Maiden , Leg 4- Ocean Globe Race 2023-2024

 Punta del Este, Uruguay to Cowes, UK

5th March 2024- 16th April 2024

6599nm

42 days

This final leg was all about the overall IRC rankings for us. We started the leg in 2nd place and had a point to prove, we could not let Trianna take the victory. It was the last push and we were hungry to do well. I was again nervous about the doldrums but also the South Atlantic Convergence Zone which is a lesser known area off the Brazilian coast which brings light winds and squally conditions. We had sailed through it and got stuck on one of our -trial legs from Santos in Brazil to the Azores and I was determined to not make the same mistakes. 

Race start was hectic, Galiana stalled on the line right before us, so we had to duck behind them before crossing. It turns out we got off pretty lightly as we heard that Evrika and Trianna collided, causing damage to their boats. About a mile after starting, I saw Pen Duick crash tack. I was confused until I saw a bright object in the water. They had lost someone overboard- a skippers worst nightmare. Immediately I called to slow the boat down, we were a couple of boat lengths behind and pointing directly at the MOB. As I couldn’t slow down in time, I got my crew to throw him one of our horseshoe rings with the intention that it might make him more visible to the fleet behind us who were fast approaching. We called the race committee on the VHF as we knew that Pen Duick was probably too busy to make the call and I knew there were RIB’s on the frequency who were in a much better position to help than us. We kept our speed slow until we saw Pen Duick making her approach to the casualty before sheeting in again and carrying on. We later heard that Marie picked him up herself and the crewmember spent the rest of the leg religiously clipped on… Our support RIB came over to reunite us with our horseshoe buoy. A dramatic start to the last leg to say the least.

As with every leg, before the race start I took advice from Commanders- a weather routing service that we had used during the world tour. They had told me about a big high pressure (another one!!!) that was settling just off the coast, the two options around it was the upwind coastal route, making use of the afternoon coastal breezes or try and go around it to the East and try and outrun it before the ridge extended and left us with no wind. They as well as me were on the fence about the two options right up to the start. The last forecast email usually comes on the day of race start, just before our phones get sealed away, but I still didn’t have it so I gave up my phone then logged into my email on my dad’s phone whilst we were still alongside the dock. This was important as the advice in that email was to definitely take the Western coastal route, the high looked like it would expand quicker and make it difficult to make progress on the Eastern side. So as we started the leg we went West as most of the fleet went East. It was a gamble but in my gut I knew this was the right move, I had trusted my (and Rachel’s gut) for the whole trip round and I wasn’t about to ignore it now. 

The boats that went west initially looked like they were doing pretty well- alot of them were questioning me on the daily fleet chats as to what the hell I was thinking, and I was even starting to question myself but sure enough, the wind died on the East side and although we were upwind, we still had good breeze to the west. The decision had paid off and although we don’t see the other boats' positions, when we got to land we were told that on international women’s day we were 1st in Class, Overall IRC and Line Honors! A good day to do it I think! 

Unfortunately after our great start, we hit a roadblock when both our generator and then our engine refused to work. We can charge our batteries either with the generator or the engine in neural revs (so the prop isn’t spinning). Vuyie quickly set to work and managed to successfully get the engine working, so we were able to charge our batteries. Our problem now was we were unable to run our watermaker. We are able to run our watermaker off the generator or the inverters. Unfortunately the inverter had stopped working at the end of the last leg. It miraculously started working in Uruguay, but despite Ami’s best efforts, it had stopped working less than a week after we had left… So without the gen we had no way of making water. A team set about fault-finding with the gen. After 3 days of ripping it apart and getting to know it very well indeed- they found the issue and managed to get it working again! Amazing effort from all involved! 

Whilst this was going on we had been collecting water by diverting into rain squalls and collecting it in a baggy reef in our mainsail, then pushing the boom up at the aft and holding up our sea anchor around the mast. The water then collects in the sea anchor and we attached a big hose to the bottom which we fed down into the boat to fill our tanks. We successfully filled our tanks in this time and had alot of fun doing it! In one big squall cloud, the whole team woke up to hold up the sea anchor, all 12 of us in laughing and celebrating the rainfall. We managed to fill both of our tanks in that rainfall and all of the pots and pans onboard and even managed to have a shower in the rain. 

