THE 2023-24 OCEAN GLOBE RACE
The all-female Maiden crew have again made history, sailing 28,000 miles around the world to win the Ocean Globe Race. Heather Thomas is the first female British skipper to win a round-the-world race and her team aboard Maiden, backed by Tracy Edwards MBE, are the first all-female crew to win a global race. It doesn’t get better than this. Fourteen crews set out from Cowes on 10 September on the adventure of a lifetime, full of expectations for a race around the world. Seven months later, 10 returned, all changed by the experience – some saying they wanted to do it all again.
One of those was Heather Thomas, the skipper of the all-female crew aboard Maiden, in which Tracy Edwards and her team made history 34 years earlier by becoming the first all-female crew to compete in a round-the-world race.
Back then, Tracy and her Whitbread crew won two of the legs and finished 2nd in class, returning home to Cowes to a hero’s welcome. Heather and her team took the next step – winning the Ocean Globe Race outright! And Heather Thomas didn’t just win, she and her second generation Maiden crew thrashed the other 13 teams in a boat that had already raced four times around the globe.
Thomas, at 27, the youngest skipper in the fleet, was ecstatic. Talking about her crewmates, she said: ‘There is such a strong bond between us. We’ve achieved our goal of showing what women can do. I’m so proud of this crew!’
CELEBRATING DIVERSITY
This story is from the July 2024 edition of Yachting Monthly UK.
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This story is from the July 2024 edition of Yachting Monthly UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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