Solo lap of Australia

Australian sailor Lisa Blair has followed up her lone circumnavigation of Antarctica in 2017 in her Open 50 Climate Action Now by completing a non-stop single-handed voyage round Australia. Blair left from Sydney on 20 October and sailed 6,536 miles round the continent anti-clockwise, returning in December. She is the first woman to complete this voyage,

The 33-year-old arrived back in Rushcutter’s Bay, Sydney, after 54 days at sea. She reported that she had experienced some atrocious conditions, especially to the south of Australia and Tasmania. At one point the boat fell so hard off a wave that a through-hull fitting was punched out.

Even her final day at sea was an epic. “On the very last night of the journey I was still sailing close hauled in an epic storm facing 5m waves. In the end, conditions got so bad that I decided it was safer to heave to. I was very violently crashing off the back of steep waves.”

When the storm finally cleared she met dense fog and ghosted into Sydney Harbour in light winds at little over a knot.

Blair was in regular satellite communication with shore, unlike her counterparts in the Golden Globe. “Eight weeks at sea on your own is very difficult and being able to have a quick call with family or friends helped keep me going.”

She reports in her blog that she is going to take ‘a year to catch up on the rest of my life, but you can be sure there will be another adventure in my future.’