“Stop being a bystander in your own life”; the sailor that took the path to becoming themselves, no matter what

Not everyone has a life that simply goes from one point to another unchallenged at any point. This is the exact same for Tracy Edwards, navigator of Maiden.

Doing what you want to do is a privilege that not many people get, Tracy was not going to let anything get in the way of that. Expelled from school at 15, many would not have expected anything to come from someone after that as it is common for motivation to simply dissipate. 

Tracy knew education was not for her and so did her Mother. Speaking in a Ted talk Tracy quoted her Mother, saying, “Darling, education is not for everyone… every single one of us is good at something, you just have to go and find what that is.” After that her Mother let her go back-packing at the age of 16. This is an enablement that many young people today would definitely not get, a sense of freedom and a journey path starting to being happier within herself.

Going to Greece at that time was the best thing that could’ve happened. At 17 whilst working on a boat, Tracy was asked if she could navigate, her obvious response was no. Over two days the skipper then taught Tracy how to navigate and she knew there and then this was it. Especially after  she says that numbers appeared to her like ‘Hieroglyphics’ beforehand and hated them. 

The next stage of the journey came to finally entering the Whitbread around the world race. Out of over 200 crew in the whole race, Tracy was one of three women and also she had no part in navigating she was onboard as a Chef. This irritated her as she knew that her own cooking was ‘lousy’ and that she was a great navigator. 

This lead to her quest to get an all female crew to take part in the race. Once doing so this annoyed a lot of people at the time, a lot of men in particular. This didn’t phase Tracy at all, constantly saying, ‘How does it affect them?’. Tracy even recalled on many times men coming up to her and saying ‘You’re going to die’. The response, “Well, ok, that’s my business.” The Maiden came second. The best British boat since 1977. 

Tracy has since hit bankruptcy in later years and is not disgruntled by it in the slightest. She got expelled from school, was told on many occasions she would die, has later on gone bankrupt and had many other hurdles on her way. Tracy is still happy, she did what she wanted, and let nobody, no man, tell her what she could and couldn’t do. Be yourself, no matter what.