Dame Ellen MacArthur

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2009

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the solo yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur. She was 28 when she became the fastest person to sail solo around the world, and has been called the 'first true heroine of the 21st century'. She still sails with friends and with the charity she set up for children with cancer and leukaemia, but her ambition now is to try to find a way of living the same sustainable existence on land that she lives at sea. When your life depends on it, she says, you realise how scarce food and fuel really are.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Boys of Summer by Don Henley Book: SAS Survival Handbook by John 'Lofty' Wiseman Luxury: A fluffy purple worm (which has been taken everywhere).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My cast away this week is the yotswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur. At just 28 she became the fastest person to sail
0:35.5	solo around the world. With her limitless passion for the sea and iron will to
0:40.6	triumph, she's been called the first true heroine of the 21st century, yet
0:45.6	her upbringing and approach seems to heart back to a much more old-fashioned time.
0:50.2	As a girl she poured over the pages of swallows and amazons and skipped school lunches, saving
0:56.4	her pennies to buy a little dinghy.
0:58.9	Of sailing alone for the first time as a child, she says, I felt a mixture of freedom responsibility and
1:05.1	respect for the water feelings which remain unchanged today.
1:09.3	Ellen it was 2005 then when you became the fastest person to sail solo non-stop around the globe
1:15.6	what was the moment that you realized that land wasn't far off?
1:20.3	The thing that really hit me was the smell of the land. The smell of land was something I hadn't smelled for two and a half months and it was so strong.
1:28.0	It was really strong, really, definitely plants, you could smell plants, but it was the earth actually, I think.
1:35.8	You could actually smell the earth.
1:37.6	When you were alone for those final closing hours and minutes.
1:43.6	When you knew that you'd got it,
1:45.1	did you allow yourself, as you were alone,
1:47.1	a little personal moment of triumph?
1:49.9	It's funny, there was nothing like that.
1:51.8	Absolutely nothing. I was focused on the
1:53.3	finish line and really because the finish line is near the rocks until you
	...

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