Thirty years ago, many said it couldn’t be done. Traversing the globe in a small sailboat is a feat to challenge any adventurers—but an all-female crew? The sniggering by sports writers and the all-around skepticism didn’t stop Tracy Edwards from recruiting a crew of a dozen women to compete in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. Hers was one of 15 sailboats on the 33,000-nautical mile, nine-month trek in a contest for trophies at the end of each of the journey’s four legs.
Edwards called her small sailing yacht the Maiden, and British writer-director Alex Holmes named his documentary on the race after the boat. Edwards and several of her crewmates are the talking heads interspersed amidst period footage shot for television, much of it as crackled and faded as an early silent movie and likewise affording a smudgy window onto a lost world.
Although she learned determination from the example of her mother, a vicious stepfather sent her spiraling downward until the sea caught her interest. Working as a steward on a private yacht, she was encouraged by a visitor, Jordan’s King Hussein, to learn seamanship and go for the Whitbread. It took a few years of apprenticeship at a time when women were allowed on in the Whitbread boats only as cooks. Finally, in 1989, she departed from Britain, skippering the Maiden around the globe, taking third and first place at several stops but losing time when her boat sprang a leak.
The ocean is a vivid presence through much of Maiden. Enormous and heaving, waves pitching skyward and rocking her boat sharply, the sea is an ongoing body slam against the fragile craft and its crew. Sailing a straight line from South America to Australia to save time, the Maiden crossed especially treacherous waters near the Antarctic with icy decks, ice-covered faces on deck and icebergs lurking in the misty waves. Edwards and crew were undaunted, determined that their journey would rise above the status of human interest story and be taken seriously on the customarily male sports pages of the world media.
