Hannah Jenner and her crew waved goodbye to tens of thousands of people when their "Glasgow: Scotland with Style" yacht set sail from Qingdao Port, Shandong province. After 10 days at Qingdao, Jenner and her 17-member crew set off on their seventh race to Hawaii at 3:30 pm on February 24.
Young and pretty, it's hard to imagine Jenner, 27, as the skipper of one of the 10 yachts competing in 2007-2008 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.
The only female skipper in the race, she is determined to steer her boat to a podium position. She does not see the fact that she is the only female skipper as any reason to lag behind.
"I use it as an advantage," says Jenner. "Other skippers quite often write you off and won't see you coming because they're busy concentrating on other people. I definitely want to win and beat the boys!"
Jenner led her crew to the third place in the 6th leg from Singapore to Qingdao, which is described as tough by male skippers and crew including the skipper of "New York", Duggie Gillespie, who won the first place in this race.
After 17 days of racing since leaving Singapore, the fleet has experienced constant headwinds that have tested both the crew and the boats.
The leg was an upwind one that saw some severe gale force winds. It was characterized by weather extremes. In the beginning, it was still very hot with temperatures going to 33 C. But after about 12 days, it dropped to 10 C and could be freezing at night. The current against the wind created a vicious sea state.
Under such conditions, the skipper's role becomes very important. Jenner helped the crew spend more time below the deck to stay warm. She kept encouraging her crew that the bad weather wouldn't last long and that the faster they sailed the quicker they would finish.
"We never once thought about giving up as it is not in the nature of my team," Jenner says.
She began sailing when she was 8. She has been a professional sailor for seven years and has raced across the Atlantic five times. Her experience as a training mate and training skipper with the clipper race since 2004 makes her an experienced and qualified skipper.
"My crew members slept four hours and then sailed for four hours, followed by another four hours' sleep and four hours' sailing ... But I could only sleep about two hours a day for I had to keep an eye on them," Jenner told China Daily in an exclusive interview.
She drank coffee to keep herself awake. Most of the time she kept watching over her boat and the crew - checking the sailing route, modifying tactics or uploading new weather data into the computer.
For the skipper, however, the biggest challenge is managing people.
"I am completely responsible for the boat and crew. I have to make sure everybody on the boat is safe and the boat is sailing fast," she says.
In their fourth race from Durban in South Africa to Fremantle in Australia, Jenner and her crew successfully rescued a crew member who was fell overboard during a headsail change.
"I think the whole experience has brought us even closer together," she says. "The incident had made us a strong team."
"She is absolutely qualified for being a skipper. She has a good knowledge of boats and she can make the right decisions in tough circumstances," a 59-year-old crew member Robin Brunton says. "When one of the crew members was washed overboard, she immediately took over the helm and turned the boat on the route and came back."
The incident was described as "the worst thing that could happen to a boat" by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, chairman of the clipper race. "She is a good skipper. Look at the result, she has done pretty well," he says.
Despite bad weather on the sea, Jenner was welcomed by sunny weather in Qingdao.
After finishing each race, Jenner likes to have a good rest and drink beer. "Qingdao beer is good," she says.
The skipper of a boat needs experience, says Knox-Johnston. "It is not easy to find many females with the experience. But she has got such experience and is a good skipper."
Jenner says: "Obviously my family would be really proud of me whichever boat I'm on, but it's nice to be skippering the boat. That really means something to them.
"The people involved in it are fun and really prepared to go to town to make sure the crew and skipper get the best support possible," she adds.
Jenner is lucky to have a boyfriend who is also into sailing. After the 2007-2008 clipper race, she will continue exploring the sea, she says.
"I am hoping to go on a single hand sailing trip and become the youngest person to do it and cover the farthest distance," Jenner says.
(China Daily March 10, 2008)