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Whatever happened to Whitbread sailing yacht Maiden?

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Tracy Edwards MBE changed the course of sailing history with her all-female Whitbread race crew - a story of determination that was immortalised in the 2018 documentary film Maiden . Now she’s using her famous yacht to alter the destinies of girls across the world...

Checking her email one summer’s day in 2014, pioneering yachtswoman-turned-philanthropist Tracy Edwards saw a message from a sender she didn’t recognise. Out of curiosity she opened it, and in doing so altered the course not only of her own life, but potentially the lives of millions of girls the world over.

The email came from a marina in Mahé, an island in the Seychelles. Over a glass of rosé at the Royal Ocean Racing Club in London, Edwards shares the message with me: “It said, ‘Did you know your beautiful boat is sitting here rotting? If someone doesn’t come and do something about her, we’re going to take her out and sink her.’ It was heartbreaking.”

The boat was Maiden , a 17.7-metre aluminium ocean racing yacht designed by Bruce Farr in 1979. Edwards had bought it second hand to contest the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race (later the Volvo; now the Ocean Race). At 26, she skippered the first all-female crew to take on the challenge and, against the expectations of sceptics, won two of the race’s six legs, including the perilous Uruguay-to-Fremantle leg across the Southern Ocean. At the end of the race, after 167 days and 33,000 nautical miles Maiden finished second in class overall.

By the time that email came through in 2014, the boat wasn’t hers anymore; she’d sold it in 1990. And the marina was demanding €75,000 (£63,000). “It wasn’t what she was worth,” Edwards explains, “it was what they were owed. Her owner had skipped and just left her. She was in such a bad state, she wasn’t even worth scrap.”

Edwards didn’t have the money to spare. But – as someone for whom there is no such word as can’t – she was unfazed. She contacted Maiden’s original crew members, and between them they raised the money through crowdfunding. Two months later she was on a flight to Mahé, expecting to sail Maiden home. “I thought, ‘She can’t be that bad,’” she says. “But she was. We’d have died if we’d sailed her a mile.”

This time Edwards was in a quandary. But, as has happened more than once in her extraordinary life, the planets were aligning in her favour. She was booked to speak at a conference of the Association of Independent Travel Operators at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan – motivational speaking is one of many strings to her bow – an event that garnered much more press attention than one might have expected because of the story of the decaying boat. Word reached Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, Maiden’s original sponsor, who called her. “She said: ‘My brother sent me a press release saying you’ve rescued Maiden . What can I do to help?’”

The story of how Tracy Edwards, now 57, became a competitive sailor is the subject of two books and the recent feature film, Maiden , a documentary that grossed $3.5 million (£2.7m) in the US in the first three months of its release. But it’s a tale worth retelling nonetheless.

As a child, Edwards had dreamed of becoming a ballerina like her mother, who had danced with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, attending the performing arts school ArtsEd.

But although she retains the bearing and physique of a dancer – slight and slender, yet forged, one suspects, from steel and springs – Edwards quit at 12, when her widowed mother remarried. The family moved to Wales, and a volatile relationship with her stepfather turned her into a rebel. She was suspended from school 26 times and eventually expelled. Encouraged to travel by her mother, she went to Greece, where, still a teenager, she was working in a bar in Piraeus when the skipper of a motor yacht asked her if she would consider filling in as stewardess on charters. She didn’t hesitate. “I left that night and was on the boat the next day.”

Until then she’d had, she says, “zero” experience with boats, bar a short trip with her father from Hayling Island, on the south coast of England, to the nearby Isle of Wight when she was eight. She was seasick, and “vowed never to set foot on [a boat] again”. But this was a job, and she had a living to earn. And in any case, the yacht in question – Kovalam (now Lady May of Glandore ) – was an alluring prospect: a 31.5-metre motor yacht designed in 1929 by Philip & Son that had been used in the 1982 film of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun .

“She was beautiful,” recalls Edwards, who despite occasional seasickness soon found she loved the life aquatic. Autumn approached. “We ended up in Palma, and someone asked if I was doing the season in the Caribbean. So, I did my first transatlantic, this time on a sailing boat, and learned how to sail. On my second transatlantic I learned how to navigate.”

Over time – she reckons she covered about 250,000 nautical miles working on charter boats – she made the transition from stewardess to deckhand to first mate, thanks to a succession of “extraordinary” skippers. “They were such mentors. Every single one saw something in me and took time to change my life.”

The luckiest of her breaks came in 1985 off the coast of Massachusetts in Martha’s Vineyard, on a 31.6-metre ketch called Excalibur that was hired for a day charter by King Hussein of Jordan and his wife, Queen Noor. Edwards served them lunch, and the king engaged her in conversation, continuing to chat to her as she washed up afterwards.

“We shared the same interests,” she says. “He was a pilot, and I’d learned to navigate, and we both loved navigation. I love radios; he was a ham radio operator. And we both loved taking machinery apart. He asked me what I was going to do next, and I said what I really wanted was to do the 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World Race and that I’d tried [to sign on] a boat, but they didn’t want a girl. And he said: ‘You don’t strike me as someone who takes no for an answer. If you want to do this, you have to fight for it. You have to go back and get on that boat.’ And I realised then that was what I had to do.”

This time she was taken on as a cook. The 24-metre yacht, which like Maiden had been designed by Farr , was called Atlantic Privateer . Its skipper warned her at her interview that, in his opinion, “Girls [were] for shagging when we get into port.” But Edwards knew she could take care of herself, even though she was the only woman on the 18-strong crew (there were only four female crew, out of 230, in the entire race). Atlantic Privateer didn’t finish. But the experience galvanised her determination to try again – as skipper of her own all-female crew.

She placed an ad in Yachts & Yachting that read: “Wanted: girl sailors,” recruiting 11 women, all of whom were more experienced than she was. King Hussein, who had kept in touch, told her: “Leadership is not about being the best, it’s about bringing out the best in others.”

