Sailor Tracy Edwards on bankruptcy, divorce, and being back on deck with her feisty female crew

Music is blaring out of a radio on a ladder and a team of tanned crew, sweating in shorts and polo shirts, are fixing pieces of equipment on the deck of a yacht. ‘I judge people on their reaction to meeting Maiden,’ warns Tracy Edwards, as we step into the shade of the boat shed. ‘She has her own personality.’

On a baking morning in Hamble, a yacht haven on the Solent in Hampshire, it’s as if history is repeating itself.

In the very same spot in 1988, a then 25-year-old Edwards begged and borrowed kit from around the yard to refit the boat that she had remortgaged her house for, and in which she would storm into the record books as the skipper of the first all-female crew to sail around the world.

When, almost three decades later, Edwards got an email to say her beloved Maiden had been abandoned and was in a dreadful state of repair in the Seychelles, she didn’t think twice. ‘I rang up my old project manager and said, “What are you doing?” He told me he was just about to retire, so I said, “No you’re not. I’ve found Maiden and we’re rescuing her.”’

Even Edwards’ own teenage daughter, Mack, is resigned to joking that the 58ft Maiden is her mother’s ‘firstborn’. ‘Mack heard me waffle on about Maiden her whole life,’ says Edwards. ‘When she came into Hamble again, it was like my two girls meeting each other.’ The boat was so full of holes that even the most hardened shipbuilder shed tears.

But that didn’t faze Edwards. Now in her mid-50s, a slight figure in jeans and T-shirt, with bright hazel eyes and a crop of short hair, she still brims with the no-nonsense energy that caught the country’s attention when she declared what then seemed like a brazen intention to ‘take on the boys’ in the toughest and longest ocean race in the world. She inspired a generation of women sailors – such as, most recently, the skippers Wendy Tuck and Nikki Henderson, who took first and second place in the Clipper Round the World yacht race that finished in July.

And she’s lost none of her plain-speaking feistiness and grit – throwing in the odd ‘bloody heck’ as she speaks at nineteen to the dozen, and constantly refers to her old crew as the ‘girls’. Of Maiden she’s unequivocal: ‘Oh God, I could never leave her like that!’ She spent two years raising the money to bring her home. With a chuckle, she recalls, ‘But it was Mack who said, “Mum, what are you going to do with her then?”’

Edwards racked her brains and contacted Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, who also happened to hold Maiden close to her heart – her father, King Hussein of Jordan, had helped fundraising in the ’80s. After a meeting in a hotel in London, Edwards had a plan and a sponsor.

Next month, after a year of refitting, Maiden will set off around the world again to reclaim her mantle as an inspiration for young women: as the flagship of Edwards’ foundation, The Maiden Factor, to raise awareness for women’s education in developing countries. Although this time Edwards won’t be on board. ‘It’s about the next generation,’ she says – that, and she has a back injury (‘kicked by a horse; I know, I sailed around the world and was fine’).

If that was the end of the story it would have been a remarkable reunion, but, in the decades since she last saw Maiden, Edwards has been through more ups and downs than a yacht in a stormy Southern Ocean.

As we snatch a quiet moment, in a marquee on the Hamble quayside, Edwards recounts her struggle through two divorces, bankruptcy and single motherhood with, at one point, barely enough money to pay her rent. ‘It’s been a roller coaster,’ she says, with the smile of someone who has dusted herself down and started again. ‘It never stops being a roller coaster.’

In 1990, after crossing the finishing line of  the Whitbread Round the World Race in the Solent to thousands of cheering onlookers and honking vessels, and with Yachtsman of the Year and an MBE to her name, she was waved off into the sunset to marry her waiting fiancé – Simon Lawrence, a property developer – redecorate their house, and write her memoirs.

Over the course of two brief and broken marriages – the second was to Chris Cossett, a computer expert – she was unable to stay away from the water. ‘I’m not going to talk badly about them,’ she says now of her former husbands. ‘They thought I would change and I couldn’t. 

I thought I could settle down and change too.’ She spent the 1990s attempting to better her Whitbread achievement, in which Maiden had come second in her class, and won two legs over the course of 32,000 nautical miles and nine months – the best result for a British boat in more than a decade. But that ended in 1998, when she and another all-female crew almost lost their lives after the mast was broken in bad weather during another round-the-world race, the Jules Verne Trophy. 

When a fling led to the birth of her daughter, Mackenna (or Mack) in 2000, she swore never again to put herself in danger. She became a motivational speaker with Will Carling, the former rugby player, and managed sailing programmes – including, fatefully, a round-the-world race from Qatar, which she did more than manage. To keep that race afloat, she took out an £8 million bank loan in her name; but her sponsor dissolved their company and she went bankrupt on her 43rd birthday in 2005. ‘I had lost everything I had worked for over 20 years,’ she says.

With typical stoicism, Edwards got a desk job (as a project manager with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) and moved with her then six-year-old daughter from their Berkshire home to a rented terrace house in London. ‘I literally stuck a pin in a map and said, “Right, where are we going to live?” The pin landed on the Duke’s Head in Putney.

So we went there and thought, “This would be good.”’ The pair discovered London together, hiring bicycles to ride along the towpath and visiting museums. ‘It was  a terrible time in our lives but we turned it into something exciting,’ says Edwards. At one point, when she was with her daughter on a bus, a woman recognised her. ‘She started saying, “Oh my God, it’s you. You’re amazing.” My daughter said, “Why do you know that lady, Mummy?” And I had to tell her, “That lady knows me.”’

