Hilary Lister – a different kind of extreme sailing

On Friday 8 August 2008, three months before the start of the Vendée Globe, singlehanded sailor Hilary Lister and her team decided to suspend her round Britain record attempt and continue next spring. 8 weeks after leaving Dover, she had reached the southwest Cornish fishing port of Newlyn – a point she should have reached in the middle of her third week according to her schedule.

Her team did have problems with the boat’s keel, but the weather was also responsible for many of the delays.

Compared with the daily runs typical of the Ocean 60s in the Vendée Globe, even her original schedule doesn’t sound impressive – in fact many family cruisers do more miles per day – but Hilary and her boat are a bit different. The only part of her body that she can move is her head, and she controls everything by blowing or sucking through three tubes strapped to her mouth.

I’m not going to try to describe the drive (probably better described as bloodymindedness) that led her to take up offshore sailing while being ground down by Reflex Sympathetic Dystropy. Just download this and read about it for yourself.