Edwards recalls: “He said, ‘You have to believe in people, trust people. If you truly love human beings and understand them, that’s the way to lead. With faith, honour and courage, anything is possible.’ That was his motto. I wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it above my desk, and it went around the world with me stuck above the nav station.”

She needed a boat. A new one was beyond her, financially, but eventually she found Maiden , then called Prestige , and mortgaged her home to pay for it. Thanks to King Hussein, Royal Jordanian Airlines became the major sponsor. Three decades on and now newly restored, Maiden’s livery retains its grey and white as a gesture of gratitude to her mentor, who died in 1999. Which brings the story to King Hussein’s fourth daughter, Princess Haya’s, offer to help.

“You’ve rescued Dad’s boat,” she’d told Edwards when she heard about Maiden in Mahé, and asked how she could help. “So I said: ‘We need a lot of money to restore her.’ And she replied: ‘Well, I can take care of that. But what are you going to do with her?’.”

At that stage Edwards wasn’t certain. “I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with her. She’d changed my life, and I thought maybe she could change others’ too.” Princess Haya flew to London; the two met, and within two hours they came up with a plan. They would use Maiden to raise funds for a grant-making charity, the Maiden Factor Foundation, to support initiatives that help educate girls around the world.

Edwards, having become an ambassador for the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children soon after her 1990 Whitbread achievement, has a history of supporting good causes. A patron of six projects, it made sense to start with those. It isn’t only culture and poverty that prevents girls from going to school, she explains, it can be something as simple as a lack of segregated toilets that deters them, hence the work of Fields of Life, a development organisation in East Africa, and now a beneficiary of the Maiden Factor Foundation. And Just a Drop builds wells in developing countries so that women and girls can spend time studying instead of spending hours fetching water for their villages.

Then there’s the literacy charity Room to Read, specifically working with girls in refugee camps in the Middle East, and Positive Negatives, which produces literary comics, animations and podcasts about contemporary social and humanitarian issues aimed at young girls. Last, but not least, the Girls’ Network mentors young women at risk of leaving school before their exams.

“We have a big problem in the West with girls dropping out at 15,” Edwards says, “and missing those really important years, which is something I’m very aware of.” She herself gave up on school at 15, but eventually earned a degree in psychology. “That really decreases their life choices. The Girls’ Network puts women who’ve achieved something in business, or in life, into schools to work with groups of girls, and it’s phenomenally successful in motivating them.”

Just as Maiden is proving to be. Towards the end of 2018, the yacht was ready to go to sea again, setting sail on what will be a three-year, round-the-world voyage, crewed entirely by women, aiming to raise both funds and awareness. She headed first for Malta, then Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, where Steinlager 2 , her great rival and overall winner of the 1989-90 Whitbread Race greeted her.

From there she sailed across the Pacific to Hawaii and then to Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles – “All wealthy yachting centres where we know we can raise lots of money,” Edwards notes. The day we meet, the boat has just left San Diego and is heading, via the Panama Canal, for Antigua in the Caribbean. There had been a plan to go south along the Pacific Coast, but Hurricane Kika held the crew in port in Los Angeles for 10 days. "Thanks to climate change, hurricane season is so unpredictable now,” Edwards says.

The yacht has a practical role to play, too. “We have hundreds of schoolgirls come aboard,” Edwards says, “which is much scarier than the Southern Ocean, I can tell you. And we’ve got this amazing female crew who also give talks in schools. We can’t keep up with the number of schools that want us. Teachers love it.”

Because, she stresses, it’s not just about telling girls there’s nothing they can’t do. It’s equally about showing them. And Maiden is proof of where single-minded determination can get you. “She’s not an idea or a motto,” says Edwards, or a glib instruction to follow your dreams. “She’s an absolute, actual physical thing.”

And so she is: a gloriously restored and refitted manifestation of just what a young woman can achieve – and go on achieving – if she really puts her mind to it. themaidenfactor.org

First published in BOAT International's Life Under Sail in April 2020. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.

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Anne Diamond interviews internationally renowned yachtswoman Tracy Edwards, MBE

Join us for another opportunity to watch British journalist Anne Diamond’s engaging conversation with yachtswoman, author and activist Tracy Edwards, MBE. Tracy gained international fame in 1990 as the skipper of the first all-female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round the World Race and became the first woman to be awarded the Yachtsman of the Year trophy. Discover her inspiring story as a pioneer in the field of yachting and learn about her favorite charities.

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Tracy Edwards

Yachtswoman, author and activist Tracy Edwards, MBE, gained international fame in 1990 as the skipper of the first all-female crew to compete in the world’s toughest yacht race, the 33,000-mile Whitbread Round the World Race (now known as The Ocean Race). Her yacht, Maiden, won two legs of the competition and came in second overall in her class. For this feat, Tracy was awarded an MBE and became the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year trophy.

In 2014, when Maiden was discovered in the Seychelles in a state of disrepair, Tracy raised funds to bring Maiden back home to the UK. And after she was restored to her former glory, the iconic yacht embarked on a three-year world tour in 2018 as a fundraising campaign for The Maiden Factor Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Tracy in an effort to promote the education of millions of girls all over the world.

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'Oil poured on my lawn, threatening calls: I was shocked by the hostility'

Sailing was never a part of my childhood. My Mum was a ballet dancer and, as I was growing up in Pangbourne, I wanted to follow in her footsteps. But my life changed when I was 10 with the death of my Dad from a heart attack. When my Mum remarried we moved to Wales and I began to get into trouble at school. At 15 I was expelled for smoking and drinking on a school trip. My Mum decided I was mixing with the wrong people and said I should go back-packing around Europe to escape. It was the best thing I could have done. I was working in a bar in the Greek port of Piraeus when one day the skipper of a motor yacht came in saying he needed a stewardess. The next morning I packed my bags and that was the start of my life in sailing.

