MAIDEN MAKES HISTORY AGAIN

Being the first all-female crew to win a round-the-world race is seismic in itself, but the diverse nationalities of the crew are just as significant for the future of sailing

- Heather Prentice and Barry Pickthall

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