WEBVTT

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Being able to navigate
is an extraordinary gift,

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and there is nothing like it in the world.

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I get no more sense
of satisfaction greater

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than leaving a port

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and knowing that I can get
my team and my boat

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safely from that port to another port,

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maybe three, four, five,
six thousand miles away.

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Being at sea for me is ...

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it's to total freedom,

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and it is the ultimate
opportunity to be you

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because you can't be anything else.

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You are naked in front
of your peers on a boat.

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It is a small area.

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Maiden is 58 feet long.

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There's 12 women in a 58-foot boat.

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I mean, you are literally
up against each other,

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and so you have to be you.

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The greatest moment
for me when I'm sailing

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is the moment that the land disappears.

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It's an indescribable moment of --

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[gasps]

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adventure

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and no turning back,

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and just you and the boat
and the elements.

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I wish everyone could experience
this at least once in their lives.

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The further you get away from land,

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the more you kind of fit into yourself.

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It is you,

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how do we get to the next place,

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how do we stay alive,

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how do we look after each other

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and what do we do 
to get to the other side.

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So the question I get asked
the most when I go and do talks

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is "How do you become
and ocean-racing sailor?"

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And that's a really good question.

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I've always wanted to say "I had a vision,

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which became a dream,

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which became an obsession,"

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but of course life's not like that,

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and one thing I'm really anxious
for people to know about me

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is that my life
hasn't gone from A to B --

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because how many people can say
their lives just go from A to B;

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they think I'm going to do this
and they go and do it?

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So I tell the truth.

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And the truth is that I was expelled
from school when I was 15 years old,

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and my long-suffering headmaster
sent a long-suffering note

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to my long-suffering mother,

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basically saying that if Tracy
darkens these doors of the school again

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then we will call the police.

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And my mum took me and she said,

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"Darling, education is not for everyone."

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And then she gave me the best
piece of advice anyone has ever given me.

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She said every single one of us
is good at something,

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you just have to go and find what that is.

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And at the age of 16 she let me
go backpacking off to Greece.

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I ended up working on boats,

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which was OK --

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17 years old,

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didn't really know what I wanted to do,

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kind of going with the flow.

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And then on my second transatlantic,

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my skipper said to me, "Can you navigate?"

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And I said, "of course I can't navigate,

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I was expelled before long division."

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And he said, "Well, don't you think
you should be able to navigate?

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What happens if I fall over the side?

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Stop being a bystander in your own life,

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stop looking at what you're doing

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and start taking part."

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This day for me was the day
that my whole life started.

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I learned to navigate in two days --

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and this is someone who hates numbers

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and sees them as hieroglyphics.

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It opened up avenues and opportunities
to me that I could never have imagined.

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I actually managed to get a ride
on a Whitbread Round the World Race boat.

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It was with 17 South African men and me.

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I was 21 years old,

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and it was the longest
nine months of my life.

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But I went to cook,

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I managed to survive until the end,

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and when I got to end of this race,

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I realized that there were
230 crew in this race

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and three women,

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and I was one of them.

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And I'm a lousy cook.

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I'm a really good navigator.

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I think the second most profound
thought in my entire life was:

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no man is ever going to allow me
to be a navigator on their boat ever.

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And that is still the case today.

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In 35 years of the Whitbread

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there's only been two female navigators

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that haven't been on
on an all-female cruise,

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and that's how Maiden was born.

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That was the moment I thought,

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I've got something to fight for

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and I had no idea
that I wanted to have this fight.

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It was something that I took to
like a duck to water.

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I discovered things about myself
that I had no idea existed.

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I discovered I had a fighting spirit,

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I discovered I was competitive --

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never knew that before --

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and I discovered my second passion,

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which was equality.

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I couldn't let this one lie.

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And it became not just about me
wanting to navigate on a boat

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and having to put my own crew together

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and my own team,

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raise my own money,

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find my own boat

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so that I could be navigator.

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This was about women everywhere.

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And this was when I realized

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that this was probably what I was going
to spend the rest of my life doing.

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It took ages for us to find the money

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to do the 1989 Whitbread
Round the World Race.

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And as we looked at all the big,

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multi-million pound,

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all-male projects around us

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with their brand-new shiny boats
designed for the race,

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we realized this was not going to be us.

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We had to make this up
as we went along.

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No one had enough faith in us
to give us this kind of money.

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So I mortgaged my house

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and we found an old wreck

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with a pedigree,

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an old Whitbread boat --

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it had already been
around the world twice --

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in South Africa.

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We somehow persuaded
some guy to put it on a ship

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and bring it back to the UK for us.

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The girls were horrified
at the state of the boat.

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We got a free place in a yard.

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We got her up on the hard

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and we redesigned her;

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we ripped her apart;

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we did all the work ourselves.

