Stop being a bystander in your own life

"Life doesn't go from A to B -- it's messy," says sailing legend Tracy Edwards. In this inspiring talk, she tells how she went from teenage misfit to skipper of the first all-female crew in the toughest race on the seas -- and how she now helps young people around the world achieve their dreams, too.

Being able to navigate
is an extraordinary gift,

and there is nothing like it in the world.

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

and knowing that I can get
my team and my boat

safely from that port to another port,

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

Being at sea, for me, is ...

it's total freedom,

and it is the ultimate
opportunity to be you,

because you can't be anything else.

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

It is a small area.

Maiden is 58 feet long.

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

I mean, you are literally
up against each other,

and so you have to be you.

The greatest moment
for me when I'm sailing

is the moment that the land disappears.

It's an indescribable moment of --

(Gasps)

adventure and no turning back,

and just you and the boat
and the elements.

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

The further you get away from land,

the more you kind of fit into yourself.

It is you,

how do we get to the next place,

how do we stay alive,

how do we look after each other

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

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

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

And that's a really good question.

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

which became a dream,

which became an obsession,"

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

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

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

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

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

So I tell the truth.

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

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

to my long-suffering mother,

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

then we will call the police.

And my mum took me and she said,

"Darling, education is not for everyone."

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

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

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

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

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

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

kind of going with the flow.

And then on my second transatlantic,

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

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

I was expelled before long division."

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

What happens if I fall over the side?

Stop being a bystander in your own life,

stop looking at what you're doing

and start taking part."

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

I learned to navigate in two days --

and this is someone who hates numbers

and sees them as hieroglyphics.

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

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

It was with 17 South African men and me.

I was 21 years old,

and it was the longest
nine months of my life.

But I went as a cook,

I managed to survive until the end,

and when I got to end of this race,

I realized that there were
230 crew in this race,

and three women,

and I was one of them.

And I'm a lousy cook.

I'm a really good navigator.

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

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

And that is still the case today.

In 35 years of the Whitbread,

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

and that's how Maiden was born.

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

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

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

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

I discovered I had a fighting spirit,

I discovered I was competitive --

never knew that before --

and I discovered my second passion,

which was equality.

I couldn't let this one lie.

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

and having to put my own crew together

and my own team,

raise my own money, find my own boat,

so that I could be navigator.

This was about women everywhere.

And this was when I realized

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

It took ages for us to find the money

to do the 1989 Whitbread
Round the World Race.

And as we looked at all the big,

multimillion pound,
all-male projects around us,

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

we realized this was not going to be us.

We had to make this up as we went along.

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

So I mortgaged my house,

and we found an old wreck with a pedigree,

an old Whitbread boat --

it had already been
around the world twice --

in South Africa.

We somehow persuaded
some guy to put it on a ship

and bring it back to the UK for us.

The girls were horrified
at the state of the boat.

We got a free place in a yard.

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

we ripped her apart,

we did all the work ourselves.

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

so that was quite entertaining.

Every morning when we would walk in,

everyone would just gawk at us.

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

We were such a novelty.

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

"Do you want this old rope?"

"Yep."

"Old sails?"

"Yep, we'll have those."

So we really made it up as we went along.

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

you know, there was no preconceived idea

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

So whatever we did was OK.

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

Not just women --

men, anyone who'd ever been told,

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

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

Maiden became a passion.

And it was hard to raise the money --

hundreds of companies wouldn't sponsor us.

They told us that we couldn't do it,

people thought we were going to die ...

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

"You're going to die."

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

In the end, King Hussein of Jordan
sponsored Maiden,

and that was an amazing thing --

way ahead of his time, all about equality.

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

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

We won two legs of the Whitbread --

two of the most difficult legs --

and we came second overall.

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

It annoyed a lot of people.

And I think what it did at the time --

we didn't realize.

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

600 boats sailing up the Solent with us;

50,000 people in Ocean Village
chanting "Maiden, Maiden" as we sailed in.

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

and we hoped we'd achieved something good,

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

The Southern Ocean is my favorite ocean.

Each ocean has a character.

So the North Atlantic is a yomping ocean.

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

have-fun type of ocean.

The Southern Ocean
is a deadly serious ocean.

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

the latitude and longitude --

you know when you're there,

the waves have been building,

they start getting
big whitecaps on the top,

it becomes really gray,

you start to get sensory deprivation.

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

with this massive wilderness around you.

It is empty.

It is so big and so empty.

You see albatrosses
swirling around the boat.

It takes about four days
to sail through their territory,

so you have the same
albatross for four days.

And they find us quite a novelty,

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

and they hang behind the boat,

and you feel this presence behind you,

and you turn around,

and it's this albatross
just looking at you.

We sold Maiden at the end of the race --

we still had no money.

And five years ago, we found her,

at the same time
as a film director decided

he wanted to make
a documentary about Maiden.

We found Maiden,

she burst back into my life

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

over the years,

about following my heart and my gut

and really being part of the universe.

And everything I find important in life,

Maiden has given back to me.

Again, we rescued her --

we did a Crowdfunder --

we rescued her from the Seychelles.

Princess Haya, King Hussein's daughter,

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

All the original crew were involved.

We put the original team back together.

And then we decided,
what are we going to do with Maiden?

And this, for me,
really was the moment of my life

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

every project, every feeling,

every passion,
every battle, every fight --

and I decided that I wanted Maiden
to continue that fight

for the next generation.

Maiden is sailing around the world
on a five-year world tour.

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

We are supporting community programs
that get girls into education.

Education doesn't just mean
sitting in a classroom.

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

you don't have to feel a certain way,

you don't have to behave a certain way.

You can be successful,

you can follow your dreams

and you can fight for them.

Life doesn't go from A to B.

It's messy.

My life has been a mess
from beginning to end,

but somehow I've got to where we're going.

The future for us
and Maiden looks amazing.

And for me,

it is all about closing the circle.

It's about closing the circle with Maiden

and using her to tell girls

that if just one person believes in you,

you can do anything.