How Lisa Blair Become The First Woman To Sail Antarctica Solo And Almost Died Doing It

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When Lisa Blair was 25, she fell in love with sailing, working as a hostess on a sailboat.

Fast forward only seven years later and she became the first woman to sail solo around Antarctica

with just one stop.

But it wasn't without complications, having a near-death experience where her yacht dismastered at sea.

Still, she kept sailing, quickly becoming the fastest woman to sail solo around Australia

and then Antarctica as she crazily attempted her record again and beat it by 10 days.

All these adventures took place on board her yacht Climate Action Now,

which she hopes will inspire others to take action.

My name's Sophie and I'm the producer here at the Female Athlete Project.

Chloe caught up with Lisa for one of the brief moments she had her land legs.

This chat proves that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

Just ask Lisa, who's gearing up to break another record by travelling the Arctic solo.

We hope you enjoy it.

Lisa, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.

Thank you, I'm so excited for this chat.

It's going to be fun.

It's going to be very fun.

I cannot wait to talk about, you've had some epic adventures so far already in your life.

You're planning another amazing one.

But before we get to those, can you describe yourself as a little kid?

Yeah, I think myself and my mum have a different opinion of what I was like as a little kid.

But I grew up in the bush, so we were very independent, run around, play, build forts,

jump across the creek, like the rocks on the creek, that kind of stuff.

But in school, I actually got heavily bullied because of it.

So I, all through my high school years, like I had the whole of like year 11 and 12, like

isolate me from the group.

Like I was just that little bit different because of the childhood upbringing that we

had in the bush, solar power, you know, we didn't have access to like the Simpsons or

Neighbours or like, you know, modern TV and things like that.

And so it just meant that we were just that little bit more.

I don't know.

Independent, creative out there.

And that wasn't really absorbed very well.

So I like to say that I was a really bubbly, vibrant kid.

But then when I went through that phase, I was like very different to kind of who I am

now.

I'm sorry that you went through that.

It's kids can just be really horrible.

Kids can be horrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No filter.

Yeah.

No filter.

And just that concept of someone being slightly different than what's deemed normal.

Yeah.

And that pack.

And that mentality as well.

Like, oh, I'll just do what they want to do because that makes me cool then.

Like, yeah, that wasn't great.

But I imagine what is celebrated about you and your achievements now and what you're

doing in the sustainability space is something that's so celebrated and cherished by so many

people.

So it's so weird that as an adult, it's something that's such a beautiful thing.

But as a young person, people see it as a threat or whatever that is.

But I'm so grateful for that childhood.

Even as hard as it was, A, it gave me the resilience that I've got now.

And it showed me that you can go through those bad moments and come out on top.

You've just got to keep moving forward.

Yeah.

The biggest lesson I think I took from all of that was that attitude is everything.

Like, we can't control what other people do to us.

We can't control what they say to us.

We can only control how we respond to that.

Yeah.

And for me, I decided that I wanted to be loud and proud and bubbly and go out and have

incredible adventures.

And, you know, a nine to five job just wasn't on the cards for me.

And so I was able to do that.

Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

How did you first find a love for being on the water?

Well, we grew up in the bush.

So it was like, you know, little bush kid running around bare feet, playing with the

dingoes and stuff.

And so it wasn't until I randomly in my last year at university.

So I studied visual arts and education.

So the intention was to be a high school art teacher.

Yeah.

I don't know why I wanted to go back to school and put myself through more trauma.

But anyway.

That was the intention.

And my high school art teacher had been my inspiration, like had been the rock through

that period of time, gave me a safe haven and everything.

And then one summer break, it was meant to be a three month working trip up in the Whitsunday

Islands.

And I got a job on a sailboat as the cook and the cleaner.

So I became a hostess on a sailboat.

Yeah.

Fell in love with it.

And we'd do these like two night, three day trips around the islands up there in the

Whitsundays.

And it was just an awesome adventure.

And I used to, I used to pester my deckhand and skipper so hard and be like, what's the

name of that rope?

What's that do?

What's this do?

What do I do if I pull this?

And I just peg them with questions and just ask all the questions I could.

And I just loved it.

And it really felt like freedom to me on the ocean.

Where do you think that idea of learning and asking questions and wanting to know all of

the things?

Was that an inherent thing?

Yeah, I've never been, I guess, particularly shy about asking for something like, and I'm

very conscious that if you don't put yourself out there, you're not going to get anything.

Like if you never ask the question, you're never going to know the answer, whether that

be for sponsorship or adventure or, you know, learning literally the ropes on the boat.

Yeah.

I also, I guess at the time when I first started on a sailboat, I would look at the captain

of the boat and be like,

Yeah.

He's incredible.

He knows how to fix an engine.

He can do 12-volt wiring.

He can do plumbing.

He can fix sails.

He's managing a boat.

He can dock a 70-foot yacht.

Like this is insanity.

I could never be that.

But I always sort of thought that if I wanted that adventure, I needed to learn a little

bit and be able to be a valuable kind of crew member.

And so I guess that's where the question started.

And did it feel quite foreign being a kid from the bush being on the water?

No, I guess like dad was a dive master growing up.

So we'd spend a bit of time at sea, not necessarily us at sea, but in and around stories of the

ocean and under the sea particularly.

But yeah, no, we lived about 30 minutes from the beach.

So it wasn't something that we did a lot.

And when my parents got divorced, I ended up living with mum on the beach for like two

years through high school and just loved it.

Yeah.

And then we went back to the bush.

We went back to the bush property afterwards for a little while.

But so it wasn't like this new thing.

But sailing, sailing had also been something we'd been a little bit exposed to.

So my mum's new partner after the divorce, he had a sailboat.

And so our like Easter holidays would be on his boat.

But I'm a teenage girl.

The last thing I wanted to do was learn about ropes on a boat from a dude who's not my father.

You know, like that whole like complicated divorce.

Scenario, new partner, teenage kid, really rebellious teenage kid.

So, yeah.

So I never really learnt anything about sailing through that.

I just knew I enjoyed being on the ocean.

And so how did you go from cooking and cleaning on the boat to we won't go as far to say to

what you've achieved now, but what was the next step from there?

Yeah, I well, it's a story I don't tell often because I don't know.

I don't think that there's anything different between guys and girls on boats at all.

We're just sailors.

We can both we're both as capable.

But, you know, given the theme of this podcast, I think it's really relevant story.

So I'll share it.

But so I had been working for this company for about six to seven months and I was trying to work my way up to the point where I was out of the kitchen and able to run the boat and like the deckhand kind of role.

And I could do all the jobs.

I knew all the ropes.

I had gotten the knowledge together.

To do that, had all the right licenses, had notified HR that this was something that I really wanted to do.

And at the time they said, yeah, yeah, of course, when the next position comes up, you'd be perfect.

And so that sort of almost half offered, not really, but sort of soft offered this next position.

So it was more of a waiting game for that opportunity.

And about seven or eight months into working for this job, the opportunity came up and they ended up hiring a guy who wrote in the back of a chocolate bar.

Please hire me over someone who'd been with the company for seven months, had all the skills, the equipment, had the tickets, and he had no tickets, never been on a sailboat.

And they put him in that position.

So I actually quit the job the very next day and I had an opportunity a week later and it changed my life.

I mean, sometimes these things as bad as they are open other doors and it, I had an opportunity a week later to jump on a sailboat from.

Samoa to Hawaii, and I took it and I sailed to Hawaii and just had this open ocean, incredible journey with friends.