Despite suffering from seasickness, I loved being on the ocean. I was meeting people who believed in me. Having never succeeded at anything before, their encouragement spurred me on. Starting as a stewardess, I worked my way up to being a deck hand and, eventually, a first mate. At the time I had a boyfriend who had competed in the Whitbread Round the World yacht race; I was inspired to do the same. I joined the crew of the Atlantic Pride, racing in the 1985-86 Whitbread with 17 guys and me as the cook. It was a long nine months, but I found a willpower within that I didn't know existed. It surprised my Mum even more.

I realised that of the 200 crew members in the race, only five were women. So I decided to put together an all-female crew for the 1989 race. I was naive and didn't realise the battle I'd have. I'd experienced some mild ribbing about being a woman in sailing, but was shocked by the vindictiveness of certain people. There were articles saying it would be my fault when these women killed themselves in the race. I even received threatening phone calls and had oil poured on my lawn one night. But the project became a magnet for people who had a point to prove.

It was with this venture that I first began to suffer financial difficulties. I had to remortgage my house to buy the boat, Maiden, then mortgaged the boat to pay for the refit. In those days that was how sailing projects were financed. The race itself was incredible. We proved a lot of people wrong, winning two legs and finishing second in our class. I'll never forget sailing into Southampton with 50,000 people chanting the boat's name.

What drives any sports person is the belief that you can do better the next time. After the initial euphoria we were annoyed we hadn't won. Our next project was to be even bigger, the 1998 Jules Verne trophy, a prize for the fastest circumnavigation of the world with no stopping and no outside assistance, again with an all-female crew. It was going fantastically until we came across horrifying weather off the coast of Chile. It broke our mast. It took us 16 days to reach the shore, but I'll always be proud that we didn't need rescuing. It was the end of my sailing career. I became pregnant soon after and decided I wanted to manage sailing projects instead.

Within seven years, I would lose everything. My vision was to create a race circuit for big multi-hull boats. It was suggested that I go to Qatar, which was trying to set itself up as a global sports capital. In 2003, I signed a £6m sponsorship deal with Qatar Sports International, one of the crown prince's companies, and also managed to get HSBC involved. It was to be the first part of a £38m sailing programme, paying boats to enter races, creating big regattas with big prize funds and having our own governing body. I had suppliers, teams and wages to pay, so I borrowed £8m from the bank on the strength of the agreement I believed I had with the Qataris and used my house and boat as collateral for the other £2m. The event in 2005, the Oryx Quest, was a great success, but I'd paid for everything with the bank loan and QSI wouldn't give me the money they had promised. They disputed whether they owed me any money, or whether there was a contract. Then, before I had the chance to sue, they dissolved the company. I was in trouble. In September 2005, on my 43rd birthday, I was declared bankrupt.

After 25 years in the sport I was left with nothing. My confidence was battered. You realise who your friends are at times like that. The crown prince has paid the bank so I now have a smaller debt, but it is still a debt. I had to pick myself up because I'm a single mum with a daughter to look after. I now do motivational talks, which I love. The experience has made me realise that it's how you deal with failure that dictates who you are.

Tracy Edwards was born on 5 September 1962 and grew up in Berkshire and Wales. In 1985 she became the first woman to take part in the Whitbread Round the World Race. In the 1989-90 Whitbread she skippered the first all-female crew to the best performance in the race by a British boat since 1977. She was awarded an MBE and became the first woman to be voted 'Yachtsman of the Year' by the Yachting Journalists' Association. In 1998 her crew were on course to break the record for a non-stop circumnavigation until the mast broke. After retiring from sailing following the birth in 1999 of her daughter, Mackenna, Edwards began organising sailing projects. Beset by financial problems, she was declared bankrupt in 2005. She is now a motivational speaker.

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How Tracy Edwards and the Sailing Crew of Maiden Made Nautical History

By Michael Schulman

“I fell into it” is the way Tracy Edwards explains how she got into sailing. Raised in Pangbourne, England, Edwards was expelled from high school when she was sixteen, in the late seventies, and went backpacking around Europe. She wound up working at a bar in Greece, where a customer asked her, “Want to work on my yacht?” She became a stewardess on his charter boat, and during a stop in Martha’s Vineyard she met King Hussein of Jordan, who told her, “With faith, honor, and courage, anything is possible.” “I wrote it down on a piece of paper,” Edwards recalled recently, “and it went around the world with me on my nav station.”

How Edwards ended up sailing the globe is the stuff of seagoing legend. Soon after meeting King Hussein, she joined the crew of Atlantic Privateer and sailed the 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World Race. She was one of four women in the entire race, out of two hundred and thirty crew members, and was there only because she had enlisted as a cook. “I didn’t like that at all,” Edwards, who, at fifty-seven, has the quiet authority and silver pixie cut of Judi Dench , recalled. “At the end of the race, I just thought, I want to navigate. That’s the thing I enjoy doing. So, if the world doesn’t exist as I want it to exist, then I need to change it.”

Edwards spent the next three years assembling the Whitbread’s first all-female team. Funding was hard to come by, so she refinanced her house and bought a used fifty-eight-foot aluminum yacht called Prestige, which she renamed Maiden. Desperate for sponsors, she turned to her old acquaintance King Hussein, who offered the support of Royal Jordanian Airlines. Few people expected the team even to finish the race. With Edwards as skipper and navigator, Maiden set sail from Southampton, England, on September 2, 1989, and returned nine months and thirty-three thousand nautical miles later, having won two of the race’s six legs, including its most treacherous: from Uruguay to Australia, through the freezing waters of the Antarctic. When the yacht came into Fremantle, Edwards recalled, “the collective jaws around the world just dropped.”

Edwards and nine of her former crewmates were at the Loeb Boathouse, in Central Park. The women, who represent six nationalities, were crowded around a pair of bar tables with gin-and-tonics. In a few hours, they were due west, at the Landmark Cinema, for the première of “ Maiden ,” a documentary by Alex Holmes, which chronicles their journey. The next day, they were headed to Long Island, where Dawn Riley, who was one of Maiden’s watch captains (and its sole American), now runs a training fleet in Oyster Bay. “Sailing and barbecue and gin and all our friends together,” Angela Heath (a sail trimmer, from Ireland) said. “It doesn’t get better than that.”

