The Red Bulletin June 2020 (US)

17
Sailor, 45, GBR.
Later this year, Hare will aim to become
the eighth woman to navigate the world
unaided, in the Vendée Globe race.
Pip
Hare
“Bad weather
doesn’t last
forever”
With her yacht-racing preparations on
hold due to lockdown, Hare looks back
on the hours that made her a sailor.
As told to JESSICA HOLLAND
Very early in my ocean-sailing career, on
my way from the Canary Islands to the
U.K., I found myself upside down in a
boat as it slid, mast first, down a wave.
It was terrifying. The waves were more
than 40 feet high—above mast height—and there
were hurricane-force winds in excess of 70 knots
[80 mph]. When you’re in the trough of a wave,
it blankets out all the wind so it’s utterly still,
eerily silent. And then, as you rise up to the top,
you hear the rumbling and feel the vibrations
of the wave breaking—it’s like a freight train
approaching. When it hit, it was like being
rammed from the side by an elephant. I was
thrown around. I was helpless.
I couldn’t be on deck or I’d have been thrown
over the side or broken bones, so all I could do was
hide down below during the six-hour peak of the
storm. When the boat rolled, I fell onto the ceiling.
Everything that wasn’t tied down rained down on
top of me. A couple of glass jars of chili sauce fell
from the fridge and smashed; there was glass and
chili sauce everywhere. I can still remember that
smell 20 years later.
When the storm eventually subsided, I was
left with a boat in tatters, but I was alive. The
experience should have put me off sailing forever—
RICHARD LANGDON/OCEAN IMAGES
Hare sails out from her
home port of Poole and
into the English Channel
on a training day.
36 THE RED BULLETIN