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Being able to navigate
is an extraordinary gift,

2
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and there is nothing like it in the world.

3
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I get no more sense of satisfaction
greater than leaving a port

4
00:00:13,826 --> 00:00:18,223
and knowing that I can get
my team and my boat

5
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safely from that port to another port,

6
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maybe three, four, five,
six thousand miles away.

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Being at sea, for me, is ...

8
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it's total freedom,

9
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and it is the ultimate
opportunity to be you,

10
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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.

13
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Maiden is 58 feet long.

14
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There's 12 women in a 58-foot boat.

15
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I mean, you are literally
up against each other,

16
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and so you have to be you.

17
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The greatest moment
for me when I'm sailing

18
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is the moment that the land disappears.

19
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It's an indescribable moment of --

20
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(Gasps)

21
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adventure and no turning back,

22
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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,

25
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the more you kind of fit into yourself.

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It is you,

27
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how do we get to the next place,

28
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how do we stay alive,

29
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how do we look after each other

30
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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

32
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is "How do you become
an ocean-racing sailor?"

33
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And that's a really good question.

34
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And I've always wanted
to say "I had a vision,

35
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which became a dream,

36
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which became an obsession,"

37
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but, of course, life's not like that,

38
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and one thing I'm really anxious
for people to know about me

39
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is that my life hasn't gone from A to B --

40
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because how many people can say
their lives just go from A to B;

41
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they think, "I'm going to do this,"
and they go and do it?

42
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So I tell the truth.

43
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And the truth is that I was expelled
from school when I was 15 years old

44
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and my long-suffering headmaster
sent a long-suffering note

45
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to my long-suffering mother,

46
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basically saying that if Tracy
darkens these doors of the school again,

47
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then we will call the police.

48
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And my mum took me and she said,

49
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"Darling, education is not for everyone."

50
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And then she gave me the best
piece of advice anyone has ever given me.

51
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She said, "Every single one of us
is good at something,

52
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you just have to go and find
what that is."

53
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And at the age of 16, she let me
go backpacking off to Greece.

54
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I ended up working on boats,
which was OK --

55
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17 years old, didn't really know
what I wanted to do,

56
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kind of going with the flow.

57
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And then on my second transatlantic,

58
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my skipper said to me, "Can you navigate?"

59
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And I said, "Of course I can't navigate,

60
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I was expelled before long division."

61
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And he said, "Don't you think
you should be able to navigate?

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What happens if I fall over the side?

63
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Stop being a bystander in your own life,

64
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stop looking at what you're doing

65
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and start taking part."

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

67
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I learned to navigate in two days --

68
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and this is someone who hates numbers

69
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and sees them as hieroglyphics.

70
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It opened up avenues and opportunities
to me that I could never have imagined.

71
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I actually managed to get a ride
on a Whitbread Round the World Race boat.

72
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It was with 17 South African men and me.

73
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I was 21 years old,

74
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and it was the longest
nine months of my life.

75
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But I went as a cook,

76
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I managed to survive until the end,

77
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and when I got to end of this race,

78
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I realized that there were
230 crew in this race,

79
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and three women,

80
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and I was one of them.

81
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And I'm a lousy cook.

82
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I'm a really good navigator.

83
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I think the second most profound
thought in my entire life was:

84
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"No man is ever going to allow me
to be a navigator on their boat, ever."

85
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And that is still the case today.

86
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In 35 years of the Whitbread,

87
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there's only been two female navigators
that haven't been on an all-female cruise,

88
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and that's how Maiden was born.

89
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That was the moment I thought,
"I've got something to fight for."

90
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And I had no idea
that I wanted to have this fight,

91
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and it was something that I took to
like a duck to water.

92
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I discovered things about myself
that I had no idea existed.

93
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I discovered I had a fighting spirit,

94
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I discovered I was competitive --

95
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never knew that before --

96
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and I discovered my second passion,

97
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which was equality.

98
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I couldn't let this one lie.

99
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And it became not just about me
wanting to navigate on a boat

100
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and having to put my own crew together

101
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and my own team,

102
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raise my own money, find my own boat,

103
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so that I could be navigator.

104
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This was about women everywhere.

105
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And this was when I realized

106
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that this was probably what I was going
to spend the rest of my life doing.

107
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It took ages for us to find the money

108
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to do the 1989 Whitbread
Round the World Race.

109
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And as we looked at all the big,

110
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multimillion pound,
all-male projects around us,

111
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with their brand-new shiny boats
designed for the race,

112
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we realized this was not going to be us.

113
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We had to make this up as we went along.

114
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No one had enough faith in us
to give us this kind of money.

115
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So I mortgaged my house

116
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and we found an old wreck with a pedigree,

117
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an old Whitbread boat --

118
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it had already been
around the world twice --

119
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in South Africa.

120
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We somehow persuaded
some guy to put it on a ship

121
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and bring it back to the UK for us.

122
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The girls were horrified
at the state of the boat.

123
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We got a free place in a yard.

124
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We got her up on the hard
and we redesigned her,

125
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we ripped her apart,

126
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we did all the work ourselves.

127
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It was the first time that anyone
had ever seen women in a shipyard,

128
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so that was quite entertaining.

129
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Every morning when we would walk in,

130
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everyone would just gawk at us.

131
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But it also had its advantages,
because everyone was so helpful.

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We were such a novelty.

133
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You know, we got given
a generator, an engine --

134
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"Do you want this old rope?"

135
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"Yep."

136
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"Old sails?"

137
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"Yep, we'll have those."

138
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So we really made it up as we went along.

139
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And I think, actually,
one of the huge advantages we had was,

140
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you know, there was no preconceived idea

141
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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.

