Scot remembers Tracy Edwards' Whitbread Round the World race 30 years on

The Southern Ocean, with its temperamental weather systems, menacing icebergs lurking barely visible in the freezing water and stretching thousands of miles between land, had earned a sinister nickname among hardy sailors who threw themselves at it in a bid to win a small statue of a Beefeater and the glory of snaring the toughest leg of the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

"Sea of Certain Death" may have been their attempt at black humour as they contemplated waves that rose to the height of houses. But there were times, admits Sally Hunter, the only Scot among the nine-strong crew of the first all-women Whitbread race entry, that it felt terrifyingly close to living up to its title.

“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments when you’d get up in the middle of the night and there was horizontal sleet and the wind was blowing at 40 knots and wonder ‘what the hell am I doing here?’,” says Hunter, casting her mind back 30 years to the 1989 race on board skipper Tracy Edwards’ yacht Maiden Great Britain.

“Then the sun comes out next morning, and it’s 'okay, let’s crack on with it'.

“But it was tough.”

The phenomenal achievement of the all-women crew, who battled not only the forces of Mother Nature but a macho yachting community and sneering male-dominated sports media which in one case referred to them and their yacht as a “tin full of tarts”, is now set to be retold at the Glasgow Film Festival’s UK premier of Maiden, a documentary that tells their story in their own voices.

It recalls Edwards’ astonishing determination to defy critics and sexist attitudes to not simply bring together the race’s first all-female crew, but to win the challenging Southern Ocean leg and then end the race in overall second place for their category.

As well as shattering a sea-faring glass ceiling, the crew achieved the best result for a British boat in the race in 17 years, an achievement which is yet to be bettered.

On board the Maiden and making sporting history was Sally Creaser – later Sally Hunter – from Glasgow. Bitten by the sailing bug as a young girl thanks to her parents’ sailing boat in Troon, she admits it would be well after the thrill of taking part had subsided, that she fully appreciated what a blow for equality it had really been.

“You get caught up in things, and it’s just something you are doing,” she says, speaking from the Arran-based yacht business she now runs with husband Iain.

“It was a bit like my father used to talk about the war. It did not seem outrageous because everyone was doing the same thing, just trying to race.

“It felt normal.”

But, of course, it was not. While sailor Clare Francis had become the first woman to skipper a yacht in the Whitbread Round the World race in 1977/78, an all-women crew was largely regarded as doomed to fail.

“One incident sticks in my mind,” says Hunter, one of six crew tasked with taking the helm while Edwards was below plotting the course. “I had been out racing with some fella on a J24 little boat when he said to me ‘When does this Whitbread race start?’, and I said ‘September’.

“He said ‘Oh well, you’ll be back in October then’.

“There was a lot of negativity, but there were a lot of people who believed in us too.”

Edwards endured the bulk of the sneers and sexist questioning.

One incident, captured in the opening sequence of Maiden, shows her gamely responding to photographers’ pleas to smile more. Another sees her batting away a question from a female television presenter about packing waterproof mascara for a race in which staying alive and unhurt was a bigger issue than make-up.

Edwards was already determined to skipper an all-female crew when Sally heard about her from a contact she’d met during a Scottish regatta.

Having tracked her down, Hunter’s interview to join the crew was brief and unconventional. “She walked in through the door, laughed and told a joke and I thought she’ll be on the boat,” laughs Edwards who, with Hunter, will attend the UK premiere.

Even with her crew in place, 24-year-old Edwards faced an uphill struggle to find sponsors willing to throw support behind an all-woman team for an endurance challenge that would take them on a five-month, 32,018-nautical-mile journey which in previous years had claimed lives on the way.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it was King Hussain of Jordan who stepped in to offer vital support. A second-hand yacht was secured, and the women took up tools to repair it for challenge ahead.

That they finished the first leg – never mind raced home in third place – stunned many. Their success in the second leg confirmed they were no fluke team.

“We won it!,” recalls Hunter. “It was the most challenging leg, from Uruguay to Freemantle in Australia, 7600 nautical miles, 37 days to do it.

“It was the first time we’d sailed in the Southern Ocean. And we won.

“But it was tough. We suffered from tendonitis from constantly hauling at the wheel and frost nip on our faces, when ice crystals formed under our skin. Even with face masks on, the skin would blister and peel off.”

The crew worked "four hours on, four hours off" but with half an hour spent removing sodden outerwear and another half an hour to put it back on, sleep became impossible.

Edwards, despite a relative lack of experience as a skipper, had gambled on sailing the shortest but most challenging route. The crew would go on to win another leg of the race, before finishing in overall second place for their yacht’s class.

The final finishing line, with Maiden escorted home by a flotilla of small yachts and greeted by thousands of cheering supporters, brought a mix of emotions amid the celebrations.

“It was a strange feeling, it was hard to believe it was just going to end,” reflects Hunter.

Edwards went on to become a figurehead for women in sport while, back home in Scotland, Hunter continued to sail for enjoyment and sport, to marry, have a family and run the couple’s business, Hunter Yacht Deliveries.

She now sees the changes Maiden’s crew inspired. “We didn’t think anything of it at the time. But when you look back at some of the things that were said to us and how we were treated, people wouldn’t get away with it now.

“That’s a sign of how things have changed.”

Tracy Edwards MBE and Sally Hunter are due to appear at the UK premiere of Maiden on Monday, February 25, at the CCA, Sauchiehall Street. The screening is part of the Glasgow Film Festival.

Maiden will be released in UK cinemas on 8th March, with nationwide previews and live Q+A with Tracy Edwards MBE on 7th March. www.Maiden.film