The women—a boisterous bunch—reminisced about why they had answered Maiden’s call. Sarah Davies (English, first reserve) was in the army at the time, and saw an ad in Yachts & Yachting . “It just said, ‘Wanted: Girl Sailors.’ I said, ‘That’s me!’ ” Mikaela von Koskull (Finnish, helm) was a radio officer on a cargo ship. Passing Cape Horn, “I thought, Bloody hell, I’m going to do Whitbread one day.” They recalled the flagrant sexism they faced in the press, including the time a Guardian writer called them “a tinful of tarts.” Edwards said, “When we came first in New Zealand, he wrote, ‘They’re not just a tinful of tarts. They’re a tinful of smart, fast tarts.’ Which we loved, until someone pointed out the word ‘tart’ is still in there.”

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They finished their drinks and walked to the Conservatory Water, the pond where kids steer model sailboats. A quick race? They picked out a pair of boats, and an employee brought them two remote controls, with levers for sails and rudders. The Maiden alumnae passed the remotes, hooting as they navigated around a triangle of basketball-size buoys. “I’ve stalled,” Davies said, twiddling her joystick. “Disaster!”

“You never get wind when you want it,” Edwards observed, fanning herself in the eighty-degree heat. “That’s rule No. 1 with sailing.”

“This is what the doldrums were like,” Heath said, referring to the windless waters around the equator. Another crew member added, “There, we took our clothes off. We can’t do that here.”

Edwards checked her watch. “O.K., I think we need to go. I’m making an executive decision. I’m now skipper again.” They headed back to their hotel to change, abandoning the race halfway, as their critics had expected them to do thirty years ago. In 2014, Edwards launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy back Maiden, which a subsequent owner had left to rot in the Seychelles. Princess Haya, King Hussein’s daughter, paid for the boat to be transported back to England and restored. Maiden is now on a three-year worldwide charity tour, with all-female crews. “She’s halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii,” Edwards said. “She’ll be in New York July next year.” ♦

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Interview with Tracy Edwards, Skipper of 1st All-Female Yacht Racing Crew

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Sailing Legend Tracy Edwards' Yacht Maiden Set For Swansong

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Thirty-three years after British round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and her all-female crew sailed into Southampton to a hero's welcome, her yacht Maiden is about to embark on a final race.

Record-breaking Edwards and her team defied expectations in 1990 to come second in the gruelling Whitbread race. They survived a tornado on the final leg and went the last five days without food.

Now, after being rescued from the scrapyard and painstakingly restored, Maiden is ready for one last stab at yachting glory.

"She's reaching the point now where she's had her day," Edwards told AFP at London's St Katharine Dock, where Maiden is moored.

The yacht, built in 1977, will be retired next year after she has competed in this year's Ocean Globe Race -- the Whitbread's successor -- which will start from Southampton on the southern English coast on September 10.

Once again Edwards, whose Whitbread crew was the first all-female team to take part, has put together a women-only line-up -- this time drawn from all corners of the globe.

The crew, skippered by the UK's Heather Thomas, includes yachtswomen from India and Antigua as well as an Afghan film-maker.

Since Maiden's restoration, Edwards has been sailing the boat around the world as part of her charity work to promote girl's education and empowerment.

The subject is close to Edwards' heart after her own experience of discrimination as a young yachtswoman in a male-dominated sport.

One skipper famously rejected her saying his crew wouldn't be the "only racing team in the world with a girl".

That, she says, made her more determined.

When glory came, the yachting world was astounded. Many had not even expecting her team to finish the first leg.

Edwards went on to become the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year trophy.

She hopes the 2023 crew will inspire girls and young women who might think sailing is not for "people like them".

The search for the team took her "far afield" sparked by a meeting with Whoopi Goldberg, patron of her girl's education charity The Maiden Factor.

"When we met her in New York she looked at me and said 'where are all the black girls in sailing?' And she was right," Edwards said.

Edwards' Maiden Factor works with charities and girls educational programmes to help those with no access to education.

Edwards is particularly preoccupied by the plight of women in Afghanistan since the return of the Taliban government two years ago.

"I feel angry... . Women are being cancelled. I just can't find the words," she said.

Since August 2021, girls have been barred from schools and universities and most UN and NGO jobs.

Afghan video journalist Najiba Noori, 28, who will accompany the crew, said she was honoured.

"My generation had some chances, some opportunities, it was not easy but we started fighting and we achieved," she said, adding that she was "really worried" for the next generation.

"Their future is dark, it's a tragedy," she said.

After the Ocean Globe race, Maiden will resume her "world tour", promoting girl's education for a last few months before retirement.

Her final itinerary will include Jordan.

Jordan's late King Hussein was Maiden's first sponsor after a chance meeting in the US when he gave Edwards his palace phone number and urged her "to give him a shout".

Since the king's death in 1999, his daughter Princess Haya bint Hussein has continued to offer support and help.

Hussein was a "great mentor" and encouraged Edwards to ignore critics who thought competitive sailing was too tough for women, she said.

"He was way ahead of his time. Girls in Jordan went to school, university, wore trousers, had jobs and sat in the government.

"He was visionary, an extraordinary man," she said.

Sailing Legend Tracy Edwards' Yacht Maiden Set For Swansong

Thirty-three years after British round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and her all-female crew sailed into Southampton to a hero's welcome, her yacht Maiden is about to embark on a final race.

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Yachting legend edwards’ ‘maiden’ set for final race.

• AFP, LONDON

Thirty-three years after British round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and her all-female crew sailed into Southampton to a hero’s welcome, her yacht Maiden is about to embark on a final race.

Record-breaking Edwards and her team defied expectations in 1990 to come second in the grueling Whitbread Round the World race. They survived a tornado on the final leg and went the last five days without food.

