Being able to navigate is an extraordinary gift, and there is nothing like it in the world. I get no more sense of satisfaction greater than leaving a port and knowing that I can get my team and my boat safely from that port to another port, maybe three, four, five, six thousand miles away.
Biti u mogućnosti navigirati je poseban dar i ne postoji ništa slično. Ne postoji veća satisfakcija nego napustiti luku znajući da mogu odvesti svoju ekipu i svoj brod sigurno iz te luke u drugu udaljenu možda i pet, šest, osam ili deset tisuća kilometara.
Being at sea, for me, is ... it's total freedom, and it is the ultimate opportunity to be you, because you can't be anything else. You are naked in front of your peers on a boat. It is a small area. Maiden is 58 feet long. There's 12 women in a 58-foot boat. I mean, you are literally up against each other, and so you have to be you.
Biti na moru za mene je... totalna sloboda i to je ultimativna prilika biti svoj, jer ne možeš biti ništa drugo. Pred svojim kolegama na brodu si ogoljen. To je mali prostor. Maiden je jedrilica dugačka 18 metara. 12 žena se nalazi na tom brodu od 18 metara. Doslovce ste jedna uz drugu, tako da morate biti svoji.
The greatest moment for me when I'm sailing is the moment that the land disappears. It's an indescribable moment of --
Najveći trenutak za mene kada jedrim je trenutak kada kopno nestane. To je neopisiv trenutak...
(Gasps)
(uzdah)
adventure and no turning back, and just you and the boat and the elements. I wish everyone could experience this at least once in their lives. The further you get away from land, the more you kind of fit into yourself. It is you, how do we get to the next place, how do we stay alive, how do we look after each other and what do we do to get to the other side.
avanture i bez okretanja, samo ti i tvoj brod i elementi. Želim svima da to iskuse barem jednom u životu. Što se više odmičeš od kopna, to se više približavaš samom sebi. To si ti, kako doći do sljedećeg odredišta, kako preživjeti, kako brinuti jedni o drugima i što učiniti kako bismo prešli na drugi kraj.
So the question I get asked the most when I go and do talks is "How do you become an ocean-racing sailor?" And that's a really good question. And I've always wanted to say "I had a vision, which became a dream, which became an obsession," but, of course, life's not like that, and one thing I'm really anxious for people to know about me is that my life hasn't gone from A to B -- because how many people can say their lives just go from A to B; they think, "I'm going to do this," and they go and do it? So I tell the truth. And the truth is that I was expelled from school when I was 15 years old, and my long-suffering headmaster sent a long-suffering note to my long-suffering mother, basically saying that if Tracy darkens these doors of the school again, then we will call the police. And my mum took me and she said, "Darling, education is not for everyone." And then she gave me the best piece of advice anyone has ever given me. She said, "Every single one of us is good at something, you just have to go and find what that is." And at the age of 16, she let me go backpacking off to Greece.
Najčešće pitanje koje mi postavljaju kada održavam govore je: "Kako postati mornar koji se utrkuje oceanom?" I to je zbilja dobro pitanje. I oduvijek sam htjela odgovoriti: "Imala sam viziju koja je postala san, koji je postao opsesija." Ali, naravno, život nije uvijek takav, i jedna stvar koju bih stvarno voljela da ljudi znaju o meni je ta da moj život nije išao od točke A do točke B, jer koliko ljudi može reći da njihov život ide od točke A do točke B i pomisle: "Napravit ću ovo." i onda to uistinu naprave? Zato kažem istinu. A istina je da sam izbačena iz škole u dobi od 15 godina i da je pateći ravnatelj poslao pateću notu mojoj patećoj majci u kojoj je pisalo da ako se Tracy pojavi ponovno na vratima ove škole, pozvat će policiju. Moja mama me posjela i rekla: "Draga, obrazovanje nije za svakoga." I tada mi je dala najbolji savjet koji mi je ikad itko dao. Rekla je: "Svatko od nas je dobar u nečemu, samo moraš potražiti što je to." I kad sam imala 16 godina, dozvolila mi je otputovati u Grčku samo s ruksakom.
I ended up working on boats, which was OK -- 17 years old, didn't really know what I wanted to do, kind of going with the flow. And then on my second transatlantic, my skipper said to me, "Can you navigate?" And I said, "Of course I can't navigate, I was expelled before long division." And he said, "Don't you think you should be able to navigate? What happens if I fall over the side? Stop being a bystander in your own life, stop looking at what you're doing and start taking part." This day, for me, was the day that my whole life started. I learned to navigate in two days -- and this is someone who hates numbers and sees them as hieroglyphics. It opened up avenues and opportunities to me that I could never have imagined.
