Authors Electric

  I should have come by boat, of course. The one-way street leading down to the river at Hamble-le-Rice, near Southampton, is as narrow and steep as anyone might expect, who knows the ways of riverside villages. I thought of Pin Mill, I thought of Wivenhoe and Maldon. You can probably think of many more. Then, like all the other riverside towns and villages which you might have in your mind’s eye, I was suddenly there, by the water. The public hard stretched in front of me, a yacht club to the left and an utterly lovely 1960s ocean racing yacht doing an utterly incredible 21 st century 180º pivot in her own length to reverse smoothly into her pontoon slot, just as the sun went over the yardarm. The Yacht Club at the end of the High Street by Janet Bradley I’d come to Hamble to have lunch with Vuyisile Jaca, who was part of the winning Maiden team in the recent Ocean Globe Race – and also the first Black African woman ever to race around the world. I wanted to say goodbye before s...

The only UK entry in the 2023 OCR  It started just three weeks ago. I’d heard that Tracy Edwards’s iconic yacht Maiden was lying in St Katherine’s Dock in London and would be open to the public on Saturday afternoon. Then I heard that I could buy a ticket just a couple of days earlier and attend an evening event to meet the crew. This had the great merit of offering pleasure and research… would Tracy Edwards herself be there? ‘Marketing’ isn’t keen on Lionesses of the Sea as the title for my forthcoming book about c20th women sailors and I can’t be bothered to argue the point just now. But Tracy would make a great lioness.  She was certainly there. She opened the gate to let us all troop in. An erect, petite figure in an anorak. Not playing the celebrity hostess; the gate needed opening. She opened it. Suddenly there, next to  Maiden , able to touch her, potentially go on board, I felt overcome with emotion. This yacht, which had raced around the world with the first...