Africa, Antarctica and now around Australia – Lisa Blair has never taken the ‘easy route’.
Even before becoming a world-renowned adventurer, the Honorary CYCA Member has been pushing her limits. And, on October 20, from adjacent to the CYCA in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, she’ll do it again.
Blair, who holds the record for the first woman to sail solo around Antarctica, aims to become the first woman to sail solo around Australia, circumnavigating the entire coastline anti-clockwise – 6,536 nautical miles – taking approximately six weeks to complete the epic journey.
“I always wanted to create a bit of a career out of adventuring and to use that to inspire people to have adventures and follow their dreams and goals,” Blair tells Offshore.
“When I was looking at doing Antarctica I was also looking at the Australia record – at the time I deemed it safer to do than the Australian one because of the lack of shipping channels, rocks, reefs and coastline and all those additional challenges.
“From there I always then had the intention to do the women’s record around Australia. Now I’m putting it together and doing it!”
For Blair, much of the challenge isn’t going to be on the high seas.
“I think 90 per cent of the battle is getting to the start line – getting the sponsorship, the boat (CLIMATE ACTION NOW) prepped and ensuring everything is ready to go and ticking the boxes,” she says.
“The challenge itself – I love being away from land, and for me it’s overcoming all the obstacles along the way… fatigue management, loneliness, weather change, storm conditions, light winds, reefs, rocks, managing yourself alone on a boat for six weeks – that’s the challenge I love.
“It’s a unique one – some people would definitely struggle with the loneliness. I don’t have anyone to default to, to say ‘do this, this, this’ so I have to figure it out and I enjoy that challenge. Being at sea so long, after so long preparing and being in a rush to get going, it’s this incredible calming moment of ‘ahh, now I’m just sailing and I don’t need to worry about anything else’.”
Blair’s love of sailing started during her university days. “I got a job as a cook and a cleaner on a charter boat in the Whitsundays, doing a lot of the grunt work but also being able to enjoy the sailing. I was fortunate enough the deckie on board was really helpful – he started teaching me the names of things, as did the skipper who saw my interest grow, and I went from there,” the artteacher graduate says.
“It’s a sport anyone can do irrespective of your physical capabilities, and I think you can learn quite quickly or slowly depending on how you want to learn. It’s an amazing sport.
“I was a primary school teacher for four months in Tanzania – a great experience. Because I was a teacher, the parents would take you to the local dance clubs, little holes in the wall, underground… lots of fun! I did that trip, did another year of school then went to the Whitsundays and the rest is history.
“I do fully intend to get back to the art but maybe when I’m 50 and I’ve set up a cool art studio.”
Despite a later start to sailing, Blair, 33, however, is not an inexperienced sailor. Last year she competed in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, and she’s experienced some of the world’s most challenging conditions – including being demasted on her successful Antarctica adventure – and come through the other side.
“We later worked out it was an electric current issue through the rigging, which caused my diagonal shroud to snap after four months… it snapped when I was in seven to eight metre swells, with 30 to 40 knots of wind,” Blair says of her biggest challenge.
“It was pretty ‘decent’ (challenging conditions) but that was average for the Southern Ocean, I’d been in that for weeks and weeks. It’d just gone dark, the rig snapped as soon as it lost its support – it took me four hours to separate the spear from the boat. I very nearly died several times. I managed to save the boat but I was hypothermic at the end of it from the conditions… it took me another 10 days to build a jury rig, intercept a container ship and do a fuel transfer and then motor sail the boat up to South Africa which was another 1000 miles away at the time of the demasting.”
After two months in South Africa, an insurance payout and the fortuitous discovery of replacement sails and a mast, she returned to her demasting point to continue where she left off.
Terrified – every wave – and battling sea sickness, a head cold, 15-metre swells and massive storms, she conquered the trip. But don’t call her crazy for signing up to do it again, albeit in warmer waters.
“All the time [people call me crazy] – it’s an opinion, everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” Blair says.