She had just finished a psychology degree at the University of Roehampton and was teaching internet safety in schools, when a marina in the Seychelles contacted her in 2014 about the plight of Maiden. The boat had been passed from owner to owner over the years, after Edwards was unable to afford to keep her at the end of the Whitbread. When she first stepped back on board her old boat, she found the labels that she had written for charts still on the navigation table. ‘It was like  I had just stepped out for tea.’ 

Tracy Edwards’ attachment to Maiden is more than just nostalgia. ‘This boat taught me everything I know,’ she says. ‘She taught me how to be a feminist.’ Her reason for creating an all-woman team was at first a practical one. ‘I wanted to go around the world with nice girls, not smelly boys. It was only when I was told I couldn’t do it, that it became about something else. Everyone said, “Don’t be so bloody stupid.”’

However, Edwards came from a family of strong women – albeit not seafarers (she grew up near Reading and in Wales). Her father died from a heart attack when she was 10, and she watched as Patricia, her ballerina mother, battled prejudice to take over his stereo business.

When she fell out with her new stepfather and was expelled from school at 15, she ran away to Greece and heard about a job as a cook on boats. She first sailed around the world in 1985, dishing up breakfasts and mugs of hot chocolate in the galley for 17 men. ‘I thought I was going to die a lot of the time.’ Crucially, one of her skippers also taught her to navigate, despite Edwards insisting, ‘I can’t do maths and I’m stupid.’ Soon she was plotting courses across the Atlantic. ‘I will never forget the sensation of sailing into port and thinking, “I did that.”’ Ever since then she has thought of the water as ‘the beginning – not the end of the land’.

Her own Whitbread race was a full-blown ’80s affair. Edwards and her crew lived in a pink house in Hamble and took the Duchess of York (who formally christened Maiden) sailing. Race footage shows them in a uniform that included pink shorts, and they even finished a leg in Florida in swimsuits, having shaved their legs and done their hair. They did aerobics on deck and played the music from Top Gun at full blast. ‘A lot of boats didn’t allow music. They thought it was not serious enough.’

Of course, they also faced waves the size of houses, navigated around icebergs and whales, nearly went under off Cape Horn – ‘I was eyeing the life raft’– and lost fingernails and circulation in the cold. And one of the Maiden crew helped save the life of a sailor on another boat over the radio.

Their message was that women didn’t have to become men to be good at things. ‘At the time, other sailors and sailing journalists were just vile about women attempting to do this.’ Even female executives whom Edwards approached for sponsorship responded with a sneer, and she was forced to stump up her own cash for Maiden. ‘Every time we ticked one box there was something else.

“They’re not strong enough.” Tick. “They’re not smart enough.” Tick. “They won’t be able to sail.” Tick. The last criticism was, “Women don’t get on.” Where do they get that from? They [the yachting press] are all funny about it now and say we can’t believe we said that about you.’ She chuckles: ‘God, we had our arguments. We weren’t 12 sheep. I picked 11 bloody feisty women.’

As Edwards speaks there is a certain vulnerability about her. She has a vape close at hand – ‘Mack told me it was irresponsible to smoke as a single parent,’ she says. She puts her enviably toned forearms and lean frame down to nervous energy and pours sugar and full-fat milk into her morning coffee. She says that people probably find her eternal energy ‘annoying’.

However, she has also learnt to ask for help and would leave Mack with friends and family when she worked. ‘I relied heavily on a support network.’ One of her happiest pastimes now is gardening in her still-rented house in Putney – ‘I’ll only afford to get back on the property ladder in Outer Mongolia,’ she quips – or having a drink in the pub with friends (including some of her old crew mates).

She has never cared much about fashion, but she isn’t averse to heels and a dress for a party. When she needs a date, she borrows a willing male friend. ‘Men and my life are not compatible,’ she has decided. ‘I’ve been single for 18 years. People me ask if I’m gay. I wish I was. I know so many gay women, my life would be so much easier.’ Commuting regularly to Maiden, she also has an office at home for fundraising. ‘I’m a workaholic and I love what I do.’

As Maiden sets off on her new three-year voyage, Edwards hopes she can keep bucking trends for girls. ‘My battle 30 years ago was to stand up and fight for women to do things,’ she says. ‘Sexism and inequality are still there but more insidious… I’m old and ugly enough to shout about it.’

There will be fundraising events for different girls’ projects – from building sanitation to accessing schools – at every stopover, starting in Jordan and going on to India and beyond. A message of hope written by girls at each stop will be carried on board. Among a relay of all-female crew and skippers will be Dee Caffari – another record-breaking yachtswoman – and paying guests can apply to join a leg. ‘But they have to be able to swim – unlike me. I’m being a real hypocrite,’ says Edwards. She famously also still gets seasick on short passages.

In her Whitbread days, Edwards was joined by her mother at every stopover. There’s a shadow of pain in her eyes as she describes how Patricia died in 2012 of multiple sclerosis. Now, one of her biggest supporters is Mack, who, aged 18 and fresh out of school, has joined the Maiden Factor team.

‘I get easily distracted. Mack keeps me on the straight and narrow.’ Edwards is impressed by the voice of her daughter’s generation – ‘even boys her age are in MeToo T-shirts’ – and is amazed at the number of female applicants to crew the boat. However, Mack will not be at the helm but managing the photography on shore. Mother and daughter roll their eyes at each other. ‘You couldn’t pay her to get on a boat,’ laughs Edwards.

Maiden will be at the Southampton Boat Show from 14 to 22 September 2018. She departs on her voyage from Southampton on 22 September.  For details of the Maiden Factor voyage, visit themaidenfactor.org