And it was a mate of mine from uni and her father owned the boat.

And, um, so it was three months completely off grid night watches, night sailing whales around us in the middle of the night with a perfectly clear starry night.

Like it was just the most magical experience.

And I just fell absolutely in love with that idea of like sailing to other countries.

Not just sailing around the harbor, but, but to other country, like across oceans.

And it wasn't necessarily the destinations that interested me.

It was the time at sea that I really enjoyed.

Yeah.

How amazing.

Yeah.

And when did the idea of, of doing that solo start to come into your mind?

Yeah.

When did I go a little off the rails?

I guess.

Uh, yeah.

I finished that.

I finished that trip and I came back to Australia, broke, got the first job I could get, which was selling costume jewelry in the mall, like $5 pieces of plastic.

And it was one of those little central like stalls that everyone looks at you as they walk past.

And so I was like in this trappy job, hating it under fluro lights after just having this incredible adventure thinking, I just want to be out there.

I don't want to be here.

How do I get to there?

And I started reading all these books.

And so my mom's partner, John.

He, um, lent me all these books and the books were heavily themed on solo sailors.

Okay.

And so it was like Robin Knox Johnson, Kay Coddy, Jesse Martin, like all these incredible historical solo sailors at world first.

And, um, so as I was reading these, I was like, oh, I'd love to do that.

Like one day thinking like 30 years, cause I still hadn't got the enough experience.

Yeah.

And, uh, and in one of the books they talked about this yacht race called the clip around the world yacht race, which is a crude yacht race where you sign up, you pay a birth fee and you race each other around the planet.

And so I obviously got fixated on that idea thinking this is incredible.

Can we just pause on the fact that you literally just said, just race around the planet.

Like, like, is that just normal?

And you're like daily life that you just talk about, like racing around the planet.

Cause it's kind of what you do.

Like it's now it's normal.

Then it was like, absolutely.

Like my entire family thought I was nuts trying to even look at this.

Yeah.

And the birth fee at the time was $80,000.

Well, 40,000 pound, but the conversion rate at the time.

And I was earning 20 bucks an hour, no savings, no options, um, no real idea of how I would do something like that.

And no one in my family had ever.

Really kind of done something like that.

Mom had done a fundraiser for cancer where she rode a horse to Byron Bay, um, from the sunshine coast years and years ago before we were born.

But, um, other than that, we didn't really have that kind of mentality.

Yeah.

And, uh, at the same time, I was like trying to decide whether I could do this race.

Trust me, it gets to the solo bit in a minute, but as I was trying to do this race, uh, Jessica Watson, who's like one of Australia's most famous solo sailors.

Um, she became the youngest person to.

Sail solo nonstop and unassisted around the world.

And she came into Maluba on the sunshine coast and I wasn't the sunshine coast working in this crappy mall.

And so I'd sort of followed the tail end of her journey.

Cause I just come back to Australia and I, and as she finished, I very clearly remember thinking to myself.

Why am I hesitating?

This is an incredible opportunity.

Like if she can make it happen, she can get a boat when she started at 13 years old.

And she left when she was 16 to race this boat or sail this boat around the world.

Like what's stopping me, you know, except me.

And so I really decided that I would commit.

And so I signed up and I signed the contract, which locks you in as like an all or nothing.

So you either, you are paying the 80 grand, no matter what you're paying the 80 grand, even if you don't go, so if you don't raise that money by the deadline, you don't get to sell around the world, but you still owe the 80 grand.

So it was a huge, like gamble personally.

Huge.

Yeah.

And then I had 12 months to raise the money and did absolutely anything I could.

I went to the local library, borrowed a book on sports marketing, read about thing called proposals that you meant to write sponsorship proposals and like would send these ridiculously useless proposals out to people and then try and get feedback from them and just started learning about that world and how to sort of build it up.

And I ended up doing a fundraiser where I cycled my bike from Sydney to the sunshine coast.

I'd never ridden a road bike in my life.

My bum feels sore just thinking about that.

I didn't know how to ride a road bike or anything.

I had this lovely guy donate a couple of months of time and he'd kick me out of bed at four in the morning before work and make me ride up and downhill so that I could get fit enough to ride from Sydney up here.

And yeah, and I ended up not quite raising the money and I got half of the funds and then called mum absolutely in tears saying I can't do it.

You know, I'm flying to the UK to start my transition.

I'm training for this race in like a week.

I've only got 40,000 raised.

I don't have enough.

It's not going to happen.

And mum, as you'll hear as we go through the rest of the story, she very much has set me back on the path when I get a little bit lost.

And this was one of those key moments.

And she was like, well, you've paid for the training.

You want to become a better sailor.

Like just go and do the training.

And so I did.

And then eventually another crew member offered $5,000.

A donation like pound, sorry.

And then another one loaned me 7,000 pound.

And then we refinanced against dad's house and we were still 2000 short after all of that.

Yeah.

And I put an article in the local paper on the sunshine coast that went online.

And this guy who once holidayed on the sunshine coast lives in China as an American citizen, read that article online, somehow still get some email to him, read the article and thought, oh yeah, I'll donate my fund money, which was exactly $2,000.

And like the next day I was racing around the planet.

Incredible.

So it was like this whole gamble of like, if you don't just throw yourself into it, you'll never find a way.

But if you, you, but you have to give it literally everything you've got, like to make it to the start line.

And so I went from like someone who had sailed, you know, Samoa to Hawaii and done a year of sailing before that to a circumnavigator the year later after sailing 40,000 miles around the planet.

And.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was spending a whole year at sea on this boat, learning, working, loving it, but also looking at it all from a solo perspective and thinking, oh, one day, what would I do if I got in this situation?

What would I do in this storm?

How would I set the boat up for this?

And so I really used that as an opportunity to kind of, I guess, soft test the idea of solo sailing and to gather skills.

And yeah, when I got back from that, I was like, well, what else can I do?

I've done something I never thought was possible.

And so where do I go from here?

I started to get a bit emotional when you talked about your mum and mum's always putting you back on the right path.

It's like, it's such a powerful thing having someone like that in your corner, isn't it?

Well, and like, it doesn't have to be your mum.

It just has to be someone who sees your vision and trust that you can make it happen and then backs you 100 percent.

Because, you know, sometimes you get overwhelmed.

Sometimes life is just hard.

And when you run like a track like that, that's off the beaten road.

Like it's always going to be.

It's always going to be challenging.

I mean, you would know from your sporting career, like it's and you need people in your corner that can give you that motivation on the few days that you sometimes can't give it for yourself.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you've gone around the world.

You've started to learn and think, I could do this on my own one day.

One day.

When did the one day happen?

Well, then I got back to Australia and I was like, hmm, I'm a little bit bored now.

What am I going to do?

I'm going to try solo.

So I am I honestly couldn't think of doing anything more challenging after what I'd already done because racing around the world is hard.

Like it's physically one of the hardest things you'll ever do in your life.

Like it's just mentally and physically exhausting the whole time.

And I liken it to like running a marathon where you run the marathon and you're at that exhausted finish line state and then you stay in that state for the entire year.

And so that endurance game that you play with that.

Yeah.

And that that like, yeah, it ruins people, but you can also find a way through it.

And so I got back and I got, funnily enough, a job as the captain of the boat that wouldn't hire me as a deckhand.

No way.

Yeah.

So I came back two years later and became the captain of that boat.

Wow.

