking trimaran was damaged by a trawler yacht in Cowes. My questions were rather more long-winded than they have been transcribed here, but the abbreviated ones are perfectly adequate as a guide. I started off by asking her to speak about her early memories of sailing.

EM: I was lucky enough to go sailing when I was four years old with my aunty, aunty sea and she had a small boat on the south east of England and I went with my brother and Grandma and tried it and loved it and absolutely fell in love with it, realised it was something that I wanted to do a lot more of. I thought it was an incredible way to travel. I remember even as a child thinking that on this boat we have everything we would need. You know, we could sail anywhere, we could go virtually anywhere in the world. I think that's quite extraordinary, still even now, and it was hugely motivating, so that was what the click was at a young age.

SK: Did Arthur Ransome open up a world of adventure?

EM: Oh yeah the Arthur Ransome books were fantastic. I still have the full 13 book set sitting at home and they were magical stories. I think about, you know, kids having adventures, but kids having responsibility as well and I think that is quite rare in this day and age for kids to have responsibility for what they're doing and they were definitely kids who were thinking for themselves which I think is great and I think that it is very healthy.

SK: Arthur Ransome's tales were mainly adventure and not about competing. How did you get to be competitive?

EM: I realised when I was seventeen years old that I really wanted sailing to be my life and sailing to be my job and that was something that was very, very important to me and set about completely to do that and I realised that sponsorship was something that was absolutely crucial for doing that. That certainly the sport of offshore racing short handed and solo offshore racing would not exist without sponsorship…most offshore racing in fact. And that was, kind of, the most important hurdle to get over so I set off on my own solo trip when I was eighteen around Great Britain in a little 21 foot boat and found my first small sponsors who were willing to help me and I realised that racing was what I was going to have to do in order to maintain a job within this sport, particularly if I was going to go off and do solo voyages and the majority of those are in fact races so I set about to learn about racing and raising money sponsorship wise.

SK: And you've still got the Coribee?

EM: That's right yeah, I was sailing her just a few weeks ago and she's fantastic and I couldn't imagine selling her that's for sure.

SK: Who were the people you looked up to when you were developing this idea?

EM: All the solo sailors who did that for a living. It wasn't looking up to people in particular but looking up to the sport as a whole. You know, having messed around and been around those people and spent time with them and been around and stuff in solo races you realise that although these guys are the best in the world at what they do, they're actually really nice people and it's not an elitist sport. You know, they're not difficult people to approach. The guys are actually really, really nice and approachable and I felt that that was very, very positive and I guesss I looked up to the sport and was impressed by the sport as a whole.

She laughed when I mentioned that my nerves were easing.

SK: What about the role of female sailors in your development?

EM: I think that people like Isabelle (Autissier) and Katherine Chaveau and Claire Francis and Naomi James, they went out to do it because they wanted to go out there and do it. I don't think that any of them, certainly those I know, they definitely didn't do it because they wanted to say "Hey look what women can do!" They did it because they loved it and they were able to find sponsorship which allowed them to do it and I come from the same direction. Certainly if I'd been born a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago I don't know I would have done what I've done because of how society was but in the era that I was born, you know, I have been able to what I've done and done it just because I desperately wanted to, not necessarily because, or not at all because I was trying to wave a flag saying "hey, look what we can do if we really try." You know normal women can do it. It wasn't for that reason.

SK: What if sailing hadn't worked out?

EM: Who Knows? I mean, nobody knows in real life today. You know, you can't rewind your life and change it. It doesn't work like that. I know that I love animals, I love nature, I love being outside, I love travelling, I love working with a team, I love achieving things, I love learning. There's lots and lots of things that I enjoy. I mean it's hard to say…in fact it's not hard, it's impossible.

SK: Are the Mini Transats difficult to sail?

EM: They are small. I think that's the biggest thing. You're sailing a very small boat on a very big ocean. So they are very small and they are very fast…I mean they average 14,15 knots sometimes so you're going very, very quickly and they're not the easiest things to handle and you've got to stay on top of things but they're good fun and it's an incredible race. You learn a huge amount. They're basically mini Open-60's.

SK: The Mini Transats are allowed to enter the South Atlantic Challenge and that should be exciting.

SK: It should. I think that one great thing about the mini-Transat boats is that they are capable of crossing Oceans. They are very seaworthy little boats and they are shippable around the world by cargo ship as well which obviously helps from a racing perspective.

SK: Was all the various sailing ventures with different sailors important in rounding you off as a sailor?