Završila sam radeći na brodovima, što je bilo OK, sa 17 godina nisam zaista znala što želim raditi, više sam išla niz vjetar. I tada, na mom drugom transatlantskom putovanju, moj skiper mi je rekao: "Možeš li navigirati?" I, naravno, rekla sam: "Naravno da ne mogu navigirati, izbačena sam iz škole prije nego sam naučila dijeliti." Rekao je: "Ne misliš li da bi trebala moći navigirati? Što ako padnem preko broda? Prestani biti promatrač vlastitog života, prestani gledati ono što radiš i počni sudjelovati." Taj dan je za mene ustvari dan kada je moj cijeli život započeo. Naučila sam navigirati u dva dana... A ja sam netko tko mrzi brojeve i gleda na njih kao na hijeroglife. To mi je otvorilo prostor i prilike kakve nikad nisam mogla zamisliti.
I actually managed to get a ride on a Whitbread Round the World Race boat. It was with 17 South African men and me. I was 21 years old, and it was the longest nine months of my life. But I went as a cook, I managed to survive until the end, and when I got to end of this race, I realized that there were 230 crew in this race, and three women, and I was one of them. And I'm a lousy cook. I'm a really good navigator.
Uspjela sam dobiti mjesto na utrkama Whitbread Round i World Race. Bili smo 17 Južnoafrikanaca i ja. Bila mi je 21 godina i to je bilo najduljih devet mjeseci u mom životu. Bila sam kuharica i uspjela preživjeti do kraja, i kada sam došla do cilja shvatila sam da se natjecalo 230 posada i tri žene, a ja sam bila jedna od njih. A ja sam loša kuharica. Ali sam zbilja dobar navigator.
I think the second most profound thought in my entire life was: "No man is ever going to allow me to be a navigator on their boat, ever." And that is still the case today. In 35 years of the Whitbread, there's only been two female navigators that haven't been on an all-female cruise, and that's how Maiden was born. That was the moment I thought, "I've got something to fight for." And I had no idea that I wanted to have this fight, and it was something that I took to like a duck to water. I discovered things about myself that I had no idea existed. I discovered I had a fighting spirit, I discovered I was competitive -- never knew that before -- and I discovered my second passion, which was equality. I couldn't let this one lie. And it became not just about me wanting to navigate on a boat and having to put my own crew together and my own team, raise my own money, find my own boat, so that I could be navigator. This was about women everywhere. And this was when I realized that this was probably what I was going to spend the rest of my life doing.
Mislim da je sljedeća najdublja misao mog cijelog života bila: "Nijedan muškarac mi nikada neće dozvoliti da budem navigator na njegovom brodu." I to je i danas slučaj. U 35 godina utrke Whitbread bila su samo dva ženska navigatora koja su bila u cjelovito ženskim posadama i tako se rodio Maiden. Tog trenutka sam pomislila: "Imam nešto za što se borim." I nisam imala zamisao da se želim boriti, to je nešto što sam prihvatila vrlo prirodno. Otkrila sam stvari o sebi za koje nisam znala da postoje. Otkrila sam da imam borbeni duh, otkrila sam da sam kompetitivna - nikad to prije nisam znala - i otkrila sam svoju drugu strast, a to je jednakost. Nisam mogla to propustiti. I nije se radilo samo o meni, da želim navigirati brodom i moram sastaviti svoju posadu i svoju ekipu, prikupiti novac, pronaći brod kako bih mogla biti navigator. Radilo se o svim ženama posvuda. I tada sam shvatila da ću provesti ostatak svog života radeći ovo.
It took ages for us to find the money to do the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. And as we looked at all the big, multimillion pound, all-male projects around us, with their brand-new shiny boats designed for the race, we realized this was not going to be us. We had to make this up as we went along. No one had enough faith in us to give us this kind of money. So I mortgaged my house, and we found an old wreck with a pedigree, an old Whitbread boat -- it had already been around the world twice -- in South Africa. We somehow persuaded some guy to put it on a ship and bring it back to the UK for us. The girls were horrified at the state of the boat. We got a free place in a yard. We got her up on the hard and we redesigned her, we ripped her apart, we did all the work ourselves. It was the first time that anyone had ever seen women in a shipyard, so that was quite entertaining. Every morning when we would walk in, everyone would just gawk at us. But it also had its advantages, because everyone was so helpful. We were such a novelty. You know, we got given a generator, an engine -- "Do you want this old rope?" "Yep." "Old sails?" "Yep, we'll have those." So we really made it up as we went along.