And I was like full circle.

Yeah.

Just, you know, when roadblocks happen, find another way around it.

And so I did.

And and then I was looking at solo races.

And an option to try solo sailing.

I didn't own a boat.

I still had no money.

I was, you know, just figuring life out.

Right.

And I found this yacht race called the Trans-Tasman Yacht Race, which runs from New Zealand to Australia every four years.

And I was like, oh, it's a year away.

That's enough time to get a boat together for that.

I'll like sign up and do that.

And I remember calling the organizers and going, oh, hi.

You know, are there any other girls signed up?

And they're like, no, no, we're full.

You're the last one to take a position.

You'll need to sign up now.

Otherwise, you know, the spot can go.

And so I paid the entry fee.

And then I was like, oh, by the way, what's the latest date?

I can let you know I have a boat by.

And they just laughed so hard.

I was the only girl and the only one without a boat to actually sign up for this solo like Tasman Sea yacht race.

And yeah.

And then started another journey on that.

And it was while doing that, I was trying to convince a complete stranger to lend me a boat to sail solo across the Tasman Sea.

Which obviously they're saying no to.

I'd think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Smart people.

Right.

And he said, look, maybe if you combine this project with something larger, you could buy the boat and do both projects with it.

Okay.

And maybe you're then in a position to raise the sponsorship.

And so this one guy said, I think this boat's capable of this trip.

And he threw out this Antarctica record with this Russian sailor, Fedor Konyakov, had set in 2008.

And he's like, have a look at it.

Google it.

Get online.

See what you think.

And so I Googled it.

And I was like, this guy's insane.

This is Southern Ocean.

Not only that, it's like, you know, waves the size of a three-story building on a normal day at sea.

It storms stronger than hurricanes like every week.

And you're expecting someone who's, you know, got three years sailing experience to go into the Southern Ocean to go and do this kind of trip.

So I initially was like, yeah, no, not for me.

That's too far.

That's like, you know, pushing the envelope.

And so I just focused on the Trans-Tasman.

I got a boat lent to me like 10 days before I had to sail it to New Zealand.

There's a whole nother set of stories there.

And then I raced it back to Australia.

And that was my first solo crossing was to New Zealand and back.

And I had no idea what I was doing.

I messed up a billion times.

The autopilot had an issue.

So I said, like, you know, there's little mechanical oven timers that you click them over.

So I had one of those because every 20 minutes you have to look at the horizon for ships.

OK.

And every 20 minutes you're waking up the entire crossing.

And the crossing was 12 days at sea.

So for 12 days you're sleeping.

Every 20 minutes.

Every 20 minutes.

For 12 days.

Every 20 minutes.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, no.

And then the autopilot would wig out and the whole boat would do a little like pirouette in the middle of the ocean, like just spin around in a circle.

And so I ended up sleeping at the back of the boat by the wheel with my little 20 minute oven timer.

By my ear, because I was worried that I would sleep through it and like kept on the back deck and got zero sleep for like 12 days.

And yeah, arrived in New Zealand, like exhausted, turned the boat around and raced it back to Australia.

So that so the 12 days every 20 minutes was on your way over.

That wasn't even the race.

Both directions.

Both ways you have to do that.

So every time I sail solo close to land or no one has it.

So something like the Tasman Sea has got so many ships and fishing boats and stuff.

Yeah.

There's a lot of traffic out there.

I can't sleep more than 20 minutes at a time.

Right.

On any record.

Any record you've done.

Any record I've done.

Even what I just came back from.

I feel stressed for you.

Oh, my gosh.

That is so full on.

Just the stress to the body, the way your hormone levels change.

Like it's, yeah, it's quite intense.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so how did you go in the race on the way back?

So I felt like I did pretty good given it was a little home built aluminium boat.

Great.

Not a racing boat.

Not a racing boat.

Not a racing boat.

Not a racing boat at all.

It was just a boat.

I'm like, I don't care.

I just need a boat.

This boat was available.

I took it.

It was great.

And the guy who landed to me is amazing.

And so I came, I think it was 11th online honours out of 13 boats that finished and 16 that

entered the race.

And I, on the handicap, I think it was eight position.

Wow.

So I felt pretty good about that.

That's great.

First race ever.

That's amazing.

You know, like as the captain, as the solo sailor.

Yeah.

So I felt pretty good about it.

And just like, you know, sailing the 1200 nautical miles to Australia, I think it's

a pretty big achievement.

Absolutely it is.

Even just making it there.

Put the race aside, actually just making it home alive is quite incredible.

Yeah.

I, when you talked about the three story building waves around Antarctica, I felt physically

ill.

Yes.

Oh, you will feel more ill.

Yeah.

There's plenty, there's plenty to come in that.

But I think like with my sporting career.

I've changed and throw myself in the deep end in a sense, but there's an element of

safety where if I fail, it's on a football pitch and I will survive.

You throwing yourself in the deep end is a very different story.

Yeah.

You, you have to go into these projects with the view that rescue is never an option.

So I look, it doesn't really matter if you're close to land or not on the project.

If you go into it with the idea that you have an exit strategy, then you'll

probably never set the record because you will give up at the first big hurdle that

you've got to face.

Whereas for me, like for something like Antarctica, and I'm sure we'll get into that story in

a minute.

You know, I was more than three days from help at the, at the average for most of that

record.

So even if I broke my leg, I would have to triage myself for a minimum of three days.

So IV fluids, I have a bone injection gun on board so that I can inject myself into

the bone marrow to give myself fluids.

Like I carry all this stuff because I have to be prepared for all those scenarios that

might take place and hope, hope that none of them happen, but you have to have that

mentality going into it.

Okay.

So how do you get to the point of making the decision of, I'm going to give it a crack?

Of sailing around Antarctica like a mad person?

That, that.

So I had spoken to mum, obviously she features quite a lot and I'd spoken to the rest of

my family, my dad and my sister.

Um,

before I did the Trans-Tasman and just sort of softly floated the idea because I had the

suggestion, I initially thought, yeah, I'm not capable of that.

I'm not strong enough.

I've only got three years sailing experience.

I'm not that person, even though I really wanted to, but then I couldn't stop thinking

about it for months.

So as I kept building up the preparation for the Trans-Tasman, I started researching like

how cold's cold, you know, where's the iceberg line?

Like what, what would the conditions actually be?

Like in those latitudes and we'd sailed the Southern ocean with the Clipper race, but

a little bit higher in the, in the planet, I guess you'd call it further North.

Um, and so the conditions like were extremely rough in one area we sailed through, uh, just

off the bottom of New Zealand, actually, we had a pretty major storm and the waves were

higher than the mast was tall and the mast is 22 meters.

So the whole boat would disappear.

Yeah.

The whole boat would disappear in the trough.

Um, like it, it was, and I remember looking at the captain at the time going, is there

something else we can do?

And he's like, keep driving the boat.

And we're hand steering down these monster waves in the Southern ocean.

And like, it was, everyone else was locked in the boat because it was too dangerous on

deck.

And so I was looking to do that on my own, not with a crew of 16 people.

And so I, I just couldn't shake that idea though.

So I had sort of floated the idea past my family first, and this was pretty ever sailing.

It's all low.

I said, oh, you know, what do you think about me sailing solo around Antarctica?

Like, what would you think to that?

And mom was instantly like, ah, no chance.

You're not doing it.

That is crazy.

No, like I'm putting my foot down.

No, I supported you for new, like you around the world crude race, but no, not solar and

Antarctica.