EM: I think you learn with everyone you sail with. You know, you learn every time you go sailing. You don't just have to learn with someone who's done a lot of solo sailing, to learn but obviously if you sail with someone like that you're going to learn even faster. You're going to learn more things and you know, sailing with Alain Gautier, racing on the trimaran with him was just fantastic. And working with his team, learning how they prepared the boat was brilliant…it was very, very important. But we learn things from most things that we do so now I try and always see it like that rather than learning really specific things with really specific races.

SK: How much of a shock was it when Francis Joyen blistered around the world?

EM: It wasn't really a shock as such because we knew he was going and we knew that if he made it round he had a very, very good chance of breaking the record. Actually just getting around the world in the first place is a huge undertaking in a multihull. You know, he was the second man in history ever to get a multihull around the world solo and non-stop so the fact that he made it round was incredible. But from a record perspective I was actually pleased that Francis was able to do that. I was pleased for him because he's an incredible person and he really deserved to break the record. I think I was not alone in being surprised in how much he took off the record. You know, it was incredible. No one ever imagined him doing it in that amount of time. When you look back in the history books, that same boat just several years before had been taken round more slowly with a crew. You know, it was absolutely unbelievable but it set a very definite bar and that's a very important bar in that, saying "you know, okay, that's the one to get over." Before that, the challenge was getting around the world solo, non-stop, in a multihull, in a big boat, and if you did that you stood a very good chance of breaking the record. My challenge wasn't just getting round the world in a multihull but it was getting round and getting around fast. You know, it was a real big challenge to aim for. It was a really high bar to get over.

SK: Was there comfort in some ways but pressure to maintain a higher speed?

EM: Yeah, to know that you had to average 15.4 knots through the water to break that record was pretty amazing really. You know, it's a fast speed and every time you're sailing the boat anywhere and you're going slower than 15 knots you're thinking: "This isn't good enough" and the pressure of that was, and is, huge.

SK: What were your biggest concerns about the boat before setting off?

EM: Ah, you have to think of everything that can go wrong. What are the biggest concerns? I mean the biggest concerns you have to deal with, so they're no longer the biggest concerns, so you hope you've ticked everything on the list. I mean, going up the rig was something that you don't want to have to do, hitting something in the water is something you don't want to have to deal with. And you spend a lot of time preparing that whole section of issues, like, in the middle of the Southern Ocean, on the delivery we did hit something in the water and I, single-handedly, got the spare rudder and took the old one out and changed it and did that in about forty five minutes and that was all part of learning. It was all part of getting it right and being better for the record attempt itself.

SK: And the biggest problems and biggest maintenance issue while out there?

EM: Myself! That's the biggest. You know, keeping the boat going…I can't say it's easy but you know it's simple, you have to learn things: you have to deal with things. You have no choice, but maintaining yourself, for me that's hard.You have to. You don't have a choice. You're sailing a boat that could capsize literally pretty much any time. You're sailing on a boat where the loads are really huge. You're sailing on a boat where, you know, if the wind increases by 2 or 3 knots you're changing sails again. I mean that's the reality of what you're living with and what you're dealing with and you've got to cope with it. You don't have a choice and no, you're not going to get a lot of sleep but that's the reality of it. There's no point in worrying about it or grumbling about it. It's the hard and fast truth and when you choose to go and do something like that then that's what you've got to deal with I suppose.

SK: Was there a time when you first started the solo voyages when you thought: "what have I let myself in for?"

EM: No, never. You know why you're doing it. You know why you're out there. If you don't know why you're out there you shouldn't be out there in the first place. I've never wished I was getting off the boat, however hard it's been. It's been pretty tough but you know, you know why you're there.

SK: What about the will to continue. How do you pick yourself up when things are bad?

EM: The part of the project that you do in taking the boat around the world is a fifth of the entire project. It's nothing. It's a fraction of the whole project and when so many people have put so much time and effort into that project: into getting the boat ready, into preparing her. The days and nights spent preparing her, the twenty thousand miles we did in preparation for that trip. When all that's happened and you're out there on your own and you're toughing it out a bit, you know, you're just doing your bit and it's your time to give the most you possibly can. So the biggest motivation is the amount of time the others have put in there and when you think about that and you remember that and you have no excuse whatsoever to give up because it's just your bit, you've got to do your best.

SK: How important is being in touch with base?

EM: I think the team plays a huge part in the project. It is very much very much a team sport. With the communication issue, does it make it easier or…I guess that's what it boils down to...I'm not sure. I think having communication is a huge plus but it's also a negative.

SK: What about the pressure of maintaining contact in difficult times?