After being rescued from the scrapyard and painstakingly restored, Maiden is ready for one last stab at yachting glory.

The Madien yacht is moored in St Katharine Docks in London on Thursday.

“She’s reaching the point now where she’s had her day,” Edwards said at London’s St Katharine Dock, where Maiden is moored.

The yacht, built in 1977, is to be retired next year after she has competed in this year’s Ocean Globe Race — the Whitbread’s successor — which will start from Southampton on the southern English coast on Sept. 10.

Once again Edwards, whose Whitbread crew was the first all-female team to take part, has put together a women-only lineup — this time drawn from all corners of the globe.

From left, Junella King, Kate Ledgard, Vuyisile Jaca, Najiba Noori, Willow Bland and skipper Heather Thomas pose for a photograph on the yacht Maiden in St Katharine Docks in London on Thursday.

The crew, skippered by the UK’s Heather Thomas, includes yachtswomen from India and Antigua as well as an Afghan filmmaker.

Since Maiden’s restoration, Edwards has been sailing the boat around the world as part of her charity work to promote girl’s education and empowerment.

The subject is close to Edwards’ heart after her own experience of discrimination as a young yachtswoman in a male-dominated sport.

One skipper famously rejected her saying his crew would not be the “only racing team in the world with a girl.”

That made her more determined, she said.

When glory came, the yachting world was astounded. Many had not even expecting her team to finish the first leg.

Edwards went on to become the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year trophy.

She hopes this year’s crew will inspire girls and young women who might think sailing is not for “people like them.”

The search for the team took her “far afield” sparked by a meeting with Whoopi Goldberg, patron of her girl’s education charity The Maiden Factor.

“When we met her in New York she looked at me and said: ‘Where are all the black girls in sailing?’ And she was right,” Edwards said.

Edwards’ Maiden Factor works with charities and girls educational programs to help those with no access to education.

Edwards is particularly preoccupied by the plight of women in Afghanistan since the return of the Taliban government two years ago.

“I feel angry... Women are being canceled. I just can’t find the words,” she said.

Since August 2021, girls have been barred from schools and universities and most UN and non-governmental organization jobs.

Afghan video journalist Najiba Noori, 28, who is to accompany the crew, said she was honored.

“My generation had some chances, some opportunities, it was not easy, but we started fighting and we achieved,” she said, adding that she was “really worried” for the next generation.

“Their future is dark, it’s a tragedy,” she said.

After the Ocean Globe race, Maiden is to resume her “world tour,” promoting girl’s education for a last few months before retirement.

Her final itinerary includes Jordan.

Jordan’s late King Hussein was Maiden’s first sponsor after a chance meeting in the US when he gave Edwards his palace phone number and urged her “to give him a shout.”

Since the king’s death in 1999, his daughter Princess Haya bint Hussein has continued to offer support and help.

Hussein was a “great mentor” and encouraged Edwards to ignore critics who thought competitive sailing was too tough for women, she said.

“He was way ahead of his time. Girls in Jordan went to school, university, wore trousers, had jobs and sat in the government,” she said. “He was visionary, an extraordinary man.”

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Tracy Edwards’ Maiden to compete in the new retro Whitbread Round the World Race

• Katy Stickland
• October 17, 2019

Tracy Edwards has announced that her 58ft Bruce Farr-designed Maiden will race in the Ocean Globe Race, the retro Whitbread Round the World Race

Tracy Edwards made history in 1989 as the skipper of the first all female crew to sail around the world in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. Maiden won two legs and came second overall in her class. The best result for a British boat in the race since 1977.

Now Maiden could be racing the route again in the Ocean Globe Race (OGR), a retro Whitbread Round the World Race designed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first event in 1973.

Organised by Don McIntyre, who was behind the 2018 Golden Globe Race , the 30,000 mile event is scheduled to start in Europe on 10 September 2023 and will have four legs taking in the Southern Ocean and the three great capes.

Stopovers will include South Africa, Australia or New Zealand and South America, before finishing back in Europe in April 2024.

Maiden won two legs in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race

Skippers from France, Finland and the UK have already committed to take part in the event including Edwards.

She recently told organisers: ‘With so many yachts from previous Whitbread races being rescued and restored, as has Maiden of course, it seems only fitting that we should race them around the world again. COUNT US IN!’

Maiden is currently sailing around the world as part of work for the not-for-profit The Maiden Factor , promoting girls’ education and raising money to directly support a group of charities  already working in the field.

Tracy Edwards is currently focussed on The Maiden Factor, promoting girls’ education around the world, but will she be tempted to skipper in the race?. Credit: Tim Anderson

Finland’s Tapio Lehtinen , a finisher in the 2018 Golden Globe Race, has entered a Swan 55 in the Adventure Class for production yachts between 47 – 55.25ft.

He has just taken ownership of the Olin Stephens designed yawl Galiana , one of two Swan 55s now entered in the 2023 Ocean Globe Race , and will set out from Southampton UK bound for Finland at the weekend.

First launched in 1970, Galiana is the second of 16 yachts to be built by Nautor to this design, which Lehtinen describes  as ‘the classiest and most beautiful of the early Swans.’

Tapio Lehtinen was the last to finish the GGR. Credit: Christophe Favreau/PPL/GGR

British yachtsman Alan Macmillan shares that view. He has entered his cutter rigged Swan 55 Ariana and is about to embark on a round the world cruise in preparation for the 2023 OGR.

Lehtinen, who has also re-entered the 2022 Golden Globe Race, sailed in the 1981 Whitbread as watch leader aboard Skopbank of Finland , and is using his OGR programmer to ‘blood’ the next generation of Finnish ocean sailors now graduating through the youth racing classes by introducing them to the Southern Ocean and the global racing scene.

This he hopes will secure a continuation of the Finnish round the world sailing legacy, which dates back to the days of the Gustaf Erikson windjammers and the theme of the Ocean Globe clipper route.