And she knows enough about sailing to know, you know, the risks with something like the

Southern ocean.

And, um, and so then after I did the trans Tasman, so by that point, I'd sailed almost

30.

3,000 nautical miles solo.

So I'd gone all the way to New Zealand and back solo.

So I at least proven that I could sail solo and that I, and I didn't even know until that

point that I would enjoy it or not.

Maybe I'd hate solo sailing.

Like I had no idea.

And I just loved it.

Um, and so she saw all of that.

And afterwards I was like, oh, so what do you think about this Antarctic idea?

And she was like, I don't really want to say yes, but I think you, you know, you, if you

trained a little bit more and got the skills.

But like, you could do it.

And, um, so from then I had my family support and I finished the trans Tasman and like a

week later started campaigning for the Antarctica.

Like it was just like, I just went straight into it.

I decided I needed to be in Sydney for that.

So I made the move to Sydney.

I slept on some lovely lady's couch.

That was a friend of a friend that I'd only spoken to on the phone who I was trying to

convince to let me lend their boat to race around Antarctica.

And so I slept on her couch and I cleaned her house for her for like six.

Months and low, sorry, her spare bedroom.

And like finally got a job in Sydney, working on a sailing boat and teaching sailing.

And yeah, just kind of built it up from there.

But I had this firm idea that if I wasn't around where potential sponsors would be,

where I could have meetings in person and the likes, it would be almost impossible to do it.

So working in the Whitsundays wasn't going to work and the only other place you can do

sailing in really Australia as a job is Sydney Harbor.

So I, um, I got some jobs down there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I worked five different companies, five different jobs, all part-time or casual and just worked

as much as I could and then worked full-time on the campaign for the next three and a half

years.

Yeah.

Whoa.

Yeah.

It was a long time.

A long time.

And when did the boat come along?

So about two years in, I'd postponed the following year before because I hadn't raised any sponsorship

or had a boat.

And even though I'd put hundreds and hundreds of proposals out and had negotiation conversations,

they just hadn't come through.

Um, I then remember talking to mom and I was like, oh, you know, I think maybe what I might

do is postpone Antarctica for a few years and I can fly to the UK and become one of the

captains of the Clipper race.

And then that's like got a lot of sponsorship, a lot of media coverage, it'll help build

my profile.

And then I can come back to Antarctica when I get back.

And so I had this conversation and she's like, oh yeah, that sounds like an okay idea, blah,

blah, blah.

And then the next day she calls me and goes, hey, I'm going to go to Antarctica.

And then she goes, hey, I've been thinking, I think I can refinance against the house and

help you get the boat.

And it was this chicken and egg scenario, if you didn't have the boat, you couldn't get

the sponsorship dollars.

You couldn't buy the boat without the sponsorship dollars.

And like, people didn't think you were leaving until you actually had a boat to go with.

Like, so it was this mental kind of thing for people.

And I instantly was like, no, mom, don't, don't finance like on my, like way out there

goal, um, against the family home that, you know, I'm not going to be able to get the

boat.

That's silly.

Don't do that.

And so I tried to convince her not to.

And she's like, look, I'm just looking at it like an investment.

This is like a business investment.

You'll pay me back.

You'll do interest.

I'll make the money off the interest.

Like we'll just do it as a structured loan.

It'll be fine.

Um, and at the same time I eventually said yes to mom lending me the money for the boat,

the Royal commission came in for lending rights and they changed it from, I think it was accountability

to serviceability and mom wasn't serviceable for the amount we were trying to go for.

We found the boat in Newcastle.

I wanted it.

I put a deposit on, we started the process and then like within a week, all the laws

changed and we weren't eligible anymore.

And uh, so we were left without like a boat that we wanted that was perfect that we couldn't

buy.

And it ended up being an old crew member of mine that sailed from, I delivered a boat

from Western Australia to New Zealand and he came for a section of the trip and I had

emailed a local reporter and said, Hey, I'm looking for someone.

Hey, I'm looking for someone who can privately invest in me for this project.

They'll make 8 cent interest, blah, blah, blah.

Um, can we do an article?

And it went up on, um, a sailing platform called my sailing and he read it and he got

called me up out of the blue and goes, tell me a bit more about this boat loan.

Cause I was talking about Antarctica years earlier with him on the boat.

And so he knew that I'd been working on this for multiple years, you know, obviously knew

I could sail and do all of the physical stuff.

Yeah.

Um, and so he's like, tell me more about it.

And so me, mum, him and his wife, Citi, we all sat down and had a big conversation around

it and he said, right, let us chat and we'll get back to you.

And then they ended up financing the boat and I still owe him a lot of money.

Thanks Colin and Citi.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And so, um, and then I ended up refinancing with dad to pay half the boat loan back and

then got into the refit the following year cause I was aiming for a, what would it have

been 2020, uh, no 2017.

And so this was 2016 and I was aiming for a departure early 2017 and, um, but I needed

to raise enough money to fit the boat out now to get it safe enough to do the trip.

And that required a huge amount, like, you know, $300,000.

Um, I had 150 huge money here just that that's just to fit the boat out.

You've already got to make the project run.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't raise that.

Fair enough.

That's a lot of money.

Yeah.

But, uh, Dick Smith became an incredible sponsor of mine and funded half the refit.

And then I was able to reloan the 65 back from this guy, uh, that we'd paid off the

boat loan and use that.

And then I finished that record with nearly 300,000 in bills outstanding has been the

next five years paying it off.

Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's not been an easy ride from a finance point of view.

That's for sure.

Wow.

Okay.

So let's, let's actually look at this record attempt.

Yeah.

Um, I don't actually know where to start, to be honest, what is it?

Where is it?

Yeah.

That let's start with that.

Um, so in 2008, this Russian adventurer federal Cognac off set the world record and he sailed

solo nonstop and unassisted from Albany and Western Australia to Albany and Western Australia.

Um, and he did the trip in 102 days.

So because he did it as part of an organized event, which was called the Antarctica cup,

ocean race.

Um, then he raced on what they call the Antarctica cup, ocean race, race track.

Okay.

Um, and this racetracks just a virtual way points or gated entry zones that I have to

stay within or that he had to stay within on, on his record.

And so he could, once he entered onto the racetrack, he couldn't sail north of 45 degrees

south, which if you kind of imagine the bottom tip of news, uh, Tasmania, kind of that section,

and he couldn't go south of 60 degrees south, which is kind of the.

Yeah.

Tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

Okay.

So that, that gap of ocean, the Southern ocean storm belt is the entirety of the record.

So he did it in a, I think it was a 82 meter aluminum boat.

Okay.

It was this incredible vessel and he did it in 2008, but federal Cognac cops, this incredible

adventurer, like amazing.

Like I would love to be him one day, or I'm working my way up to being here one day.

Yeah.

The female version.

Yeah.

He's like climbed Everest.

He's the first Protestant priest, um, to go to the top of Alvarez.

He sailed around the world, fought solo four times.

He holds the world record for a hot air balloon, circumnavigation of the planet.

Um, he's rode from Chile to Australia and then from New Zealand to, uh, Cape Horn, uh,

in a open rowboat, like, you know, a physical rowboat, like, yeah, he's done dog sled teams

to the North pole, South pole.

Like he's just always got another project, like incredible adventure.

Wow.

And I went to meet him when I finished the trans Tasman yacht race.

Okay.

