Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1225: Solo Sailing Extremes and Resilience with Pip Hare

Transcript

Ep. 1225: Solo Sailing Extremes and Resilience with Pip Hare · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_01]: your listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast.
0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember just being amazed by her stories.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: She had a young age to go sailing, but not just sailing around the local reservoir.
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: She took up solo sailing around the globe, and she is a really prominent figure in the yachting and sailing racing world for all of her exploits.
0:53
[SPEAKER_00]: She's done so many amazing things.
0:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll dive into that here in just a little bit.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But she has a new book called MyElement that talks about some of her crazy ocean adventures, solo sailing.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have so many other things to talk about.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to hear the backstory, August 2023 was the episode, it was 958.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to continue on where we left off.
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for inviting me back.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a fan.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I think of you in your story, I'm just kind of blown away.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And a part of that might be my, and I have a tape, but I don't think so.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been landlocked my whole life.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, sailing, deep water sailing, especially solo deep water sailing, just sounds so far out there.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: What got you interested in that all the way back when you were a teenager that made you think this is a thing I've got to do.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I didn't kind of grow up around the water either.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I grew up in a landlocked county in the east of England.
2:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was lucky enough to have access to the water because my grandfather had a boat when I was a kid.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we used to go down and see him all weekends or holidays.
2:20
[SPEAKER_02]: like being on a boat was something that I was familiar with.
2:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But I really fell in love with the sport when I was a teenager and my parents sent me off on a holiday on my own when I was 16 because they thought it would be good for me to go and experience a holiday with that family and they chose a sailing holiday for me.
2:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just grabbed me.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a week with other young people on the water
2:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think at that age, you, you're being told you need to start acting more like an adult.
2:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You're being told you need to be responsible for staff, you need to make good decisions and yet.
3:07
[SPEAKER_02]: In the UK anyway, there's very little agency you can't drive, you can't vote, you know, you're still at school and yet you put a teenager in a sailing boat and they can drive, they can risk take, they can make decisions and I just loved the agency it gave me, but also it was the first time really that I had
3:34
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of really looked at an empty horizon and the world's on the other side of that and I can get there in this boat.
3:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So kind of everything together just made me think, wow, this is it.
3:50
[SPEAKER_02]: This is an incredible sport and this is how I'm going to spend my life.
3:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and you have.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you mind, I see brief lists of some of the accomplishments that you've done in sailing, but would you mind just kind of given us bullet points of your sailing resume, the things that you've done?
4:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is a very uncomfortable thing to ask a British person, do.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand.
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have competed in two Vondade labour races, which is a single-handed non-stop sailing race around the world, and I'm one of only three women in the world to compete in two of those races.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I've finished one of them.
4:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been racing solo since 2009 in various different classes kind of climbed my way up and now I have one of the top 10 international ocean racing teams.
4:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I've got a world speed saying record, which is an outright world speed saying record.
5:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not a women's record, it's the record, um, and that's for a solo circumnavigation of the arelovite.
5:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I, um, one of only two people in the world, the other person being my co-skipper, who has completed the three peaks, Yacht Race double handed.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a race in the UK,
5:26
[SPEAKER_02]: by teams at five, distinct runners and sailors.
5:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a sailing and running way.
5:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's three mountain marathons.
5:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And you sail between the mountain marathons.
5:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And me and my co-skip are Charles are the only people in the world who have ever completed that race double-handed.
5:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So we did all the sailing and all the running.
5:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not exactly.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like it.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's amazing to me, like I said, having always been landlocked.
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything about sailing just knocks my socks off, really does.
6:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's amazing.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: A few questions about that, just to kind of inform the audience.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're probably a lot of people like me who don't know much about sailing, but then there are others who are just avid sailors themselves.
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: what's it like just in general to do deep water sailing where you're way out there you don't see land anymore it's you it's the boat it's the ocean and then to make it a little bit more challenging what's it like to solo sail in waters like that.
6:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think kind of being out in the
6:57
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot like being in the middle of the desert or being in the middle of the mountains, you know, when you're so immersed in nature, when you can look all around you and the only sign of mankind is you and your vehicle or your vessel.
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that feeling of absolutely being immersed in the natural world.
7:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that is kind of equitable to anybody who adventures anywhere on our planet.
7:30
[SPEAKER_02]: that takes them out of the normal path of mankind.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to learn to work with the natural world around you.
7:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also need to take a huge responsibility for yourself and your survival.
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think those are feelings that other people will
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of being in the middle of the ocean is not one thing because it can change so rapidly and so frequently.
8:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we go from, that I think the biggest waves I've ever sailed through are 13 meter waves.
8:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually was in a boat that got turned upside down in 13 meter waves.
8:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's terrifying, that's, that's, you know, having an enormous slab
8:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in that magnitude, it's terrible.
8:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's dark, it's aggressive, the noises unbelievable.
8:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then kind of all the way at the other end of the scale, you can be completely becomes in the middle of the night, where the surface of the sea is so flat that you can actually see reflections of the stars in the surface of the sea.
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: and there's anything in between and everything in between.
9:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, every time you go out to cross the notion, you know that you are going to encounter the most incredible change and you all see a situation that you've never seen before because we cannot know the true extent of everything that's out there in nature.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And then racing a boat, you're working with that, you're taking the helm of this incredibly well-designed, well-built, fine tune, wild machine.
9:41
[SPEAKER_02]: These boats we race go so fast, they fly above the surface of the water and you're the interface between man's ingenuity and the power of nature and you have to work with nature, you have to keep safe but you have to keep fast and it's just amazing.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I sounds very, very exhilarating, but a little bit terrifying to me.
10:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Were you naturally from the beginning, just maybe a little extra brave, or another way to say it is, were you fearful when you started, and are you fearful now?
10:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't think I'm brave.
10:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious.
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to know, I want to know what I'm capable of.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: and a love for sports, I mean, I love them.
10:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, there are moments where I have been scared, but you're always scared of the unknown, you know, you're scared of something you haven't done before and most of it is when you really think about it,
10:58
[SPEAKER_02]: it's your scared because you don't know how you're going to manage it, but one of the incredible things about solo sailing is that it elevates you as a person because there is no one to help you.
11:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Every single situation that comes your way, every single challenge, every single opportunity.
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: you have to grab it, resolve it, push, be the solution.
11:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Because there's no other way out.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And so even when you are scared, you're forced into this situation of stepping up and dealing with things.
11:44
[SPEAKER_02]: In a way that maybe if someone else was there, you might
11:49
[SPEAKER_02]: past you might allow them to take the lead because they're stronger or they're more knowledgeable on more experienced.
11:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you do kind of develop more.
12:02
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always a lot of adrenaline.
12:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean there's a lot of adrenaline running waste of the time.
12:07
[SPEAKER_02]: but you do develop this ability to reassure yourself when you're scared.
12:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You just kind of think, okay, well, I've done this before or I've done something similar before.
12:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I don't know how this exact is exactly gonna pan out, but I'll be okay.
12:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be okay.
12:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of confidence really helps deal with the difficult situations.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I really believe that there's a lot of value in doing solo adventure.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And the main reason is why you just outlined there.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no one else there so you have to step up and you learn so much about yourself about self-reliance and managing things that maybe you didn't know you could manage before.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But it adds a large element of risk.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no one there to help if something goes wrong.
13:07
[SPEAKER_00]: just thinking, if someone were here to help right now, I would certainly love, oh, I'd love that assistance or someone to kind of look out for me or did that ever occur to you?
13:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I think in my earlier days, as a solo sailor, then yeah, I know there were definitely times where I was just,
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, aching for someone just to come and help me because I felt normally it's down to exhaustion.
13:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you get physically exhausted then your mental state naturally isn't so positive and you doubt your ability to deal with things.
13:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, kind of as as my solo career progressed and kind of as I've got into the more extreme end of solo sailing, I always whenever I kind of get myself close to the points of wishing someone was there with me.
14:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I always kind of take a step back and say to myself, right, you have driven yourself down this road, you chose to be here.
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's not like it was the first time I've ever tried solo sailing.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I have taken a very deliberate career path, and I have pushed and pushed and pushed.
14:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of is a double thing, because it reminds me that, you know, it's the decisions that I've made in life that have got me to this point, therefore, it's my job to sort it out.
14:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also, again, just gives that confidence.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, well, you've got to hear.
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So why can't you carry on?
14:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, everything you've done so far has got you to this point, and you're not doing too badly.
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So, crack on.
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's quite the self, self encouragement talk.
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, crack on, what's the longest that you've been solo on these ventures?
15:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's my first four-day global race, which was 2020, and that was 94 days at sea.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: 94 days, so three months of sailing alone and facing all of those challenges, I mean, how do you even stay safe?
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They're shipping traffic to be watched for, there's navigating that has to take place, and you need to sleep at some point.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So we rely very heavily on technology to manage the boat and to manage kind of situation in awareness.
15:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So there are alarms all over the boat.
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I use VHF radio to detect the movement of any vessels around me and also radar as well.
16:08
[SPEAKER_02]: When you set up guard alarms, so if anything comes within a certain radius of your vessel, then an alarm will go off.
16:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But also I have a very clever autopilot driving the boat and then just alarms all over the boat that will tell me if the wind has changed, if the wind direction has changed, if the sea states change, the boat speed has changed, tells me if I'm getting close to the lands, kind of as alarms everywhere.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: and then you kind of you spend your life at the managing and impossibly long job list kind of
16:50
[SPEAKER_02]: In any given 24 hours, there are more jobs than one person can do.
16:57
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all around the maintenance of the boat running repairs, changing sales, keeping the boat sailing fast, downloading weather information, setting up the audit pilot, making
17:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And you tend to sleep in short bursts, especially with a super fast boat, so that the last boat that I raised in the Vonday was capable of speeds of around 45, 46 miles an hour, and when the boats go that fast, you can't just go to sleep.
17:42
[SPEAKER_02]: for a long period of time because things are changing all the time and you can come up.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
17:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Upon hazards quite quickly, so you tend to sleep for 30 minutes at a time.
17:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you wake up, you check everything's okay, everything's okay, you can go back to sleep for another 30 minutes.
17:58
[SPEAKER_02]: If not, then you get up, you do stuff, you go back to sleep.
18:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And over a 24-hour period, the minimum that I would require is 4 hours.
18:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I try and get 4 hours.
18:11
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm in very stable environment or, for example, the Southern Ocean, where there's not a lot of traffic.
18:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Then within a 24 hour period, I should be able to bank a two hour sleep, which means I can go through like sleep, deep sleep and REM.
18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: But when it's busy, you keep waking up before you get into deep sleep.
18:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So you might do, let's say, 10 30 minutes sleep, which means you can get your REM and your like sleep, but you never go into a deep sleep.
18:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exhausting.
18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So much of our mental acuity depends on that deep sleep.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it do to you to go for three months and rarely get that deep rest?
18:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so you adapt.
18:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess, you know, the thing about human beings is that we can adapt and largely, you know, we don't use.
19:08
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of our kind of, there's a lot of brain function that we don't necessarily use in the life that we have.
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that you definitely feel better after you've enabled a deep sleep cycle, but
19:27
[SPEAKER_02]: On the average transatlantic race, which is like 10 days, we don't do deep sleep.
19:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're quite happily get to the end of a 10-day race and you're fatigued, but you learn to manage it in a different way, you just have to be very self-aware.
19:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do little things like, for example, I will do mental arithmetic in my head.
19:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing crazily difficult, but I'll be saying, okay, so what is?
19:59
[SPEAKER_02]: 136 minus 34 and if I can't do that easily in my head, then I know I shouldn't be making any decisions and I should kind of elevate my risk assessment somewhat and then that would either trigger me to sleep or just look after myself a bit better if there is no
20:27
[SPEAKER_02]: will give you a boost to get through a difficult time, just tiny sleep.
20:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, well, so sometimes it's just a matter of waking up.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a routine that makes you more alert?
20:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I think what's interesting is that I
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: When I'm racing, I kind of move into a different state almost.
20:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's now become just normal to be, I don't, I can, when I'm racing, I will, so you don't ever really lie down in a bed.
21:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I have a bean bag on the floor that I sleep on.
21:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And you don't ever get undressed, you just sit down.
21:20
[SPEAKER_02]: and sleep.
21:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will be asleep in less than 10 seconds.
21:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I either wake up or my own or I have an alarm that goes off that wakes me up.
21:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And so long as I haven't, so long as I don't wake up mid-deep sleep cycle, then I can literally just bounce onto my feet and I'm ready to go.
21:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the same on the land though.
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: On the land, you know, I am quite a, I don't bounce out of bed in the morning.
21:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Blah, I'm a snooze button hitter, for sure.
21:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The only difficult time.
22:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have had, you know, a couple of occurrences where I've been woken up during a deep sleep cycle.
22:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that can be really difficult because you are so groggy and disorientated.
22:19
[SPEAKER_02]: That, you know, that you're almost like you didn't go to sleep and you do have to be careful when that happens.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned having a boat turned upside down by very large waves.
22:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I am not a sailor.
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But once I was in five meter seas and a boat that was rated for five meter seas and I thought we may not make it.
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It was terrifying to me.
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But you said 30 meter seas.
22:54
[SPEAKER_02]: 13, 13 meter yeah.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, okay, tell us that story.
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to hear it.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It was quite a long time ago, so it was very early 2000s, and I wasn't alone, I was with one other person on a 12-meter boat, 40-foot, and kind of back then we didn't have the kind of weather forecast that we get now, generally when you were making a passage, then you relied
23:34
[SPEAKER_02]: for the next five days, which would generally quite reliable, and then you would make your decisions for passage planning based on those charts.
23:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Then when you're out at sea, you've got these four casts that were just text, four casts for sea areas, and this was a crossing of the Bay of Biscay, which is between northern France and northern Spain.
23:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing about the Bay of Biscay is it's...
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: where the continental shelf is.
24:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So you get all the waves coming across the Atlantic with all of that momentum, these huge waves.
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when they get to the continental shelf in the bisque, they can break because there's a suddenly the seagulls up from over a mile deep to meters deep and it gets very rough.
24:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And what happened on this occurrence was there was a
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: a weather system, which is called a rapidly developing low, which is like a little weather ball.
24:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of a bit like a hurricane almost, but it develops faster.
24:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And in between getting this weather fax and arriving in Spain, this rapidly developing low suddenly turned up in the Bay of Biscay right on my course and we had hurricane force winds with virtually
24:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, I was in kind of got to, we got to the stage where we couldn't control the boat because in the trough of the wave, there was no wind.
25:10
[SPEAKER_02]: because the waves were so big that the whole boat was sheltered by this wall of oncoming water and there was no wind.
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So the boat would just kind of just flop around and then the wave would kind of, it would start moving up the face of the wave, the top of the wave would break.
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as there was no sale up on the boat at all, that as soon as the top of the mask got above the top of the wave, because it's hurricane-false winds, the boat was just blown over sideways and then would skid masked first down the breaking wave.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so me and the other person on board, the biggest risk there was actually that we would either be washed over the side
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: break a limb through trying to stay on deck.
26:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It was crazy to stay on deck so we just kind of tied off the wheel and went down below and the boat was rolled upside down while I was down below and I was thrown onto the roof of the boat.
26:19
[SPEAKER_02]: and then everything in every cupboard flew out, they were glass jars smashing, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a raceboat so it was full of just normal tools everywhere.
26:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was not something I'd want to repeat.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds terrifying, so I assumed the boat self-righted.
26:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, yes, so it does depend a bit on the boats in this case, then yes, the boat did come up.
26:46
[SPEAKER_02]: What normally happens in those cases is that the mast breaks, and then because the key, you've got a big heavy key on the bottom of the boat, the boat will flip back up right again.
26:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And in that case, the mast didn't break, actually, and the boat was flipped up right, but it was, it was pretty much destroyed by the water.
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That's unbelievable.
27:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you fear for your life, did you think this time we may not get out?
27:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know why I didn't?
27:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I had taken the time.
27:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of one of the first really big trips I'd ever done in command of a vessel and I'd really taken the time to understand the important characteristics.
27:35
[SPEAKER_02]: for a vessel that is going out into the open ocean.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So kind of, you know, you said you were in a boat that was rated for five meter waves.
27:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I made sure, you know, the boat I was in wasn't ever rated for 13 meter waves, but I did kind of make sure that I understood.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The basic design principles for what happens to a boat if it gets into big waves.
28:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was really sure that this was a strong, well-built boat.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: That would be, you know, even if the mass boat would be a safe place to be, to ride through a storm.
28:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I was very frightened at the time and I didn't know
28:20
[SPEAKER_02]: what would happen, but I never feared for my life.
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: How long were you stuck in that storm?
28:28
[SPEAKER_02]: The storm was about 36 hours.
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Talking about exhaustion, 36 hours.
28:37
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like when finally everything started to subside?
28:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And you said, huh, we can sail again.
28:48
[SPEAKER_02]: you're still in the middle of the ocean.
28:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess it was just a lot of serving of the damage and then kind of we'd lost power as well because there was a lot of water down below.
29:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, and it didn't just go to flat calm afterwards, kind of it dropped off from hurricane force to gale force.
29:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's an interesting time where you kind of have to decide whether you're brave enough to go outside again.
29:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, obviously you lose all of your, all the instruments that were telling you how strong the wind is, kind of all of that, you lose all of that.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And so then you have to gauge kind of,
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: relatively what the conditions are and and that's a bit, that's a bit strange afterwards to kind of aftermath of a big sea state and stuff like that and then really it was just a question of kind of falling back because so much is damaged and you lose so much of the kind of electrical
29:56
[SPEAKER_02]: help that you have on board, so you have to fall back on the basic team and ship of, okay, well I need to work out where I am, I need to work out where I'm going to go and how I'm going to get there safely.
30:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think in those moments you do put aside any emotion and turn to a very practical self that is your survival self, if you like, and those are the skills that are going
30:26
[SPEAKER_02]: out out of the situation you're in and kind of move on to, to better times.
30:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, so what was one of the first things you did?
30:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to speak beyond my knowledge here, okay, did you put out a little bit of like a storm jib or a sea anchor or what were some of the first things you needed to do to say, okay, we can steer this thing again.
30:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so it was actually just, um, so the altar pilot was broken.
30:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was kind of back to hand steering.
30:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so then it was just a really, a really good internal, an external check of the steering system to make sure that it works and it hadn't been damaged at all.
31:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's just a kind of getting in there with a head torch and calling down into the locker space and checking all the
31:18
[SPEAKER_02]: and you know, very mechanical thing.
31:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it was just kind of putting up a storm jib.
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, literally just sailing with a storm jib and making way gently to the shore.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That story just amazes me, you know, bit there been a few times in my life where I wasn't sure I was going to make it.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure that if had I been in your situation, I would not have been nearly as confident as you were.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I had the idea of saying, wow, we got away with that one.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I would have been and did it scare you enough to make you think, huh, is it a good idea to solo around the world?
32:01
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
32:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they make you take part?
32:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's all no.
32:05
[SPEAKER_02]: No, the person who was with me actually said they didn't ever want to go sailing again.
32:10
[SPEAKER_02]: No, they did.
32:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, I guess, kind of by then, I'd already sailed 120,000 miles, and I think I just looked at it quite philosophically, because I never had an experience like that before,
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you go around enough times.
32:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You're gonna end up in a situation and I think it was probably my turn.
32:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, it didn't, didn't put me off.
32:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, in your book, my element, you discuss being dismasted in a race.
32:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it sounds like things did happen again later on.
32:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What is that story?
33:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have taken the start line of the Von Zeiglow single-handed round the world race twice.
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: First time it's in 2020 and I've finished the race.
33:12
[SPEAKER_02]: The second time was in 2024.
33:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And my last broke exactly halfway round the world.
33:23
[SPEAKER_02]: On day 35 of the race, I was halfway between Australia
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And the mast, which is a 30 meter high carbon tube, it's huge, it's elliptical in shape.
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's section of it is nearly a meter long, it's about 700 millimeters long.
33:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And of centimeters rather.
33:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was just in the morning.
34:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I was waiting to do a cell change.
34:04
[SPEAKER_02]: There was nothing extreme or incredible happening and the boats are flying boats.
34:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So when it gained speed, it lifts out of the water.
34:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it crash lands, it's quite aggressive and it took off and landed.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it landed, the mast shattered into two pieces and fell over the side.
34:29
[SPEAKER_02]: devastating.
34:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this race is every four years.
34:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I had been working towards it four four years.
34:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Me, my team, my sponsors.
34:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we'd put four years of training, development, preparation into this race and I was kind of
34:55
[SPEAKER_02]: all guns blazing for a top 10 finish and um yeah just to watch that mask come down which takes about two seconds um it was just a genuinely terrible thing and devastating just because of the loss of so much you know I've been working my whole with
35:23
[SPEAKER_02]: it was the greatest race of my career and to lose it like that, you know, you've got all of that emotion which is your grief-stricken, I mean it is grief-stricken.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you are 800 miles
35:51
[SPEAKER_02]: No mask or there is a mask, but the mask is now in the water, basically trying to bash a hole inside of the boat.
36:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, kind of again, it's a point where you pack up the emotion, put it to one side.
36:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And job number one is to make sure that the situation doesn't get any worse.
36:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had to make sure that the mass didn't punch a hole in the side of the boat.
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So cut everything free.
36:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And you are, I mean, you're cutting free.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's awful.
36:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, everything that I cut off that boat.
36:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Me and my team and
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: worked so hard to put it there.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I needed to try and salvage as much as I could say that I could build myself a makeshift mast.
36:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So I could self rescue back to Australia because there is no one there.
36:59
[SPEAKER_02]: there's no one between Australia and Antarctica and no one's going to come and get here.
37:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So so I had to build and you master out of the wreckage and then sail myself back to Australia.
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, what a story.
37:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is all in your book.
37:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, actually, no, that's not in my book.
37:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I'm okay.
37:21
[SPEAKER_02]: No, my book is, it, my book is about the first one day.
37:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So my book was actually written just before I settled on the second one.
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was about the first one day.
37:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So in the book, I changed a rudder in the Southern Ocean.
37:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I climbed to the top of the mast, one it's sailing, but I don't dismasked.
37:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
37:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we need another book that I think, Bip, I want to hear the details of that story.
37:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you sort out besides just the forces involved?
37:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you sort out any cause for the mast breaking?
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, was it a problem with the sheets?
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it a problem with a carbon fiber?
38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Just too many too much wind?
38:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We think it was a problem with the carbon fiber in the mast.
38:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So, kind of as I mentioned, there are sensors all over the boat.
38:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, I have a really good black box record of the boat speed, the wind speed, the loads that were in the mast.
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You, we've got kind of all of the data around
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of the environmental data and the data from on the boat and there was nothing.