Demand for places in the Sayula Class for prescribed yachts between 57.4 and 65.5ft is equally high with five owners earmarking Swan 65s – sisterships to Sayula II , the original 1973/4 Race winner.

One is French entrant Dominique Dubois, owner of the Multiplast Boatyard in Vannes, who previously owned a Swan 65, but sold it a few years ago to buy an ultralight boat to compete in last year’s Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race.

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He built all the Volvo 65’s, the giant record setting trimarans like Francis Joyon’s Idec Sport and Thomas Colville’s Sodebo , together with a series of race-winning IMOCA 60’s.

Commenting on the entry list, race chairman Don McIntyre said: ‘Many want to remain confidential at this stage but I can say we now have 12 confirmed entries representing Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA with the strongest enquires coming from Finland and France. There is also strong interest from the current owners of Sir Peter Blake’s 1981/2 Whitbread yacht Ceramco NZ and the French Whitbread winning yacht L’Esprit d’Equipe.’

The UK’s Alan Macmillan promises strong competition from his cutter rigged Swan 55, Ariana

Sir Chay Blyth , who competed in two of the early Whitbread races onboard Great Britain II , and claimed nine of the 12 trophies on offer in the ’73 Race, has also endorsed the OGR.

‘Delighted to hear that a 50th Anniversary edition of the Whitbread is being launched. The Ocean Globe will be a great adventure as well as a great race for participants. What a great challenge they can set themselves. My congratulations to the organiser; it is such a bold and exciting move! he said.

Recent Rule Changes

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the first fully crewed 1973 Whitbread Race and sailed in similar yachts with 1970’s equipment including sextants and cassette music tapes, the 2023 OGR gives ordinary sailors the opportunity to race around the Globe for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Entries are limited to approved production ocean racing yachts between 47 and 65.5ft designed prior to 1988. There are also 8 places available in a third Flyer Class for yachts that competed in the first three Whitbread races and other production ocean certified sail-training yachts. Tracy Edwards’ Maiden is eligible because the yacht first raced in the 1981/2 Whitbread as Disque D’or .

Together with the pre-1988 designed Nautor Swan range of yachts, the Nicholson 55, Grand Soleil 52, Oyster Lightwave 48 and Baltic 48 production yachts are also now type approved.

Some OGR entrants were challenged with the idea of removing extensive electronics, carbon spars or painting high visibility patches on beautiful teak decks as required under the pre-Notice of Race. Following extensive discussions, entrants no longer need to remove existing electronics, just disable them temporarily by removing control heads. High visibility cockpit dodgers will also substitute for the high vis. deck paint, and carbon spars fitted before July 1st 2019 are also approved.

Tapio Lehtinen has entered the yawl rigged Swan 55, Galiana in the race

The larger yachts and ex-Whitbread entries use Dyneema/Spectra runners and check stays for safety reasons, as well as halyards. All now approved. Spinnaker snuffers were shown to be available in 1973 and are now approved for safety reasons with amateur crew, even though they were not used in the original Whitbread Race.

Following six months of discussion with builders, surveyors and owners, it has also been shown that each keel is unique with regard to engineering integrity. While the final responsibility rests with the skipper, it is now agreed that the independent qualified surveyor responsible for inspecting an entry prior to the start of the OGR, will consider the yacht’s history and condition before determining if the keel needs to be removed for service.

The use of satellite communications equipment is severely restricted except for safety, and no live video streaming is allowed, but the scheduled once-a-week satellite phone call to race control, now includes delivery of one satellite photo from the yacht.

For the smallest Adventure Class for yachts down to 47ft, the minimum mixed gender crew required has been reduced to six.

All OGR outer garments must predominantly be of a colour that easily distinguishes with the wearer in the ocean.

Round the World Yachtswoman

Tracy Edwards, MBE

Tracy Edwards has a lot to talk about! A life story that is akin to the proverbial “rollercoaster” ride is condensed into a speech of inspiration, life and business lessons, fun and drama.

Tracy gained international fame in 1990 as the skipper of the first all-female crew to sail around the world when they raced in the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race. After years of struggle, Maiden was only made possible by the support of her friend HM King Hussein I of Jordan. Maiden won two legs and came second overall in her class, the best result for a British boat since 1977 and unbeaten to this day. Tracy was awarded an MBE and became the first woman in its 34 year history to be awarded the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy. She paved the way for other women to follow. Maiden was published in 1990 and was No.1 on the Times bestseller list for 19 weeks.

Following her success with Maiden, Tracy set to consolidate her position as one of the world’s top sailors by entering Trophy Jules Verne in 1998 again with an all-female crew.

This yachting trophy is for the fastest circumnavigation around the world with no stopping and no outside assistance. She was comfortably on course to smash the record for more than half of their route, but was thwarted when her mast snapped in two in treacherous seas off coast of Chile. During their attempt Tracy and her team broke 7 world records.

In 2014 Maiden was found rotting in the Seychelles and Tracy began raising funds in order to rescue Maiden and bring her home to the UK. The Maiden Factor was consequently set up to promote and fundraise for the education of 130 million girls worldwide who are currently denied this basic right. Thanks to the generous support of HRH Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, Maiden has been restored to her former glory. Now this iconic piece of British maritime history has embarked on a two-year world tour to raise funds for her charity, The Maiden Factor Foundation. The Maiden Factor funds projects run by charities that enable and facilitate girls’ education. – www.themaidenfactor.org

Tracy is a unique speaker having experienced not only the upsides of winning but also the devastation of taking a calculated risk that resulted in financial ruin and the depths of despair. She speaks eloquently and is disarmingly open about success and failure. The biggest lessons in life are learnt when things go wrong and Tracy’s story of battling against the odds to survive is poignant and truly revealing. There are many lessons to be learned from Tracy’s experiences of massive successes and devastating failure. In addition, Tracy has lost none of the sparkle and humour that audiences warm to and make her one of the most inspirational speakers of today.

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• Digital edition

Tracy Edwards sees Maiden for the first time in 27 years!