He was finishing his row and he ended up changing the destination from Brisbane to the sunshine

coast and came into Maluba.

And so I met him and his son Oscar.

And, um, at that time I'd committed to doing Antarctica.

So they knew who I was and he's like, good luck.

Like I support you.

And, um, he doesn't speak a lick of English.

So his son translates everything.

And he said, um, we had a cup of tea and his bit of advice was always pass icebergs to

the North.

Okay.

Like, cause all the debris ice is to the South of the Berg cause it's moving North.

Um, so yeah, so I had his support to challenge the record and, um, because he started and

finished in Albany and Western Australia, I would need to do the same destination and

I would also need to stick between 45 and 60 South.

Um, so I expected three months at sea, hopefully three months would break the record.

Um, and the distance to travel was around 14,000 nautical miles.

Wow.

Which is about 22,000 kilometers.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's a lot of kilometers.

Yes.

Yep.

Yep.

Um, I guess the difference for those who, who don't understand like what that storm

belts like in the Southern ocean as well.

If you imagine like a circumnavigation of the planet for a sailor, most of their sailing

is around the equatorial levels, trade winds, quite calm conditions, sea States, probably

two to five meters maximum.

Um, and the most dangerous part of their trip is rounding.

Cape Horn, um, which is the most Southern tip of the South American coastline there

between, um, sort of, you've got the Antarctic Peninsula comes up and you've got that coastline

that goes down off America and that's, that's it, that, that Cape there.

Um, and basically when they enter into that, they go into that storm belt and they're in

it for like maybe a week and a half, two weeks, depending on how fast their boat is.

And most people's trips become undone at that point.

Okay.

So for me to then do this record, I would be in those conditions, those storm conditions

that break every other boat, um, for the entire three months, not able to get north of the

storms, not able to get away from them.

I'm just in them.

I have to go through them.

And so at what point when you're in these storms, well, I don't even think there's one

point.

I imagine there's multiple points.

Yeah.

But when was it that you started to realize that something was going pretty significantly?

Yeah, so, uh, 72 days into the record, so I'd sailed, so Cape Horn obviously is considered

the Mount Everest of sailing.

So it's the same sort of, um, accolades as summiting Mount Everest for sailors.

And uh, so for me, I was, I'd sailed from Albany, went directly south to 45 South, I'd

sailed the whole South Pacific ocean, rounded Cape Horn, sailed the whole South Atlantic

ocean.

And literally four weeks.

Four weeks from my destination of Western Australia.

Um, I just had the South Indian ocean, which was around three and a half thousand miles.

Um, still quite a long way, still the Southern ocean, but like I was on the home stretch

and these sort of storms coming through once a week, you would have a storm, the size of

a cyclone or hurricane.

Um, and you'd have waves generally a calm day was about five meters.

Um, and then, and then you get the not calm days and the not calm days, uh, the most,

I think I saw in wave height on that particular record was about 12 meters.

Um, but then I, yeah, day 72, I was a thousand miles from land.

I was just passing below like the Southern tip of South Africa there.

And uh, it was just going on sunset.

So as you do, none of these disasters happen in daylight.

They always happen at nighttime and, uh, a piece of rigging wire snapped and I'd been

on deck.

About 20 minutes earlier, I had looked around, everything looked good.

The boat was in sort of six to eight meter seas.

So if you imagine like a three story building as a wave, that was kind of the conditions,

but we'd been in those conditions for 70 days.

Like it wasn't new to us.

It was just another day at sea.

Um, the boat felt really good.

She felt like she was handling the conditions well, like we weren't getting shoved around

too much.

Um, but I was going into a new storm that night.

So the conditions were going to deteriorate throughout the night and get worse.

Like the wind was about 35 to 45 knots of wind, which is kind of around 60 kilometer

hour winds roughly to give people a bit of an idea.

Yeah.

Generally you lose the roof off your house at 60 kilometers.

So okay.

That's a good analogy, but not like the worst I'd seen that trip.

Pretty strong.

Yeah.

I've had a lot stronger, but so for me it was like a normal day and literally the last

two weeks have been conditions like that.

They degrade.

They go slightly or they'd go slightly stronger, but on average the conditions were like that.

Um, but I was in my bunk trying to get one of those lovely 20 minutes sleeps and just

had a bang and it was so loud.

Like it was like a gunshot going off.

Like it was just this bang and it was like this metallic sound.

So it rang in my ears, like almost like a, yeah, like a bomb or something going off near

your head.

Um, and so I jumped out of my bunk onto my engine box.

Okay.

I love my engine box.

I have like a clear Perspex dome and it allows me to see out without physically going out

into the bad weather, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Um, and it means I don't then have to get all my kid on and my life jacket and all of

that, but I can assess the situation.

And so I jumped up on that and I initially thought it was a rope that broke at the back

of the boat.

So I looked at the back of the boat and everything looked normal and it was like that sinking,

twisting guts kind of feeling like, you know, something really bad's happened.

And I looked to the front of the boat.

And my master's 22 meters and aluminum, and it was just bending like a hula girl, shaking

your hips, like just flexing as the boat sailing over these waves, the master's just like about

to snap.

And so I launched for my life jacket, just in my base layers, I don't have wet weather

gear on launched for my life jacket, threw it on, just clipped myself to the outside

of the hatch to climb onto the deck and go and maneuver the boat, which is a technique

called tacking.

Okay.

So I took the angle of the boat and we put the wind on the other side of the mast and

the other side of the mast isn't broken.

So in theory, I could have tacked the boat and saved the mast and then dropped sails,

gone through the storm.

And when I had a lull, run repairs and fix it all.

And so I am running up on deck and I just hear it all come crashing down.

And so my mast snapped at deck level, like there was nothing standing up out of the boat

and like it snapped at deck level.

And so my mast snapped at deck level.

And I then had this, it was just the most violent sequence of noise.

Like if you've ever heard of like a car yard, crashing cars, that metal on metal, like grinding

and twisting noise, it was that, but I'm inside the boat, so it's amplified through the hull

of the boat really incredibly loudly.

And because everything's tensioned on your rigging, as soon as that tension's released,

the whole boat's hull just like flexed and wobbled and twisted.

And like, I had no idea.

What was, you know, cause these things can be incredibly violent.

It could have been a wave, could have been anything, but the mast just snapped.

And it fell to the right-hand side, the starboard side into the ocean, but I still had sails

up.

Okay.

And so they all became drag in the water and it turned the boat 180 degrees and there was

about this sort of two to three meter section at the base of the mast where it had broken

that was still trapped on the deck of the boat.

Yeah.

And the safety rails on the right-hand side were torn off and crushed by the rigging coming

down.

But this jagged bit of rigging that was still stuck on the boat by all the ropes and other

bits of rigging wire and stuff, that now as the boat had turned around was getting pushed

and pulled by these waves coming through.

But it was getting pushed and pulled so incredibly violently.

It was like a saw cutting the boat in half and the mast started to saw through the deck

of the boat that night.

So I had, in my mind, like incredibly limited time to try and save the boat.

And I'm a thousand miles from land, three days from help at a minimum, freezing temperatures,

like you're just before snow storms kind of temperature in a new storm coming through

that night.

Yeah.

Fun times.

And how on earth did you save the boat?

It took me hours and hours and it was honestly one of the most terrifying experiences that

I've ever gone through.

I wrote the book Facing Fear on it, and we've got a film coming out called Ice Maiden, which

is this story, but about three hours into the emergency, I started going hypothermic.

