Pip Hare picked up a magazine one day to read about the BOC challenge, which was the forerunner to the Vendéé Globe.
“And all of a sudden, there is Isabelle Autissier, absolutely kicking arse and being written about in the same way as the men…”
It struck Hare that the single-handed race was “a hundred times harder” than sailing around the world with a crew, and yet there was a French woman doing just that.
“And I knew through my whole life that that was what I wanted to do…”
"Hare says there is nothing quite like sending a boat across an ocean on her own"
During ocean racing, she has been thrown across the cabin, cracked a rib, hit her head, but Hare says there is nothing quite like sending a boat across an ocean on her own.
Pip Hare Ocean Racing's Medallia - the UK Solo sailor inspired people as she competed as one of the top performers in the treacherous Vendée Globe race Photo: Mark Lloyd
She says the career pathways for women in the generation below her are more positive now than the pathway she had to forge for herself.
“You 100 percent belong,” she says to Irish female offshore sailors like Pamela Lee and Joan Mulloy.
Pip Hare is in Dublin this week to talk to members of the Royal Irish Yacht Club Photo: James Tomlinson
“You have a right to want, even to demand a career in the sailing industry…and you are every bit as competent and worthwhile as your male counterparts, but it is worth celebrating the fact that you are different…”
Pip Hare was speaking to Wavelengths before she gave a talk to members of the Royal Irish Yacht Club this week at an event sponsored by BDO as part of their Women in Leadership programme.