38:36
[SPEAKER_02]: that was wrong at the time the marks broke and so kind of we can only assume that because the two weeks previous had been very, very rough conditions and so the boat was slamming a lot because it was taking off and landing and taking off and landing and we can only really assume that potentially the marks gained some sort of fracture during those two weeks.
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: and the fracture had just been growing, and that was just the point at which it reached failure.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But because I wasn't able to save the mast, because it was jabbing a hole in the boat, and I wouldn't have been able to pull a 30 meter mast and everything with it onto the boat anyway.
39:21
[SPEAKER_02]: We're never going to be able to see the mast and no, but there's no clues from the day to at all.
39:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So you had to rig a temporary mast and sail out of there.
39:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about that.
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds, it sounds like you megivered it.
39:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so yeah, I had, it was something that I had mentally rehearse.
39:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd never actually physically had a go at building a jury week or them.
39:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd never had a go at building one before, but I had thought about it because dismasting is not an infrequent thing to happen in the class of both that I raised.
40:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I had thought how would I do this?
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was able to rescue one of my deck spreaders and I used that as the mast.
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I attached ropes around the top of it and then there was kind of like a ball on the bottom.
40:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew that was going to be super slippery on the deck.
40:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got a neoprene.
40:32
[SPEAKER_02]: scuba balaclava from my diving kit and I wrapped that around this shiny ball to make it a bit more sticky onto the deck and then I was able to anchor the bottom of that onto the deck and then ratchet strap it in place and kind of one of the hard bits was actually getting the
41:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, kind of all the ropes go back to the cockpit, so between where the the makeshift mast was itself and where the ropes to manage it were was a space of about 20 feet that I was having to run up and down to try and get this thing in the air and there was quite a lot of trial and error, so
41:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of tighten the ropes up as tight as I could over tighten them using the big pair on the winches and then I would run forwards and just kind of throw the mast up in the air and if I tighten the ropes enough then it kind of stayed maybe.
41:44
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of two inches higher up than it had before and then I go back to the rope set, go 20 feet away, throw it up in the air.
41:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was quite a lot of trial and error on that, but I think the thing that surprised me was it only took me about three hours to build this rig after I
42:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was devastated, you know, I was so, so cut apart by the race having ended like that.
42:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But in the moment it took me to build this mast, I was almost kind of content.
42:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd, because I'd just put the emotion of not finishing the race.
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: so tightly into this little box that I wasn't going to open until I knew I was safe.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of almost caught myself being happy in my work building this vast.
42:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, yes, I guess there's a pride in being able to take control of the situation, you know.
42:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay, something really bad has happened, but I've still got this.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still okay.
43:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But then as soon as I had got them asked up in the air and I'd converted my storm sail to go on the mast.
43:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And the boat was actually then sailing really slowly, it was sailing about three miles an hour towards Australia.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was safe, you know, I was 100% safe.
43:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I had everything I needed.
43:24
[SPEAKER_02]: The boat was safe, I had power, I had water, I had food, I was going in the right direction.
43:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was then that, you know, I had 24 hours of just absolute darkness.
43:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, I just sat inside my boat in the dark and cried and cried and cried.
43:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't move my body hurt, my head hurt.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was, you know, that was probably the worst bit of it.
44:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But after 24 hours, I think I just realise, OK, well, it's going to take me two weeks to get to Australia, and I cannot stay down here for two weeks.
44:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't be like this for two weeks.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I decided, I would do something every day to make my situation better
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to make the boat a bit faster to kind of optimise the interior of the boat to change the algorithm on my audit pilot to steer us low boats over fast boat.
44:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I started making these little videos and I call the videos the slow boat to Melbourne.
44:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I made myself accountable and basically kind of went
45:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to show you what happens after this, you know, I'm going to share this with you and I am going to do something every day to make my situation better.
45:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I started cutting up sales and making a two-tail rig.
45:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I changed the weight distribution on the boats.
45:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I changed the, I changed the sheeting angles on some of the sales.
45:32
[SPEAKER_02]: and actually kind of it was such great therapy and got quite a cult following.
45:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You can still see the one on YouTube, they're called the Slow Votes of Alvin and I mean people came to those videos having not watched the race that came, watched, we're sailing this and I ended up
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, arriving in Samelben, I'd achieved my previous top speed in the race, had been 39.6 knots.
46:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And coming into Melbourne, I achieved a top speed of like, I think it was at 7.9 knots.
46:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was as happy doing 7.9 knots, as like, had been doing 39.6.
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But then the best thing about it, and I think the real
46:24
[SPEAKER_02]: gift of my dismasting was my arrival into Melbourne because the sailing community in Melbourne had heard that
46:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I was coming in there and they just decided they were going to look after me and so they organised a birth, they organised my customs clearance, a group of local sailors came out in a motorboat and met me outside the port Phillip Heads
46:55
[SPEAKER_02]: and then escorted me in.
46:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So they stayed by the boat overnight so I could sleep and I slept and then in the morning they showed me the way into the harbour and as I came across the harbour there were boats coming from everywhere they were had signs that they were holding up welcoming me and when I got into the dock in Melbourne there was a crowd of hundreds of people there
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, from the moment I got within 50 miles of Melbourne, all the people in Melbourne just opened their arms out to me and looked after me and made me feel so welcome.
47:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It was unbelievable.
47:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Really unbelievable.
47:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a beautiful story.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think we humans are all right.
47:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We know we can be really great people.
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when people step up.
47:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It really was and it was the most devastating thing to happen and I will never get over the feeling of loss from that race.
48:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
48:18
[SPEAKER_02]: the most incredible human beings and, and I, you know, I, I feel lucky.
48:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
48:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have asked this.
48:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have asked this sooner, but will you describe what the boat was?
48:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I, was it a hydrophil?
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a foiling boat that it has, um, so it's 80 meters long, last is 30 meters high.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The kill is four and a half meters deep.
48:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it has these big,
48:48
[SPEAKER_02]: curved wings, effectively sticking out of the side of the boat.
48:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And they lift the boat clean out of the water.
48:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And the wings just work exactly like a plain wing, but three waters.
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So as soon as you're going at certain speeds.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: the shape of the wings lift the boat clean out of the water, and it will fly, um, well, I mean, if you get it wrong, it will fly kind of about three, four meters above the surface of the water.
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea is, you know, it's only flying about two meters above.
49:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
49:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's no stability is the problem.
49:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So it.
49:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
49:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It flies, obviously, you're not on a, you see all the kind of America's cut and sell GP boats and they're flying on dead flat water, but we're in the middle of the ocean in waves.
49:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't have that, we don't have that stability that they do.
49:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So it kind of almost paupuses in a way, so it flies and then lands and flies and lands.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be quite a rough ride.
49:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You get a lot of bruises, you have to wear a hat.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Goodness.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: that's amazing.
49:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the subtitle on your book, at least the one that I found, says life lessons from the world's toughest solo ocean race.
50:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you have shared a lot of those lessons already, but can you highlight some of the things that you learned by doing this and other races like this?
50:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I guess my reason for writing the book was because
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: you know lots of people ask me questions that are not sailing related so they ask me how do you manage with loneliness you know how do you stay motivated what you do when you're afraid and so kind of in the book I used stories of my solar ocean racing to answer those
50:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, how do you manage when you're afraid?
50:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I'm afraid, I take the time to address my fear.
51:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of say to myself, okay, what is it you're afraid of?
51:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And why are you afraid of it?
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And even to the point of writing it down, I will list all the reasons, say, for example, climbing the mast on my own.
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll list all the reasons why I'm scared of climbing the mast on my own.
51:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I take each of those points and I mitigate against it, mitigate against it.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So I say, okay, well, you know, you're frightened you're going to fall, but you are using the best kit that has been tested.
51:33
[SPEAKER_02]: You're frightened you're not strong enough, but you've done this before.
51:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You're frightened the autopilot will fail, but the autopilot's been going for two months and it hasn't failed yet.
51:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Why would it fail just for the next 10 minutes?
51:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I answer all of these points and I say to myself, if I get to a point, I can't answer
51:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the answer.
51:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's a justified fear and I should change what I'm doing or kind of manage what I'm doing.
51:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And that technique kind of works for any type of fear really.
52:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that kind of rationally addressing it.
52:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not pretending it doesn't exist.
52:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's rationally addressing it.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're not equipped to mitigate against that fear, then normally there's something that you can do either on the land, in training, in preparation,
52:21
[SPEAKER_02]: in equipment that is going to help you address a fear.
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that.
52:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking in terms of entrepreneurial ventures, I don't know why I went there, but I think many people avoid taking the necessary risks for the big win because of fear.
52:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the steps, you know, list everything, mitigate them, determine how you're going to, you know, what you're going to do if these eventualities happen, and that that builds the confidence to do what needs to be done.
52:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it does, yeah, yeah, and, and you know, not everything goes right, it doesn't.
53:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but, but, you know, so long as you sort of wish you thought things through and a lot of solo sailing is about imagining what is going to go wrong.
53:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're constantly one of the things I do is like, I, both in kind of my, in my business world and in kind
53:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm constantly saying, well, what's the worst case scenario here?
53:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And can I manage it?
53:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I live with it?
53:33
[SPEAKER_02]: When I started my first on-day glow campaign, I didn't have a sponsor.
53:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I basically took out 25,000 pound loan to start a million pound racing campaign.
53:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just decided, OK, well, I'm going to just do something every day to make this happen.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and every day I will try and inch closer to my goal, and what's the worst case that's gonna happen?
54:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can't do the race, and I don't make it, and I end up with a lot of debt.
54:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I just kind of thought, I can cope with that.
54:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I can deal with that.
54:15
[SPEAKER_02]: What the flip side is, can you deal with not trying, can you deal with, going through your
54:26
[SPEAKER_02]: and not doing it.
54:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's normally that flip side that is the thing that gives me the nudge towards things I'm frightened of.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
54:39
[SPEAKER_00]: More afraid of not trying to do the thing, than trying to do the thing and failing.
54:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe it's not fear is a wrong way look at it, but the consequences, you know, it's like, who do I want to be the person who tried?
54:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Or the person who didn't,
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly it and that's kind of another point that I bring out in the book.
54:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I think for a long time, it's very fixated on the Vonnegleib race and it's professional York race, it needs sponsors, you need the right level of funding and the right level of experience to enter it.
55:23
[SPEAKER_02]: that the Vonneglo was the thing, you know, I was aiming towards the Vonneglo.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: That was what I wanted to do.
55:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But my biggest blocker was that I could not work out how on earth I was ever going to raise the funds or find a sponsor that would enable me to do the race.
55:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I constantly thought, what is it?
55:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is it that I want to do the Vonneglo?
55:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's because I want to be a good enough sailor to succeed in the Vondeglo, and then it just suddenly dawned on me.
56:01
[SPEAKER_02]: This isn't about what I want to do.
56:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about who I want to be, and so
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I broke down who have on-day globe sailor is, what skills do they need, what experience do they need?
56:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went out and I found those things in more achievable ways.
56:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I built myself into the kind of sailor that could do the on-day globe.
56:28
[SPEAKER_02]: because, you know, that eventually did take me to two von der Globraces, which is amazing.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think I realized that I was so blocked by thinking I had to have this gold-plated version of what I wanted instead of understanding who that person should be or could be and trying to make myself into that person, instead of just doing a race.
56:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
57:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the difference between doing a thing and being a thing.
57:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
57:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a huge difference.
57:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
57:07
[SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly it.
57:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not what you want to do.
57:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It's who you want to be.
57:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
57:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes we need that level of commitment.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to identify with something that completely to make it work.
57:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's fascinating.
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
57:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to spend some time pondering that one, Pip, because I think that is powerful, so powerful.
57:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, really cool stuff.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You have an upcoming TV series?
57:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So they have made a docu-series of the Vondaglowe Brace.
57:43
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been made by Red Bull Studios, and it features 16s, five of them are French teams, and one of them's me.
57:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's still in production, but it will be coming out.
58:07
[SPEAKER_02]: November or December this year probably on a big streaming service I'm guessing it's going to be someone like Netflix maybe but it kind of if anybody keeps an eye out for that it's called solo around the world and that should be kind of on TV's later on this year.
58:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So low around the world I can't wait that will be a
58:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're involved with the ocean youth trust.
58:37
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the ocean youth trust?
58:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So the ocean youth trust is a charity in the UK that offers sailing opportunities to young people from all backgrounds.
58:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to have the big things for me is that I
58:57
[SPEAKER_02]: believe that sailing is a sport.
58:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very diverse sport in terms of the disciplines it can offer because there are so many different kinds of sailing you can do.
59:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can do little dinghy sailing on your rest of while.
59:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do crazy sailing like me, you can go on tall ships, kind of expedition vessels.
59:19
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a different kind of sailing for everyone.
59:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very adaptable.
59:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be adapted to all sorts of physical abilities.
59:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But certainly in the UK, sailing isn't as available to as many socio-economic groups as I believe it should be.
59:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And the ocean use trust offers sailing experiences for a diverse group of young people.
59:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just teaches them
59:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The joys of being on the water, it takes them out into the English channel, sometimes kind of over to France or the channel islands, it teaches them about the weather, about sailing, about teamwork, about cooking on board, about living on board, and I just think it gives incredible
1:00:24
[SPEAKER_00]: do I want to do it?
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds fantastic.
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So much fun.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, so that's the ocean youth trust.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The TV series that's coming out toward the end of the year is solo around the world.
1:00:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Your book is my element, and it doesn't have the dismasting, but it does have the Vande Globrace and
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, we've covered a lot, but I have the feeling that we have only barely scratched the surface here, but thank you so much for your time and sharing with us.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm sure our listeners did too.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, it's been a great conversation.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely, and you know, I always say it, get out there and have some fun.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, does this sound like fun to me?
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I would like to learn more and maybe someday I could call myself a sailor.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like so much fun, Bip.
1:01:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks again and everyone do get out there and have some fun.