And so I had been completely dosed in my base layers.

I put wet weather gear on top, but I was then crawling around on the deck in freezing conditions,

in strong winds, soaking wet for hours.

And so I started to lose the ability to kind of bend my hand or I had to look at my hand

to hold.

I had to use my heels to know that it was shut, like I had no sensations left.

And I started going into brain fog, quite heavy brain fog.

And a lot of my preparation had been risk management and identifying signs and symptoms

of things like hypothermia, how to treat it and all of that.

So I knew I was running out of time.

And at this point, that soaring effect of the mast with these six to eight meter waves

coming through had cut like a pretty large kind of dinner plate size, platter size hole,

in the boat.

And it had gone all the way through the deck now, and it was just working on the hull,

which meant it was going to speed up because it's much easier section to kind of cut through.

And so I knew that time was incredibly limited.

I had disconnected the back piece of rigging and one of the forward pieces, but the next

piece was the very, very front piece of rigging.

And I had tried bolt cutters, I'd tried all the other tools, the easiest solution to me

in that scenario was to physically knock out.

The joining pins and separate the mast manually rather than trying to cut it because it was

just too thick and the gear I had wasn't working.

And also like, you're not on a stable platform.

The boat's like getting tossed left and right, left and right.

And every time these waves break, because I'm now an anchored vessel in these storms,

the wave will hit the hull of the boat, throw the boat about 50 meters sideways.

And then all that white water goes right over the boat.

So I'm submerged up to my neck in white water.

Like every 30 seconds with these impacts, trying to hold onto tools, trying not to get

ripped off the boat.

Like, and it's dark, you only got your head torch.

Like it's just an impossible kind of scenario and something, yeah, I wouldn't want my worst

enemy to go through.

Did you think that you were going to die?

Oh yes.

Yeah.

I, I had to, when I looked at the four stay wire, which is that forward one that I was

talking about, the way it had broken or with the way the mast had broken, it had bent over.

And then I was like, oh my God.

I need to lift it over.

And it has this thing called a furling drum on the bottom of it.

And that drum was blocking my access to this wire.

And I had two options at the time.

One was to take my screwdriver, wedge my arm like kind of under the drum, put the fitting

in, and then like hug it and like wrap my arm around the other side and just bash it

out that way.

But the minute I let that go, it's going to whip around the boat, like a snake, like it's

going to be, and it's heavy metal.

So it will crack a rib, break an arm.

otherwise injure me to a point where I couldn't save the rest of the boat.

The only other choice I could see at that time was to physically climb

over the bow rails and sit down on something called the bow sprit.

These racing yachts, you often see they have the stick out the front

that they fly the big sails off, and I have to climb over the rails

and sit down on that.

Again, six to eight-metre waves.

I'm not even holding on well on the boat inside the safety rails

that are still existing, let alone being out there with nothing

to hold on to, gripping on a stick out the front of a boat

in six to eight-metre seas.

It's just insanity.

I knew if I was going to do that that I had to tell somebody.

I called my shore manager up, Jeff, and he's this amazing volunteer of mine

and almost part of the family now.

It was 3 a.m. at the time I issued the call just to let people know

that I had dismastered and that I was in a pan-pan situation.

A pan-pan is one step below a mayday.

He was all on high alert.

The whole team was on high alert.

Mum was awake.

Everyone knew about it, but they were waiting for updates.

I called Jeff up and I said,

I've disconnected the back stay and the inner force stay,

but I have to climb out on the bow sprit to disconnect the force stay wire.

He's like, oh, okay.

Initially, he was all very much like, keep going.

The whole of Australia is behind you.

Just keep at it.

You'll be fine.

Very positive.

As soon as I said I had to climb over that safety rail,

he was like, oh, okay, I understand.

Wow.

Then I had to say to him, I still tear up telling this,

I had to say to him if my PLB, my personal location beacon

on my life jacket is activated, it's because I'm washed off the boat

and I'm in the ocean.

Don't come and get me.

It's the only way I could say goodbye or give them some kind of answer

as to what happened that night and to why I wasn't coming home.

So, yeah, fun times.

God.

What did he say back to that?

Pardon?

What was his response when you said that to him?

He said, okay, I understand, I understand.

And then he started trying to ask another question

to get more situational awareness of the scenario.

And I just said, I've got no time, I've got no time,

and I hung up and I left.

And I, at that point, was getting blackouts.

I was shaking uncontrollably.

I had been shaking uncontrollably for hours.

And I physically...

I physically was losing that ability to save myself.

And I knew if I abandoned the boat because it sank

and I hopped in a life raft that night, I wasn't coming home.

That a life raft was never going to save me in those conditions.

It's not strong enough to save me in those conditions.

And so I crawled back out and I got to the bow of the boat

and I got about two metres from the front of the boat

and I just froze.

I froze for like 20 minutes out there.

Like I couldn't...

forced myself to make that conscious choice

to kill myself, to give myself half a shot of surviving.

Does that make sense?

Like I knew if I stayed, if I didn't go out there,

the boat would sink and I would die.

But if I went out there, instead of it being maybe sometime tonight,

it was in the next five minutes I might not be alive.

Like it's just that severity of like it hitting home

that I might not come back from this.

How did you get...

How did you...

unfreeze?

How did you get yourself moving?

I...

You know, we'd had lots of conversations with family and stuff before this

around, you know, maybe I won't come home

because the nature of the type of record it was is huge

and there is that risk that that 1% you can't control,

that you can't plan for.

And so we'd had those chats,

but like the reality of living it is like entirely different.

And I spend that time...

Like every time these...

These waves would hit, it would rip your legs out,

drag you down the deck and you're hooking arms in the safety rails,

trying to stay on.

And then you'd crawl forward again and I'd try and like slack myself up to go.

And it was constantly this like shouting in my head of just like,

just do it.

Like you don't have a choice.

Like this is the choice.

This is the only option.

And I remember thinking through all the tools, the equipment,

the scenario in its entirety.

And going, okay, is there something I haven't thought of yet?

Is there a piece of equipment I haven't tried yet?

Is there a better or a safer way to do this that I'm not thinking of

because I'm too involved in it?

And so I really did take that time to try and look at the scenario.

And after that, I couldn't think of any other way to deal with it

except going out there.

That was the safest available option at the time.

And after about 20 minutes, I just went, I'm going to do it.

I've just got to do it.

Yeah.

The staying here is just making it harder to do because I'm getting colder

and I'm, you know, I'm going further into hypothermia.

And so I just screamed at myself, just do it.

And I jumped up and I had re-tethered over the rails in a way that if the

railing was torn off when this piece of rigging went,

because it was very likely it would rip the rails off,

that it wouldn't take my tether with it and it would take me with it.

But it also meant that if the rails were ripped off,

I'd have nothing to hang on to out there.

I'd be.

I'd be on a boat with nothing to hold on to.

And so I climbed out and I sat down and I initially thought that I could

kind of lock my ankles under the bow of the boat.

I'm really short.

My legs weren't quite long enough.

And I wish I knew this before I climbed out there,

but it was too late by then.

And I was committed and I sat down and I was there.

That was it.

So I was just holding on with like my thighs pinching up as much as I could.

My left hand, I held the screwdriver and the safety rail.

That was like,

kind of buckled and twisted to the side.

And the railing itself was only held on with four bolts that were half ripped

through the deck.

So the other bits of rail had already torn off with the dismasting.

