Allison and Claire

There are some great women sailors. Isabelle Autissier, the woman who inspired me, was credited by BBC Sports with “smashing sailing’s glass ceiling”. Autissier had the ear of the sailing gods but was bedeviled by astounding bad luck in her Around Alone races. In 1994 after flying past the pack Autissier capsized in the Southern Ocean. She had the same bad luck again in 1999. In 1996 she was disqualified when she needed assistance to repair her broken rudder. Australia’s Kay Cottee, was the first woman to circumnavigate the world alone, non-stop and unassisted. Ellen MacArthur, the current darling of sailing who held the record from February 2005 until early 2008 as the fastest person to round the globe, is a peanut of a young woman at 5′, 2″ and perhaps 110 pounds.

I wonder, how did these women get so good at sailing? Read more