We had however dropped down some places in the rankings, partly with the distraction of fixing the gen and collecting water and partly due to a lack of weather information I had put us in a very light wind area. I was annoyed at myself for putting us in that position. I always seem to beat myself up about the mistakes I make- I was isolating myself and not sleeping or eating properly. I was desperately trying to find a way out of the light winds and into a position where we could catch up with Spirit of Helsinki who were not too far ahead and Esprit D’Equipe and Pen Duick VI who had shot ahead at this point. Despite my bad calls my teams support never faltered- sometimes I think that they believed in me more then I believed in myself. 

We crossed the equator in pretty light winds. We put off the equator ceremony for a couple of days,with all of the extra hours that the crew had put in over the last few days faultfinding and collecting water, we were prioritising sleep. But with so much light wind we decided that maybe Neptune was mad at us and we needed to do it. We gave our sacrifices to Neptune- raw cookie dough and haribo and all celebrated together with a song and a dance. 

As soon as the ceremony was over, the wind filled in… So Neptune was annoyed at us after all!

Unfortunately after this we had yet more mechanical issues- our watermaker had started discharging all of the water it produced. We were yet again trying to collect water and ration whilst we could find the solution. The team did all of the investigation they could- they found that the water probe was rejecting the water as it was too salty. It pointed to the membranes being fouled. With no spare membranes, it left us in a sticky situation. As the watermaker was so technically advanced we couldn’t ‘trick’ the probe; it just threw up faults.  

After a few days, it was looking less and less likely that we would get any rain anytime soon and nothing we had tried had worked, so I decided to have a last stab at it. I had been in charge of the watermaker for the 2 years before I was skipper, had serviced and rebuilt sections of it and knew it better than anyone. I tried alot of different things but came up with the solution of slightly unscrewing the salinity probe and collecting the small trickle of water in a bucket. It was still very slightly salty but drinkable and would keep us alive. We would be able to carry on and finish the race, it was a success!

We eventually made it to the entrance of the English channel, so close to home. We had a big Low pressure system above us so had some beautiful downwind conditions and with the proximity to land some challenging sea states. 

We had our heavy weight Spinnaker back up- Big Red. We unfortunately had a nasty crash gybe with a rogue wave which caused a big kite wrap around our forestay. With nearly 35knts of wind and still making 8 knots boat speed, it was very difficult to un-wrap. When we finally had it down we had broken off a part of the foil that is on the forestay as a track for the headsails to go up in. 

We were able to jury rig a solution so we were still able to hoist our smallest headsail- the J3. We were only a couple of days away from the finish so it was frustrating but wasn’t detrimental to the race for us, and no-one was hurt so that was the important thing.

On the 16th April, after 7 months away,  we finally saw the needles again. The first boat to arrive was our own media boat with Tracy and our amazing shoreteam in. More boats joined us as we made our way up the solent to the finish. We were almost there, this incredible journey was about to be over. 

Just as we had hoisted our spinnaker over the start line, we decided to hoist one over the finish line. We had a beautiful spinnaker which we had hand painted with a message of hope for girls around the world and we wanted to show it off in it’s full glory. 

After we had finished, Don came up to us in the

OGR rib and told us that at the moment we were in 1st place IRC. We had started the leg in 2nd and I thought we had done pretty badly in the last leg so this was an amazing shock! 

When we arrived onto the dock in Cowes, we had an incredible amount of our friends, family, supporters and other crews on the dock to welcome us in. We had had so much love and support over the last year and we were so grateful for such an amazing welcome back. Although it was incredible to finally finish this adventure, it was also bittersweet. The end of the journey meant the end of the team and soon enough we would all be going back to our lives apart. I would miss these girls so much, we had become so close after spending so much time together and I was so proud of each and everyone of them. 

We found out a couple of weeks later that we had officially won 1st place and become the first all-female team to win an around the world race.

We had achieved our goals of inspiring women around the world, raising funds for girls education charities and smashing records and glass ceilings. The lists of firsts is so long- 1st back women to race around Cape Horn, 1st women from Afghanistan to compete in an around the world race, 1st Women from Puerto rico and 1st Black African Women to Race around the world. First British female skipper to win an around the world race and that's just a few of them. 

The thing I am most proud of is continuing Maiden’s legacy and bringing her full circle. After a long life she deserved to finally have a win. It has been an absolute honour to lead this team and sail on Maiden in the footsteps of the original crew and I think we did them proud.