And then my right hand,

I held the hammer,

but the hammer was so thick that I couldn't get my hands around the rail at

the same time.

So I have one hand holding the boat,

one hand holding the hammer and these waves,

like you can't,

you can't see them coming because it's nighttime,

right?

Is it like pitch black pretty much?

Yes.

You've got your head torch on and that's it.

Yeah, it's an overcast,

stormy night.

You've got your glow of your sword.

You've got so much water getting whipped around you that your torch is giving

you maybe a meter of visibility.

You can't even see past that because you just,

it's reflecting on all the light,

all the water.

But you hear the break of the wave.

You can hear it and you can feel the boat start to climb as it goes up a

wave and it'll climb for a few seconds.

This is,

yeah,

no,

it's terrifying.

And so we,

we sort of climbed up the first wave.

I heard the wave break.

And as it breaks,

like one square meter of white water is one ton of pressure being applied.

That's a huge amount.

Yes.

So a sort of eight meter wave when it breaks,

only the sort of top two meters or so will break.

But then you have a wall of like a meter and a half white water running down

the face of this mountain of a wave and it'll hit the boat.

And then when it hits the hull of the boat,

it will throw my 10 ton boat 50 meters sideways to the trough of the wave.

And sometimes you get almost fully,

airborne when this happens,

like the whole boat slam like a Mack truck kind of hitting you slams into the

hull throws the whole boat sideways.

I had gripped the rail and I'd hooked my elbow with the hammer and I'd hugged

the boat as tight as I could making myself as small as possible.

And then when you hit the bottom of the wave,

the trough,

it's like that cement,

like it's that unbroken surface of water.

So the whole boat will hit hard,

go from,

you know,

from this road,

to nothing.

And it's like slamming into that brick wall.

And then the white water hits the boat and rolls over the top.

And so it'll hit us,

throw us impact the bottom of the wave,

and then you're submerged.

And I was on the front of the boat fully submerged,

and I would just hang on.

And on the back of that wave,

I would then have to let go,

put my screwdriver in the fitting,

get my hammer and try and knock that fitting out.

And I honestly,

I don't know how long I was out there for.

I felt like a,

a lifetime,

but it was probably maybe 10 minutes or something.

But every one of those waves was just that,

that moment of unknown,

like,

am I going to get through this next wave?

And you are sitting with us here today.

You got through it and you obviously were successful when you went out

there and you ended up back in South Africa.

You eventually made your way back to South Africa.

Is that correct?

Yes.

I ended up rendezvousing with a container ship for a fuel transfer.

They collided with me,

nearly sunk me,

a second time with you.

Yes.

A whole nother big involved story,

but yeah,

they,

that was actually probably more traumatic to me than the dismasting.

The dismasting was very reactive.

Yeah.

You,

you didn't have time to deal with the emotional elements of it at the time.

You just had to survive it.

Whereas the,

the container ship collision,

my poor boat had already suffered so much.

And then this 86,000 ton container ships landing against the hull of the boat

and the whole hulls flexing the wrong way.

And there's this one moment where I was trying to get out from under the ship.

And the whole bow of my boat was sucked under the back of the ship as it

lifted on a wave with half the propeller out of the water.

And it was just like one of those moments where you're watching disaster,

but you can't control it.

And it's like slow motion.

And I'm just watching this ship just slowly fall towards my boat.

And I got clear by like millimeters.

Um,

but yeah,

that was a whole nother 12 hour emergency scenario.

And then when I finally got fuel off this ship,

um,

cause they didn't speak any English,

which was,

one of the big problems with that scenario.

Um,

I ended up,

uh,

opening the jerry cans that they gave me and the fuel was black in color.

And so I,

I didn't know if it would work in the engine after,

you know,

the now extensive damage to the other side of the boat that wasn't already

damaged before.

Um,

and,

uh,

so I ended up building a new mast with the boom.

So I lost in the dismasting my mast itself,

all the sails that were attached to it and all the rigging wire attached to it

were lost in the Southern ocean.

But the only thing I'd been able to salvage was the boom,

which is the horizontal piece of rigging that the main sail flies off.

Um,

and so I spent two days and I built a new mast with that,

with the debris on the boat and then motor sail to Cape town.

Holy moly.

Okay.

And I'm,

I know cause I'm conscious of,

of time because there's so many more elements of that.

You got there and repaired it.

I got to Cape town.

I'm pretty broken.

Yeah.

And was able with a combination of sponsors,

some insurance money,

um,

and donations from the public.

I had about 40,000 in donations from just general people that wanted to

support.

Um,

and I found a secondhand mast that had been sitting in a shed in Cape town

for 15 years.

That was two meters shorter than my old mast.

And I bought it for 5,000 Australian whacked it in the boat,

did a three hour test sale.

And two months later I left to go again.

I,

um,

yeah.

How did you,

how did you conquer the fear of going again after that level of trauma out

there on multiple occasions?

I didn't realize that I was traumatized,

right?

I didn't have time to process that.

And I hadn't processed it.

I like reach Cape town,

absolutely lost and just feeling like depressed and like not motivated to do

anything.

And it wasn't until the idea of sailing back to where I dismastered crossing

back onto the track and then finishing the record,

but doing it with one stop came into play that I actually started to feel

motivated and excited.

And I,

and I guess like you've got to kind of put it in perspective to,

in the sense of the playing field,

being a female at like sports person in this zone compared to a male sports

person in this zone.

Um,

as my first big project,

if I go out and fail,

I will never have another project.

Simple as that.

You won't get the funding again.

Wow.

Guys can fail multiple times.

Girls,

we don't get the choice,

especially at the beginning.

Um,

and so I felt like I'd lost every,

any chance of future adventure.

Like I felt like the entire world of ocean sailing was gone to me in that

moment because of the dismasting.

Um,

but once I decided that I would go back and finish it with one stop,

I just was solely focused on that.

And it wasn't until I left that the realities of,

you know,

post-traumatic stress and,

and all of that like came into play.

Whoa.

Yeah.

It's yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So you were,

and you were able to do it and then you actually did it again.

Yeah.

Cause I'm glutton for punishment.

And that time you did it with no stops.

Yeah.

So I,

I officially in 2017 became the first woman with one stop.

Um,

and I then knew I needed time.

I knew I always knew I'd do that record again.

I had,

there was,

it was never a question for me.

I hadn't,

I had never gone into it.

With the intention of setting a women's record.

I'd gone into it with the intention of becoming the best and the fastest

person.

And I think that that's needed in this day and age.

Yeah.

Um,

even though I did get a women's record and that's still achieved like a

great achievement,

it wasn't my goal.

And,

um,

so I actually,

the whole project was celebrated by people,

but I felt like I'd failed.

Right.

And so I knew I needed time to process.

It was the writing of the book that actually really helped me.

Cause I came back with like 300,000,

and bills and debt debt collectors chasing me,

like so much financial stress from that project and no real way out.

Um,

that I just had to knuckle down,

work hard,

do speaking to us.

I didn't get any rest and recovery,

any time for reflection until COVID hit.

And I had enough space to write the book.

Yeah.

And it was,

um,

so I did go and do other records.

So I ran the first all female team in 16 years to race the Sydney to Hobart,

ran a mentor program for women,

and sailing.

Um,

I did the Australia circumnavigation record.

So that was 20 minutes sleep for 58 days around Australia.

Not okay.

Yep.

Not okay.

Not exactly.

It was really bad.

Um,

and then,

uh,

COVID hit.