• Laura Hodgetts
• February 3, 2017

Tracy Edwards reunited with Maiden

She’s had her nerves shredded by roaring gales and the oceans at their most malevolent but nothing could prepare inspirational yachtswoman Tracy Edwards for the short walk down a luxury marinas pontoon, writes Danny Buckland .

At the end, forlorn in workshop grey paint with tattered rigging, lies the once resplendent Maiden , the boat she has not seen for 27 years.

Tears come easily at the arresting sight of the battered 58ft yacht that took her and an all-female crew on a triumphant round the world race that changed the perception of women and what they could achieve.

‘My poor baby, she’s such a mess,’ she says, placing a comforting hand on the vessel’s side. ‘I had no idea she was in such bad shape. It is such a sad and gruesome sight. We have to get her home and fast.’

Maiden has been through a procession of owners since Edwards and 11 female sailors took on the yachting establishment and confounded popular opinion by finishing 2nd in the gruelling Whitbread Round the World Race in 1990. The boat was abandoned three years ago and left to rot on the quayside on an Indian Ocean island.

Maiden in a state of disrepair

‘I’d heard she was in a poor state but not this bad,’ she adds. ‘I’ve been raising funds to bring her home for the last three years but it stopped me almost dead when I saw her. ‘There was a physical pain in my heart at the sight. I guess it must have been building up. I didn’t think it would be this emotional. I cried, tears of delight at seeing her after so long but also distress at what she has become. ‘The boat was the 13th member of the crew and she looked after us, made sure we got home safely so the bond is immense. She is like an old friend and it is distressing to see this neglect. When I first heard she’d been abandoned I was surprised how heartbroken I was. It was like losing a member of the family. ‘But we can rebuild her. She is like me, a fighter and a survivor.’

Edwards, who was a 22-year-old with limited sailing experience when she put together the Maiden team, now plans for boat to be a figurehead of the Maiden Factor charity, dedicated to empowering girls through education.

But the ship, once a distinctive grey and red with the Royal Jordanian livery, has become a tattered shell.’

The paint job is functional, the boat’s life lines are broken, slack and held together in places by tape and elasticated string, the hand holds have come loose and one of the helm wheels has disappeared. The mast and boom are tarnished but it is below decks where the fall from grace is shocking.

“I’m almost speechless. It is an horrific sight; who could let this happen?” she says, surveying the stripped down interior that was a pulsating crucible of female endeavour.

The carbon flooring, shaped in the garage of Edwards’ home in Hamble, near Southampton, has  been removed to reveal bilges full of water. Key internal fittings have gone, exposing the foam insulation that protected the aluminium mono-hull from the elements. Mould is rampant, the crew bunks, some with original names written on in magic marker, have been forced back at awkward angles and the four-ringer gas cooker in the galley is grimy and rusting.

It is a good ten minutes before Edwards can comprehend the scene. Evidence of a glorious past remains; a notice titled ‘ Maiden Water Maker’ is still taped to the watertight bulk head and the radio system is the original.

It is an ignominious state for a boat that generated headlines around the globe, her exploits occupying a special section in maritime and social history.

Edwards, who had been expelled from school at 15 and started life out as a self-confessed ‘boat bum’ cruising the Greek Islands, seized on the idea of an all-female crew after competing in the 1985 Whitbread Round the World Race as a cook, one of only four women among 235 crew members on the 22 boats taking part.

Her efforts to raise funds to buy, kit out a boat and sustain a six-month voyage were rebuffed by 350 different corporations, many with a sneer of contempt.

Some yachting press afforded them scant credibility and but for a few supporters – notably the Daily Mail and its award-winning sports journalist Ian Wooldridge who described her as ‘the second most determined woman after Maggie Thatcher that I have ever met’ – the venture seemed doomed to not even get down the slipway.

Edwards, who now lives in south-west London with her 17-year-old daughter Mackenna, said: ‘We were turned down by virtually everyone and the really dispiriting thing was that the few women who were CEOs were worse than the men. The guys were at least honest and said they didn’t think we’d make it but I felt that women CEOs, who maybe had had to become very male in their outlook to survive at the top, were even harder on us. They didn’t want to know. ‘It is hard to imagine attitudes like that today and my daughter has said ‘wasn’t Maiden just a group of girls sailing round the world?’ If you weren’t around in those days you cannot imagine the level of sexism that was commonplace. I experienced no sexism or misogyny when I was a cook or stewardess on a boat because I was in ‘my place’. But there was a different reaction when I put the team together. ‘Yachting journalists were taking bets on whether we would even make it to The Needles or the first stop. Maybe that was a good thing because it made us think we had more to do, had more to prove, needed to work harder with more commitment – we had to be better than the guys. “But we didn’t set out to change the world. We just wanted to compete with men on a level playing field.’

Edwards remortgaged her house to buy Maiden – a former Round the World competitor yacht called Prestige that was languishing in Cape Town’s commercial docks – for £110,000. She then re-mortgaged the boat to pay for its refit but was down to the breadline and potential ruin when a former charter client stepped in. Not just any client but King Hussein of Jordan who had once hired the boat on which she was cook, a chance meeting that sparked a lifelong friendship.

What followed was a challenge that transcended sport to become, arguably, a societal tipping point. Women were regarded as unsuitable for such a gruelling physical event without male supervision.

Edwards, still a relative novice and reluctant captain, and the crew blew their critics out of the water, winning three legs and finishing second overall, the best British performance in almost 20 years.

‘We just got on with it and weren’t really aware of the effect we were having,” she adds. “But coming into Australia in 1st place on that leg was the best thing that has happened in my life part from the birth of my daughter. What we achieved spoke louder than words. I remember listening to a debate on the BBC’s World Service as we neared port and this woman was saying women like us were ripping the heart out of families and destroying communities. ‘It was a bit disconcerting but then a flotilla of boats came out to see us and were throwing roses and carnations on the boat, which they wouldn’t have done for a male crew. Then there were 50,000 people on the quayside chanting Maiden as we came in and it still gives me goosebumps now. It took us an hour to get from the dock to the yacht club because people wanted to touch us and give us flowers. We were just girls who enjoyed sailing but we started to realise something else was happening.’