Bilo je potrebno mnogo vremena kako bismo prikupile novac za utrke Whitbread Round i World Race 1989. godine. I dok smo pretraživali sve te velike multimilijunske muške projekte oko nas, skupa sa svojim novoulaštenim brodovima dizajniranima za utrke, shvatili smo da to nismo mi. Morali smo osmisliti sve novo i krenuli smo. Nitko nije imao dovoljno vjere u nas kako bi nam dao toliki novac. Tako da sam stavila hipoteku na kuću i našli smo staru ragu s pedigreom - stari Whitbread brod... koji je već dva puta plovio oko svijeta u Južnoj Africi. Nekako smo nagovorili nekakvog tipa da ga stavi na svoj brod i dovuče ga nama natrag u Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo. Cure su bile prestravljene stanjem broda. Dobile smo besplatno mjesto u brodogradilištu. Postavile smo ga i redizajnirale, cijelog smo ga rastavile i to sve samostalno. To je bilo prvi puta da je netko vidio žene u brodogradilištu, tako da je to bilo zabavno. Svako jutro kada smo dolazile svi su zurili u nas. Ali to je imalo i svoje prednosti jer su svi bili susretljivi. Bili smo takva novina. Znate, dobili smo generator, motor... "Želite li ovo staro uže?" "Može." "Stara jedra?" "Može, uzet ćemo ih." Tako da smo putem sve izmišljali.
And I think, actually, one of the huge advantages we had was, you know, there was no preconceived idea about how an all-female crew would sail around the world. So whatever we did was OK. And what it also did was it drew people to it. Not just women -- men, anyone who'd ever been told, "You can't do something because you're not good enough" -- the right gender or right race or right color, or whatever. Maiden became a passion. And it was hard to raise the money -- hundreds of companies wouldn't sponsor us. They told us that we couldn't do it, people thought we were going to die ... You know, guys would literally come up to me and say, "You're going to die." I'd think, "Well, OK, that's my business, it's not yours." In the end, King Hussein of Jordan sponsored Maiden, and that was an amazing thing -- way ahead of his time, all about equality.
I zapravo mislim da je jedna od velikih prednosti koje smo imali bila, znate, da nije unaprijed postojala zamisao o tome kako će cjelovito ženska posada oploviti svijet. Tako da je sve što smo učinile bilo OK. I uz sve to, privuklo je i ljude. Ne samo žene - muškarce, svakoga kome je ikada bilo rečeno: "Ne možeš to napraviti jer nisi dovoljno dobar", nisi pravog spola, prave rase, boje kože ili štogod. Maiden je postao strast. I bilo je teško prikupiti novac ... Stotine nas kompanija nije htjelo sponzorirati. Rekli su nam da to ne možemo učiniti, ljudi su mislili da ćemo poginuti ... Znate, ljudi su mi doslovno znali prići i reći: "Poginut ćeš." Pomislila bih: "OK, to je moja stvar, a ne tvoja." Na kraju je jordanski kralj Hussein sponzorirao Maiden i to je bila fantastična stvar, jako puno ispred svog vremena, sve zbog jednakosti.
We sailed around the world with a message of peace and equality. We were the only boat in the race with a message of any kind. We won two legs of the Whitbread -- two of the most difficult legs -- and we came second overall. And that is still the best result for a British boat since 1977. It annoyed a lot of people. And I think what it did at the time -- we didn't realize. You know, we crossed the finishing line, this incredible finish -- 600 boats sailing up the Solent with us; 50,000 people in Ocean Village chanting "Maiden, Maiden" as we sailed in. And so we knew we'd done something that we wanted to do and we hoped we'd achieved something good, but we had no idea at the time how many women's lives we changed.
Oplovili smo svijet s porukom mira i jednakosti. Bili smo jedini brod u utrci s bilo kakvom porukom. Osvojili smo dvije postaje Whitbread utrke, dvije najteže postaje, i završili smo kao drugi ukupno. I to je i dalje najbolji rezultat jednog britanskog broda od 1977. godine. To je zasmetalo mnogim ljudima. I mislim da to što smo tada napravili nismo zapravo shvatili. Znate, prešli smo ciljnu liniju, nevjerojatan ulaz u cilj, 600 brodova koje je jedrilo uz nas tjesnacem Solent; 50 000 ljudi u Ocean Villageu skandiralo je "Maiden, Maiden" dok smo prilazili. I tako smo znali da smo napravili nešto što smo stvarno htjeli i nadali se da smo postigli nešto dobro, ali tada nismo pojma imali koliko smo ženskih života promijenili.
The Southern Ocean is my favorite ocean. Each ocean has a character. So the North Atlantic is a yomping ocean. It's a jolly, go-for-it, heave-ho type of -- have-fun type of ocean. The Southern Ocean is a deadly serious ocean. And you know the moment when you cross into the Southern Ocean -- the latitude and longitude -- you know when you're there, the waves have been building, they start getting big whitecaps on the top, it becomes really gray, you start to get sensory deprivation. It is very focused on who you are and what you are with this massive wilderness around you. It is empty. It is so big and so empty. You see albatrosses swirling around the boat. It takes about four days to sail through their territory, so you have the same albatross for four days. And they find us quite a novelty, so they literally windsurf off the wind that comes off the mainsail and they hang behind the boat, and you feel this presence behind you, and you turn around, and it's this albatross just looking at you.