So I had a postponed a year.

I'd already decided I was doing Antarctica again,

but I'd postponed one year at the beginning of COVID.

And then in 2021,

I thought,

nah,

I'm just going to give it a go.

I'll just start trying to raise sponsorship.

And canva came on as a sport really early and they were incredible.

And they funded quite a big chunk of the,

of the budget.

And,

um,

so I took the boat to Brisbane and we had a two week gap where the borders were

open between Sydney and Queensland.

And I happened to sell the boat up and then the borders shut again.

And the second wave of COVID went through.

And,

um,

so I went into refit in Brisbane with the vessel and at the beginning of

2022,

I set off for the second record and broke the existing record by

10 days and did it without.

But it wasn't without challenges and effort.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

The boat was flipped upside down three times on the last record.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Whoa.

The peak of the waves were 15 meters on that project though.

Yeah.

It's its own story or set of stories.

But yeah.

Yeah.

I'd love to chat about your boat being called climate action now.

Um,

where did that,

I imagine there's an element you talked about as a little kid,

solar power.

I imagine there's part of it from your upbringing,

but where did that come from?

Yeah,

definitely.

I mean,

we were always taught to be respectful of the environment.

Um,

I guess I did.

I didn't really understand.

How bad it was,

or,

or at least when I started self-educating around climate change and

environmental impacts,

um,

I felt so overwhelmed by it that I did nothing.

Yeah.

And so I constantly had the idea of us just one plastic bag,

just one straw.

It's just one this.

And then I raced around the world with the Clipper race and we saw so much

pollution,

like so much,

um,

48 degrees south,

halfway from Cape town to Australia and styrofoam boxes floating past in the

middle of nowhere,

so far from land,

like what's it doing out there.

And we went up,

um,

you know,

past China and a lot of the islands there and across the North Pacific.

And there were sections of that voyage where we have to have a crew member on

the bow of the boat,

physically pushing the rubbish out of the way.

So we could sell through,

cause it was so much surface pollution.

And so I started thinking,

well,

what can I do about it?

And why,

you know,

I was so overwhelmed and I sort of always had that idea that I couldn't change

things.

Then I was like,

but there's probably 8 million people that have that idea that they can't change

things.

So 8 billion people now.

Um,

but if we can change that mindset and show people that every action matters,

the little ones count to just as much as the,

the big ones and that everyone has the power to create change.

If they just take one action,

then maybe collectively we can create this impact and it's not necessarily

global warming and climate change.

It's not a decarbonization conversations.

It's the accumulation of everything.

It's how we use plastic,

how we have a throwaway society,

how we spend our dollar,

how we vote with our dollar.

Every time we go to the shops and we buy something,

we're choosing the sustainable option or the not.

And so we're choosing our future that we want.

And so I launched,

uh,

when I first bought the boat,

we renamed her climate action now,

and that was in 2016.

Wow.

And that was back when you were still considered a tree hugger.

If you had the word climate in anything and all the deniers were out there and

the world was like,

you know,

saying climate change isn't real.

Um,

and so I forcibly,

I've,

I've,

I've intentionally changed the name to climate action now to make the media

use the words climate action now.

Clever.

And every time I would do,

interviews around the record,

uh,

it was hilarious because they would do everything possible to avoid saying the

name of the boat.

They'd be like,

oh,

and you and your boat did.

And I'd be like,

yeah,

climate action now.

And they're like,

yeah,

no,

the boat,

like,

and that edits it out in the final cut for a lot of

it.

Um,

if they asked me like anything else you'd like to add,

I'd be like,

yes,

the boat's called climate action now.

And they'd be like going,

why does the shit going on?

This was what we were told not to talk about.

Like it was this whole,

so they're all focused on the female athlete side of things and not the

sustainability.

Yeah.

But the whole boat's covered in post-it note messages.

Tell me about the post.

Yeah.

So she's multicolored.

If anyone sees a photo,

I'm sure there'll be a photo somewhere.

Yeah.

She's gorgeous.

Yeah.

Um,

and my sister Shelly and me designed that and Shelly made it up on in

the graphic sign program.

And it's each one is a climate action initiative that someone in the world

is already doing.

So we physically went out and said,

Hey,

can you give me a post-it note of something you're doing to help the

planet?

And it's like,

I pick up rubbish or I turn the lights off when I leave the room,

or I turn the tap off.

When I brush my teeth or it's,

um,

you know,

there's this one little girl and she's like,

I pick up litter in the playground and she was like six years old,

writing this as her message.

Like,

and so we then wrapped the whole hull of the boat in thousands and

thousands of communities actions.

And it became a lot less about this solo girl sailing around Antarctica and

more about me carrying that voice of change,

voice of inspiration,

voice of movement,

and using the media coverage of the record to ignite change.

And that for me is what it's all about.

And on the second record,

I took it another step further and we converted the sail locker of the boat

into a laboratory at sea.

And I did ocean health research the whole way around Antarctica,

including microplastic sampling the entire way around.

And shockingly,

we found plastic in every single sample,

the entire way around Antarctica.

Like it's in my mind,

I'm like,

how is that?

It should not be there.

There's places like point Nemo where I'm closer to the astronauts in space than

any human on any piece of land.

And we sampled plastic out of the water.

Like it's scary.

It's terrifying.

Yeah.

And so for me now it's around,

how can I continue to do projects that ignite and drive change?

How can I make the,

the world that I live in more impactful and how can I leave a lasting effect?

That's going to really help our oceans.

And so that's,

that's why I do something like the New Zealand records,

which I just did.

And that's why I'm working on the next one,

which is in the Arctic.

Yes.

Can you give us,

can you give us a 90 second rundown of your next challenge?

All right.

Short version is I'm setting off or I'm,

I'm just launching the project at the moment.

Cause I just finished the last one,

but the goal is to become the first person,

not male or female person in the world to sell solo nonstop and honest around

the Arctic circle as something that's only possible because of climate change.

It's also something that requires a very unique,

style vessel to be successful.

And I didn't want to build a another boat just to throw a boat.

And so I've gone down the rabbit hole with my microplastic research and ocean

health research.

And I've learned that we now have 35 to 40 million fiberglass boats worldwide

reaching their end of life.

Now in the last 50 years in productions,

yet huge amount of boats.

And on average,

just out of Europe alone,

a hundred thousand of those boats are anticipated that they're,

they're sunk or purposely abandoned up riverways and estuaries every year.

And so if you add that,

multiply that around the world,

how much pollution is entering the waterways fiberglass and epoxy is liquid

plastic.

That's all it is.

So it all becomes microplastics in the end,

it all becomes ocean pollutions.

So I there's another material called volcanic fiber.

And so the goal is to raise enough money to fund the commercial required

research to get volcanic fiber and bioreson as a mainstream,

widely,

globally available material for boat construction,

build a boat out of it,

sell around the Arctic circle,

use the Arctic record as the education platform,

the,

the Y and the story tell of that going out and then lobby,

you know,

for policy changes across the globe in different countries.

So that's the next few years of my life.

Insane,

incredibly insane,

but in all the good ways.

Oh my goodness.

That's absolutely amazing.

Thank you so much for your time today.

It's been incredible to hear your story and the way that you have just really

thrown yourself at these challenges.

It's yeah,

it's,

it's quite amazing.

And I'm really thankful for your time and for your vulnerability today.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you got something out of this episode,

I would absolutely love it.

If you could send it on to one person who you think might enjoy it.

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