The enduring public image of Maiden is of super-fit young women dressed in swimsuits or figure hugging team skirts and shorts, not the obvious approach of an effort to smooth out the gender landscape.

‘Coming into port looking our best was an easy decision because we weren’t girls trying to be boys.’ says Edwards. ‘Arriving at Fort Lauderdale all in swimsuits was our way of saying we can do this race and look like this. It was different time and everyone loved and it was the most syndicated sports photo of the year.’

The Maiden yacht with Tracy Edwards and crew. Credit PPL

Few could have predicted the success from her tempestuous background. Uprooted from an idyllic childhood near Reading after the death of her father when she was ten-years-old, she was planted in a new life in South Wales with a step-father she grew to detest. She rebelled and a litany of smoking, drinking and truanting followed.

Edwards was expelled from school at 15 before she could take any exams, spent a summer living in a tent on a hillside, worked in a tubing factory then fell into sailing by accident. The carefree, itinerant lifestyle appealed but she admits to falling in love quickly and often too deeply as she strived to find her identity.

She made the tough graduation from cook to deckhand, learnt her trade in a uncompromising male environment before triumphing with Maiden , which led her to the Yachtswoman of the Year award – the first time it was given to a woman – and an MBE.

She had to sell Maiden at the end of the race and moved onto other sailing projects including breaking seven world records with another all-female crew sailing around the globe non-stop.

Edwards has been content to live without sailing since she retired but the fire was ignited when she discovered that Maiden had been abandoned at the Eden Island Marina, on Mahe, in the Seychelles. She launched a fund-raising campaign to rescue the boat home and make it the focal point of an inspirational not-for-profit organisation that will raise money for girls’ educational projects.

‘ Maiden is known round the world and can be used for a range of sponsored events. I don’t want it to be a charity with its hand permanently out so the aim is to use her to raise funds for different projects; anything that will help girls’ education,’ she says.

The Maiden Factor campaign has won backing from Sir Richard Branson and pop star and yachtsman Simon Le Bon and the Jordanian Royal family once again stepped in with King Hussein’s daughter, Princess Haya, pledging help.

HM King Hussein bin Talal and his daughter HRH Princess Haya bint Al Hussein

‘We first met when she was 12-years-old and I was 22 and it was very emotional to get a phone call out of the blue from her. She is a phenomenal woman. She has been an Olympic show jumper, has an HGV licence and works tirelessly for humanitarian causes. She represents everything her father believed in,’ says Edwards. ‘She remembered her father talking about me and how much he believed in me so she wanted to help Maiden this time round. She says its part of the King’s legacy and the world should remember him as a visionary. ‘He was a rock to me and believed in me when others wouldn’t and I feel very honoured to have Princess Haya involved now. She is also passionate about girls education and it is fantastic to have person of her calibre on board. ‘The last three years have been really hard and I felt like giving up. I was thinking ‘Is this just an over-emotional dream?’ and a lot of people were saying why not just buy a new boat and take girls sailing, which is not the point. It’s about rescuing Maiden and using everything she stands for. ‘It will help empower young girls so that they can go out and achieve their dreams. My daughter and her generation cannot imagine what it was like back then and I’m glad they can’t because that is a sign of what we’ve achieved. Maiden was one step and there were others and but we have to keep on doing that. ‘My daughter can’t wait to meet her. We’ve spoken a lot about Maiden throughout our lives and more recently what she means because I want her to have that spirit and independence. “I feel very proud of what we are doing and can do with Maiden now. We’ve had fantastic support from people around the world writing in to say how much they were inspired by Maiden and how they want her to inspire another generation.’

Maiden needs to be lifted out of the water soon to stop further hull damage and will then be transported back to the UK on a cargo ship because she is unfit to be sailed. Extensive re-fitting will take most of next year with a re-launch planned to coincide with the finish of the 2017-18 Volvo Round the World Yacht Race.

‘There’s a lot to be done and we still need to raise money to keep the project rolling but I’m excited about what we can achieve,” says Edwards. “When I started sailing, most of the world questioned whether women could do it; now it is accepted. We still have many challenges to improve women’s rights and the prospects for young girls. ‘If there had been a Maiden when I was growing up, it would have given me something to fight for rather than fight against. She is an icon and has proved what women can do. She showed me that we are all able to do much more than we think, providing we just have someone to show us the way –  and Maiden is just the woman for the job.’

Follow Maiden’s adventures at www.themaidenfactor.org

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My New Book

Coming soon.... MAIDEN RISING

• Testimonials
• Coming Soon

Motivational Speaker

Photography | Egor Piskov

• I believe that key lessons learnt from the world of sport and adventure can be transferred to the business place
• Issues about leading teams to maximise their full potential come across powerfully from world beaters who have achieved the absolute pinnacle of their chosen careers

To discuss please contact me by phone or e-Mail:

   +44 (0)20 7636 6565

   [email protected]

Theory about leadership and teams has its place, and countless articles and books have been written about the subject. I realise the importance of bringing examples of practical experience to my talks. I enjoy being interactive with audiences and also relish discussion groups and Q&A. I have found that a practical and participative experience has longer and far reaching benefits to individuals and teams.

A number of key points form the core of my talks and these are listed below:

• to identify the characteristics of an effective leader, develop personal leadership qualities and to implement these disciplines.
• to demonstrate how teams are led and motivated towards success by creating the right environment for those teams to reach full potential.
• to illustrate the different methods that leaders and teams can use to enhance individual and team performance with team action planning and personal development plans.
• to participate in a learning experience away from the work place that is unique, fun and with lasting benefits to all that take part.
• the team being aware of the 'phases of success' within the market place is fundamental to gauging their future performance, level of risk and happiness within their roles.