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It was the first time that anyone
had ever seen women in a shipyard,

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so that was quite entertaining.

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Every morning when we would walk in,

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everyone would just gawk at us.

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But it also had its advantages

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because everyone was so helpful.

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We were such a novelty.

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You know, we got given a generator,

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an engine --

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"Do you want this old rope?"

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"Yep."

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"Old sails?"

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"Yep, we'll have those."

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So we really made it up as we went along.

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And I think actually one of the huge
advantages we had was,

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you know, there was no preconceived idea

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about how an all-female crew
would sail around the world.

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So whatever we did was OK.

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And what it also did
was it drew people to it --

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not just women --

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men, anyone who had been told
you can't do something

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because you're not good enough --

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your right gender

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or right race

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or right color, or whatever.

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Maiden became a passion.

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And it was hard to raise the money --

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hundreds of companies wouldn't sponsor us.

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They told us that we couldn't do it,

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people thought we were going to die --

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you know, guys would literally
come up to me and say,

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"You're going to die."

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I'd think, well, OK, that's my business,

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it's not yours.

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In the end, King Hussein of Jordan
sponsored Maiden,

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and that was an amazing thing --

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way ahead of his time,

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all about equality.

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We sailed around the world
with a message of peace and equality.

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We were the only boat in the race
with a message of any kind.

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We won two legs of the Whitbread --

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two of the most difficult legs --

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and we came second overall.

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And that is still the best result
for a British boat since 1977.

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It annoyed a lot of people.

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And I think what it did at the time --

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we didn't realize.

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You know, we crossed the finishing line,

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this incredible finish --

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600 boats sailing up the Solent with us;

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50,000 people in Ocean Village
chanting "Maiden, Maiden"

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as we sailed in.

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And so we knew we'd done something
that we wanted to do

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and we hoped we achieved something good,

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but we had no idea at the time
how many women's lives we changed.

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The Southern Ocean is my favorite ocean.

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Each ocean has a character.

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So the North Atlantic is a yomping ocean.

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It's a jolly, go-for-it,
heave-ho type of --

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have-fun type of ocean.

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The Southern Ocean
is a deadly serious ocean.

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And you know the moment
when you cross into the Southern Ocean --

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the latitude and longitude --

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you know when you're there,

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the waves have been building,

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they start getting
big whitecaps on the top,

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it becomes really grey,

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you start to get sensory deprivation.

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It is very focused on
who you are and what you are

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with this massive wilderness around you.

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It is empty.

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It is so big and so empty.

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You see albatrosses
swirling around the boat.

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It takes about four days to sail
through their territory,

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so you have the same
albatrosses for four days.

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And they find us quite a novelty,

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so they literally windsurf off the wind
that comes off the mainsail

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and they hang behind the boat,

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and you sort of feel
this presence behind you

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and you turn around

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and it's this albatross
just looking at you.

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We sold Maiden at the end of the race --

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we still had no money,

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and five years ago we found her

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at the same time
as a film director decided

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he wanted to make
a documentary about Maiden.

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We found Maiden;

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she burst back into my life

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and reminded me a lot of things
I had forgotten actually,

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over the years,

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about following my heart and my gut

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and really being part of the universe.

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Everything I find important in life,

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Maiden has given back to me.

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Again, we rescued her--

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we did a Crowdfunder --

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we rescued her from Seychelles.

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Princess Haya,

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King Hussein's daughter,

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funded the shipping back to the UK
and then the restoration.

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All the original crew were involved.

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We put the original team back together.

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And then we decided:

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what are we going to do with Maiden?

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And this for me really was
the moment in my life

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where I looked back on every single
thing that I'd done --

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every project,

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every feeling,

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every passion,

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every battle,

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every fight --

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and I decided that I wanted Maiden
to continue that fight

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for the next generation.

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Maiden is sailing around the world.

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A five-year world tour.

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We are engaging with thousands
of girls all over the world.

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We are supporting community programs
that get girls into education.

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Education doesn't just mean
sitting in a classroom.

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This, for me, is about teaching girls
you don't have to look a certain way,

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you don't have to feel a certain way,

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you don't have to behave a certain way.

00:10:29.090 --> 00:10:30.264
You can be successful,

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you can follow your dreams

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and you can fight for them.

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Life doesn't go from A to B.

00:10:34.798 --> 00:10:35.814
It's messy.

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My life has been a mess
from beginning to end,

00:10:38.732 --> 00:10:41.292
but somehow I've got to where we're going.

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The future for us
and Maiden looks amazing.

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And for me,

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it is all about closing the circle.

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It's about closing the circle with Maiden

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and using her to tell girls

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that if just one person believes in you,

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you can do anything.