Join the crew Six women aiming for Vendee Globe

If she makes the start line in Les Sables d’olonne next year, Hannah Stodel would become the first disabled sailor to compete in the Vendee Globe. She could also be part of a record number of female entrants, with Clarisse Cremer, Sam Davies, Isabelle Joschke, Alexia Barrier and Pip Hare among others hoping to take part.

completely alone. Last year’s Round Britain and Ireland was tough enough and that was fully crewed (even if Stodel was driving the boat and trying as far as possible to troubleshoot on her own).

But, as the Yachtmaster instructor found out to his cost, you write Stodel off at your peril. “That Round Britain and Ireland race was brutal,” she says, “but it proved to everybody, myself included, that I could do it.”

Could she do it on her own in the Southern Ocean, when waves the size of double-decker buses are tossing her boat about? And purely in a practical sense, how would she deal with some of the obstacles the Vendee can throw at you? Climbing the mast in a storm for instance?

Stodel smiles. “Mast-climbing with one hand is a challenge at the best of times,” she admits. “It’s not impossible. I have done it. But in a bad storm … maybe when other people might potentially push to fix a problem, I would be the person who reins it in and says ‘No, I’m going to wait it [the storm] out’.

“And ultimately, the boat would need to be adapted to make my life easier. But I’m so stubborn. Like with those electrical problems last year, it might take me an hour longer than someone with two arms, but I’ll get there in the end.

“It’s been my dream for so long. And it’s not just for me. It’s for other disabled people to take on challenges which people might say are ‘impossible’.

“Ellen [Macarthur] had the same doubters. They told her it wasn’t possible [due to her age and size]. She showed them it was.”