EM: Yeah, we've worked very hard as a team in trying to make the data transfer as easy as possible. So trying to make sending video footage as easy as possible, trying to make the web cam as automatic as possible. There are lots of things to try and make life on board for that person easier to some extent because at the end of the day you're the limit. You're the limiting factor. It's not the boat, the boat can always deal with more punishment for sure.

SK: When did you realise that you were going to succeed in breaking the record?

EM: I think it was a few hours before. Generally I'd normally say when I crossed the line but as I was sailing across the Bay Of Biscay and the wind kicked in and things were okay, yeah, I realised then that there was a pretty good chance that we'd break the record. It's a pretty nice thing to feel. I thought we'd beaten it.

SK: You must have been overwhelmed by the response to your achievement?

EM: It was incredible! It was absolutely incredible and none of us ever imagined it would be as big as that. You would never expect that to happen, but you know, it was amazing and what an amazing welcome.

SK: Is life back to normal yet?

EM: I don't have a normal life (laughs)

SK: I mean in terms of Ellen MacArthurs normal life.

EM: She doesn't have one. I'm always travelling; always with the boat we're doing projects here, there and everywhere. We do work with the sponsors over in France and the UK. That's pretty hectic.

SK: What kind of training do you do off the boat?

EM: Mainly it's gym work and running or aerobic work generally and it's normally six out of seven days a week.

SK: Do you follow a special nutrition plan before heading out?

EM: No generally not but it is important to eat the best food you can so that you get decent vitamins and you're in as better form as you possibly can when you leave because you know that what you're actually going to eat out there is not that great. You know, you can supplement things nutritionally but at the end of the day the food is freeze-dried and not ideal so your body does suffer to some extent.

SK: Even big Volvo sailors suffer, so someone of your size must be even more susceptible to weight loss?

EM: Yeah, and you are doing it on your own. There's only you to pull the sail up. There's only you to make the changes. Yes it definitely makes a difference and it does take a huge amount out of you and \I'm someone who eats because I know I have to eat. You don't eat because you want to because when you're out there, you never really want to eat. You just don't have that motivation. You lose all interest in it. You're out there to try and break the record and in order to do that you've got to eat to survive and that's the way I generally always think about it. You know, I force food down. I generally don't want to eat but know I have to eat and that's how I deal with it. I didn't lose much weight as a result of that but I didn't want to eat. No, I really had to force food down.

SK: How about getting into 'the zone' where things are working well that some sportspeople talk of and staying there?

EM: From my perspective, I think it's kind of dangerous to feel that. You know, you always have to doubt. You always have to doubt yourself. You always have to doubt the boat. The moment you stop doubting yourself or the boat, the moment something serious is going to break and you're not going to be able to fix it. And I don't like that. Falling into a comfort zone is very, very dangerous. The time you relax is the when you finish the record attempt.

SK: When things were going well, you kept yourself busy doing odd jobs.

EM: Yeah, always. You know, looking around the boat is absolutely crucial and making sure that nothing's about to break or…you always find things! And even when you think everything's okay you look around and you go: "ooh, that's serious," and finding those is crucial. You've got to be able to deal with them. It's very, very important.

SK: There is enormous satisfaction in setting the record, obviously, but what for you is more important, winning races or breaking records?

EM: Learning. That's what's important. Learning and challenging myself. You don't do it to win then race, you don't do it necessarily to break the record even, you do it because it's a huge challenge. You're going to have to learn a massive amount to do it and you also have an amazing team spirit within that project.

SK: What drives you, getting to the finish post or just being out there?

EM: I think that you can't separate it. You know, a badly prepared boat won't finish. A badly prepared skipper won't finish. You've got to try and cover all aspects. It depends on the trip. It depends on so many things. You can't just put your finger on it like that, you know what I mean, there are so many aspects that come into play.

SK: Do you have a preference for solo/crewed sailing?

EM: I love working with the team and I like sailing on my own. I like challenging myself. Working with the team is even a challenge in itself. I like all aspects. I can't say I don't enjoy sailing on my own because I love it, but equally, some of the best moments of this project have been times when we've been sailing together as a team or we've been working together as a team, and that's without a doubt, so the team work, to me, is something very, very important.

SK: And your favourite craft for sailing on?

EM: I don't have a preference. I just love boats. I'm very lucky to have sailed on some amazing boats but I still sail on the little old Coribbee that I bought eleven years ago and I still love sailing her so I can't say I really have a preference. I just love all kinds of sailing. I love being on boats whether it's a rowing boat or a seventy five foot racing trimaran.

At this stage, only about half way through the questions I had planned, Dame Ellen had to move on to another appointment. I hope to catch up with her again in the future and ask her about Offshore Challenges and her involvement in the Ellen MacArthur Trust.