Self-confidence is the most important asset when you're alone on treacherous seas, says Australian solo sailor Lisa Blair.
When people say to her "I don't think I could do that', Blair replies that they probably could - with time and dedication.
"The limiting factor is your mindset and your ability to believe in yourself," she tells Susie Ferguson.
Photo: Andrea Francolini
In May 2022, Lisa Blair became the fastest person in the world to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica. Her journey is captured in the documentary Ice Maiden, currently screening in the Doc Edge Festival.
While sailing around the Southern Ocean for three months on her yacht Climate Action Now, Blair tried to film as much as she could with the hope of eventually making a documentary.
Later, for Ice Maiden, she reenacted bits of the story she was "too busy trying to survive to record" on some winter nights at a Sydney marina.
"I'm crawling around the deck of the boat just getting hammered by these buckets of water [thrown by volunteers] and the rain machines are going. We had big fans to simulate the wind gusting through… It was rather interesting and just as painful as the actual thing."
Blair says her record-breaking circumnavigation of Antarctica took about three-and-a-half years of planning and preparation - much of it mental.
"I needed to work out whether I would go crazy. How would I cope being on my own solo? I'm a very chatty, social person. I do enjoy my own space, but I am quite social as well. And so how would I physically and mentally cope with that?
"I would spend most of my waking hours imagining scenarios... What would happen if the mast snapped? What would happen if I lost the rudder? What would happen if I lost the keel? What would happen if I broke my leg?"
When Blair reached Cape Horn - "technically the most dangerous place on earth to sail around" - the winds were so strong she sometimes struggled to breathe while on deck.
"The wind has torn the tops of the waves off and it's sheeting so much water sideways that you can't actually breathe the oxygen out of the air. You have to cup your mouth and create a windshield around your mouth to be able to get oxygen into your body."
On day 72, thousands of miles from land, Blair woke to a loud bang and found her mast had snapped in the night. What followed she describes as "the largest survival scenario that I've ever encountered".
"All I could see was my mast just flexing and bending like a hula girl shaking her hips... I'd broken a piece of rigging wire and within a few minutes, the mast came crashing down."
The only way to survive that night was to keep the boat floating, Blair says, which she managed to do with a screwdriver in her numb hands, a head torch lighting up just one metre in front of her and waves roaring.
Even though solo sailing is physically tough - "You're uncomfortable a lot of the time and you're pushing yourself a lot of the time" - Blair loves the simplicity of being alone at sea.
"It's wild because I grew up on land. I grew up in the bush, I was a bush baby. But when I go to sea, it's like all the chains, all the responsibilities, all the things we have to worry about in our day-to-day life just go away. I only have to think about eat, sleep, sail. What's the wind doing? Rinse, repeat."
