Maiden Skipper Heather Thomas: From dinghy lake to Ocean Globe Race winner

In leading her all-female crew to victory in the OGR, Maiden skipper Heather Thomas has broken records and taken women’s sailing into the stratosphere. However, she started sailing no where near the sea.

Heather Thomas is the first female British skipper to win a round the world race, and her team aboard Maiden, backed by Tracy Edwards MBE, are the first all-female crew to win a global race. What a tremendous inspiration! In winning the Ocean Globe Race, the 27-year-old from Yorkshire has made history.

Heather has topped Dame Ellen MacArthur’s second place in the Vendée Globe 2001 and Tracy’s record of second in class in the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race. Thomas is also the first woman skipper to win a fully crewed round the world race. And she didn’t just win, she and the Maiden crew beat the opposition on Tracy Edwards’ winning boat, which had sailed round the world seven times already.

This crew returned home to a royal welcome being met by Sarah, Duchess of York who had played ‘godmother’ to Tracy Edwards’ all-women team 34 years ago, and Princess Haya bint Al Hussein of Jordan and her children who sponsored Maiden’s refit for the OGR. It was her father, the late King Hussein of Jordan, who had sponsored Maiden’s original challenge through the Royal Jordanian Airlines.

Queen Camilla also invited Heather, the crew and Tracy Edwards to lunch at St James’s Palace in honour of their success.

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Maiden Skipper’s big breaks

‘I’m so proud of this crew and what we have achieved. There is such a strong bond between us. We’ve achieved our goal of showing what women can do,’ says Heather, who led Tracy Edwards’ The Maiden Factor charity campaign on the water. Maiden is a global ambassador for the empowerment of girls through education.

Heather’s entry to sailing was much like that of Ellen MacArthur, who was brought up in landlocked Derbyshire. ‘My grandfather built a Mirror dinghy in the 1970s which was passed down to me and my dad. We learned to sail at Otley Sailing Club on a small dinghy lake a long way from the sea, then graduated to Laser and Pico dinghies.’

Her second break came at the age of 17 when she was invited to sail on the Ocean Youth Club’s northern sail training vessel James Cook. ‘I just loved it and knew instantly that this is what I wanted to do.’

She returned as a volunteer watch leader for further voyages and after leaving school, won a bursary from the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation to compete in three legs of the 2015/16 Clipper Round the World Race.

‘Wendy Tucker was my skipper. She taught me so much and became a mentor,’ says Heather. She hasn’t looked back since, skippering charter yachts, teaching young people to sail in the Caribbean and delivering yachts across the Pacific.

Her third big break was to join Tracy’s Maiden Factor charitable campaign in 2018 on a three-year world tour aboard Maiden, during which she gained her RYA Yachtmaster commercial ticket. Heather was promoted to skipper for the last stage of the tour back from Cape Town to the UK.

Ocean Globe Race insights

What was the hardest part of the voyage? ‘Oh, the last leg. The generator broke down and our inverter failed so we didn’t have any power to operate the desalinator to produce water to cook our freeze-dried food. Luckily it rained a lot so we were able to collect water in buckets.

‘Also our weatherfax didn’t work from the outset, so we never had good weather information. On previous legs we had always given forecasts to other crews who couldn’t access the data, but when it happened to us, this was not reciprocated, which I was rather disappointed about.

‘We did have scheduled inter-boat chats four times a day when we each broadcast our position, wind direction and barometer readings, which helped.’ And the best part of the race? ‘The welcome at the finish. That was very emotional for all of us. And then the banter between the boats. The L’Esprit d’Equipe crew organised a “true or false” quiz every day which became almost as competitive as the race itself.’

What’s next? ‘Oh, no question – I want to do another round the world race!’

A world of firsts

• Heather Thomas is the very first female British skipper to win a round-the-world race, as well as being the first female skipper to win a fully crewed race around the globe.
• Her team aboard Maiden are the first all-female crew to win a round-the-world race.
• Maiden is also the first British boat to win a round-the-world race.
• The team included the first three black women to race round the world, and the first Afghan woman.
• The Maiden crew hosted nine nationalities including: South Africa, Afghanistan, Antigua and Puerto Rico.
• The Maiden Factor charity, with the motto: ‘Educate a girl, change the world,’ raised thousands of pounds.

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