“I’m not crazy, I’m logical. I take a long, hard look at my skillset and do my research and preparation. I surround myself with the right people, experts, so if I have a gap in my knowledge like in rigging or electronics or any of those areas, I have experts on my team who I can call day and night. I think that takes the crazy out of it.
“I think this journey will be a lot different to the Antarctica one – it’s relatively high-risk the entire way around. My greatest fear is the guys with the little fishing tinnies who go five or 10 miles offshore on a beautiful day and I can’t see them until I’m right on top of them. It takes time to change direction, it takes time to change the sails. I’m not going to have a lot of rest.
“It’s going to be more tropical, though – it’s going to quite warm around the top!”
For Blair, this trip is about much more than personal promotion, though – it’s about raising the profile of the impact humans are having on the planet through her CLIMATE ACTION NOW project.
“When I did the Clipper Round the World Race and we were sailing around the top of Australia, through Indonesia, Singapore, China and the North Pacific it was a soup – we literally had the kitchen sink flowing past. Seeing that pollution – it’s a navigational hazard and it’s heartbreaking,” she says.
“One of the saddest things, for me, is that people still don’t understand the concept that what you throw in the street ends up in the ocean then ends up in your stomach through the food you eat.
“I wanted to turn that into a positive story – there’s enough negativity out there. I wanted to inspire people to step up and take a bit of responsibility and make a change – asking people to make a post-it message [about something] that they’re already doing. It might be that they’re no longer using single-use water bottles, or they’re turning off the lights at night or cutting down their showers by a minute or two… whatever it was, I took their messages and took it into the vinyl hull wrap.
“For every person with a note on the boat, they have that footprint – sharing their message. When I have a school group, it helps create that conversation, and showing it’s not that difficult to make a positive change.”
Blair has had some significant support across her adventures, including from Pivotel who have provided technology assistance in a partnership that will help broadcast her message from the boat to the world. So too, from the likes of some legendary sailing figures and adventures whose footsteps she’s following.
“I stayed with Kay Cottee when I came back from Antarctica and I’d consider Jessica Watson a really close friend now,” Blair enthuses.
“For me, I was working in a jewellery store in a mall trying to build the funds to sail around the world and I started reading the stories and the books – at the same time trying to work out my life direction and seeing whether I wanted to pursue sailing or give it up altogether.
“The one thing that resonated with me was that they were normal people… they weren’t gurus of the industry and where they had a gap in their knowledge they sought education and obtained it. It made it all achievable. Jess has been a great supporter of mine for many years now. I met her when she finished her circumnavigation before I did mine with crew. I went to them often and they were incredibly supported.”
Does she now see herself in the same light, seeing as she’s mentioned in the same breath – a pioneer of the sport?
“I still don’t! Hopefully one day. There’s a time and a place,” she says.
“One day I’d like to be considered as one of Australia’s greatest adventurers, not just sailing.”
What does that mean exactly?
“You’ll have to stay tuned!”
Lisa Blair departs on her circumnavigation of Australia on Saturday 20 October 2018, from D’Albora Marina adjacent to the CYCA at Rushcutters Bay. For more information on her adventure visit www.lisablairsailstheworld.com
| What is CLIMATE ACTION NOW?
Since Lisa Blair found her love for sailing in 2005, she has noticed the impact man-made climate change has on the environment. The storms are more aggressive and less predictable, the absence of wild life, and the increased risk of collision with ice as the glaciers keep melting. These are all symptoms of man-made climate change. What we know is that action needs to be taken and a greater awareness needs to be reached. Blair’s project CLIMATE ACTION NOW is |
designed not to focus on the problem but instead on actions we are taking or can be taking as individuals towards a solution by utilising the power of ‘note’ sharing. She invites the community to get involved and create a post-it note. For your message add an action that you are already taking towards a better future. This could be ‘I ride to work for climate action’, or ‘I recycle for climate action’. Together we can deliver a very strong message which will receive a high level of media attention and create some meaningful conversations around this topic. Lisa is has also re-named her yacht ‘CLIMATE ACTION NOW’. |
This article originally appeared in Offshore magazine October-November 2018 – click here to read more.