143
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And what it also did
was it drew people to it.

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Not just women --

145
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men, anyone who'd ever been told,

146
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"You can't do something
because you're not good enough" --

147
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the right gender or right race
or right color, or whatever.

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Maiden became a passion.

149
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And it was hard to raise the money --

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hundreds of companies wouldn't sponsor us.

151
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They told us that we couldn't do it,

152
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people thought we were going to die ...

153
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You know, guys would literally
come up to me and say,

154
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"You're going to die."

155
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I'd think, "Well, OK,
that's my business, it's not yours."

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In the end, King Hussein of Jordan
sponsored Maiden,

157
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and that was an amazing thing --

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way ahead of his time, 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.

161
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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.

164
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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.

166
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And I think what it did at the time --

167
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we didn't realize.

168
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You know, we crossed the finishing line,
this incredible finish --

169
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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" as we sailed in.

171
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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'd 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.

175
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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 --

178
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have-fun type of ocean.

179
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The Southern Ocean
is a deadly serious ocean.

180
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And you know the moment
when you cross into the Southern Ocean --

181
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the latitude and longitude --

182
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you know when you're there,

183
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the waves have been building,

184
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they start getting
big whitecaps on the top,

185
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it becomes really gray,

186
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you start to get sensory deprivation.

187
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It is very focused
on who you are and what you are

188
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with this massive wilderness around you.

189
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It is empty.

190
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It is so big and so empty.

191
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You see albatrosses
swirling around the boat.

192
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It takes about four days
to sail through their territory,

193
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so you have the same
albatrosses for four days.

194
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And they find us quite a novelty,

195
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so they literally windsurf off the wind
that comes off the mainsail

196
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and they hang behind the boat,

197
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and you feel this presence behind you,

198
00:08:57,538 --> 00:08:58,723
and you turn around,

199
00:08:58,747 --> 00:09:00,831
and it's this albatross
just looking at you.

200
00:09:00,855 --> 00:09:02,835
We sold Maiden at the end of the race --

201
00:09:02,859 --> 00:09:04,229
we still had no money.

202
00:09:04,253 --> 00:09:06,301
And five years ago, we found her,

203
00:09:06,325 --> 00:09:08,904
at the same time
as a film director decided

204
00:09:08,928 --> 00:09:11,745
he wanted to make
a documentary about Maiden.

205
00:09:11,769 --> 00:09:12,920
We found Maiden,

206
00:09:12,944 --> 00:09:14,321
she burst back into my life

207
00:09:14,345 --> 00:09:17,663
and reminded me a lot of things
I had forgotten, actually,

208
00:09:17,687 --> 00:09:18,983
over the years,

209
00:09:19,007 --> 00:09:21,635
about following my heart and my gut

210
00:09:21,659 --> 00:09:24,126
and really being part of the universe.

211
00:09:24,150 --> 00:09:28,249
And everything I find important in life,

212
00:09:28,273 --> 00:09:29,948
Maiden has given back to me.

213
00:09:29,972 --> 00:09:32,059
Again, we rescued her --

214
00:09:32,083 --> 00:09:33,256
we did a Crowdfunder --

215
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:35,302
we rescued her from the Seychelles.

216
00:09:35,326 --> 00:09:37,634
Princess Haya, King Hussein's daughter,

217
00:09:37,658 --> 00:09:41,263
funded the shipping back to the UK
and then the restoration.

218
00:09:41,287 --> 00:09:43,102
All the original crew were involved.

219
00:09:43,126 --> 00:09:45,074
We put the original team back together.

220
00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:48,438
And then we decided,
what are we going to do with Maiden?

221
00:09:48,462 --> 00:09:51,216
And this, for me,
really was the moment of my life

222
00:09:51,240 --> 00:09:54,336
where I looked back
on every single thing that I'd done --

223
00:09:54,360 --> 00:09:56,502
every project, every feeling,

224
00:09:56,526 --> 00:09:59,550
every passion,
every battle, every fight --

225
00:09:59,574 --> 00:10:02,686
and I decided that I wanted Maiden
to continue that fight

226
00:10:02,710 --> 00:10:04,229
for the next generation.

227
00:10:04,253 --> 00:10:07,545
Maiden is sailing around the world
on a five-year world tour.

228
00:10:07,569 --> 00:10:11,713
We are engaging with thousands
of girls all over the world.

229
00:10:11,737 --> 00:10:16,308
We are supporting community programs
that get girls into education.

230
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Education doesn't just mean
sitting in a classroom.

231
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This, for me, is about teaching girls
you don't have to look a certain way,

232
00:10:24,634 --> 00:10:27,023
you don't have to feel a certain way,

233
00:10:27,047 --> 00:10:28,930
you don't have to behave a certain way.

234
00:10:28,954 --> 00:10:30,153
You can be successful,

235
00:10:30,177 --> 00:10:31,426
you can follow your dreams

236
00:10:31,450 --> 00:10:32,967
and you can fight for them.

237
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Life doesn't go from A to B.

238
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It's messy.

239
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My life has been a mess
from beginning to end,

240
00:10:38,732 --> 00:10:41,349
but somehow I've got to where we're going.

241
00:10:41,373 --> 00:10:45,144
The future for us
and Maiden looks amazing.

242
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And for me,

243
00:10:46,820 --> 00:10:48,981
it is all about closing the circle.

244
00:10:49,005 --> 00:10:51,524
It's about closing the circle with Maiden

245
00:10:51,548 --> 00:10:54,211
and using her to tell girls

246
00:10:54,235 --> 00:10:56,642
that if just one person believes in you,

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you can do anything.