Južni ocean je moj najdraži ocean. Svaki ocean ima karakter. Tako je Sjeverni Atlantik za "propješačiti". To je veseli, "samo naprijed", "slobodno prođi", "zabavi se" tip oceana. Južni ocean je mrtvo ozbiljni ocean. I čim prijeđeš u Južni ocean, odmah znaš, njegova duljina i širina, znaš da si tamo, valovi se dižu, počinju dobivati bijele vrhove, postaje zbilja sivo, počinješ imati osjećaj lišenosti. Veliki je fokus na tome tko si i što si u toj svoj masivnoj divljini koja te okružuje. Prazan je. Toliko velik i prazan. Vidiš albatrose kako se kovitlaju oko broda. Potrebno je četiri dana kako bi prešao kroz njihov teritorij, tako da se isti albatrosi pojavljuju kroz ta četiri dana. I njima smo poprilična novost tako da doslovno surfaju uz vjetar s našeg glavnog jedra i vise iza broda, tako da osjećate njihovu prisutnost iza vas, okrenete se i tamo su ti albatrosi koji vas gledaju.
We sold Maiden at the end of the race -- we still had no money. And five years ago, we found her, at the same time as a film director decided he wanted to make a documentary about Maiden. We found Maiden, she burst back into my life and reminded me a lot of things I had forgotten, actually, over the years, about following my heart and my gut and really being part of the universe. And everything I find important in life, Maiden has given back to me. Again, we rescued her -- we did a Crowdfunder -- we rescued her from the Seychelles. Princess Haya, King Hussein's daughter, funded the shipping back to the UK and then the restoration. All the original crew were involved. We put the original team back together. And then we decided, what are we going to do with Maiden? And this, for me, really was the moment of my life where I looked back on every single thing that I'd done -- every project, every feeling, every passion, every battle, every fight -- and I decided that I wanted Maiden to continue that fight for the next generation.
Prodali smo Maiden na kraju utrke, još uvijek nismo imali novaca. Prije pet godina smo brod pronašli baš u vrijeme kada je filmski redatelj odlučio da želi napraviti dokumentarac o Maidenu. Pronašli smo Maiden i vratio se u moj život te me podsjetio na mnoge stvari koje sam zapravo zaboravila kroz godine, o tome kako pratiti svoje srce i instinkt i zbilja biti dio svemira. I sve što smatram važnim u životu, Maiden mi je vratio. Dakle, spasili smo ga, potražili grupno financiranje, spasili smo ga sa Sejšela. Princeza Haya, kći kralja Husseina, financirala je povratak broda u Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo i zatim restauraciju. Cijela originalna postava je bila prisutna. Okupili smo originalni tim. I tada smo se upitali: što ćemo učiniti s Maidenom? I to je, za mene, bio trenutak u životu kada sam pogledala unatrag svaku sitnicu koju sam napravila, svaki projekt, svaki osjećaj, svaku strast, svaku bitku, svaku borbu, i odlučila kako želim da Maiden nastavi tu borbu za sljedeću generaciju.
Maiden is sailing around the world on a five-year world tour. We are engaging with thousands of girls all over the world. We are supporting community programs that get girls into education. Education doesn't just mean sitting in a classroom. This, for me, is about teaching girls you don't have to look a certain way, you don't have to feel a certain way, you don't have to behave a certain way. You can be successful, you can follow your dreams and you can fight for them. Life doesn't go from A to B. It's messy. My life has been a mess from beginning to end, but somehow I've got to where we're going.
Maiden plovi oko svijeta na petogodišnjoj turneji. Angažirani smo oko tisuća djevojčica iz cijelog svijeta. Podupiremo društvene programe kako bi obrazovali djevojčice. Obrazovanje ne znači samo sjedenje u učionici. Za mene je to učenje djevojčica o tome kako ne moraju izgledati na određeni način, ne moraju se osjećati na određeni način, ne moraju se ponašati na određeni način. Možeš biti uspješan, možeš slijediti svoje snove i možeš se boriti za njih. Život ne ide od točke A do točke B. Zamršen je. Moj život je bio zamršen od početka do kraja, ali nekako sam dospjela tamo gdje smo krenuli.
The future for us and Maiden looks amazing. And for me, it is all about closing the circle. It's about closing the circle with Maiden and using her to tell girls that if just one person believes in you, you can do anything.
Budućnost za nas i Maiden izgleda fantastično. I za mene, sve je u zatvaranju kruga. O zatvaranju kruga s Maidenom i njegovom korištenju kako bih poručila djevojčicama da ukoliko samo jedna osoba ima povjerenja u vas, možete učiniti bilo što.