![]() ![]() ‘My parents had a boat where we lived on Hayling Island, and we’d all take off after school: my sister Debbie and I would do our homework, then sit up at night in gales waiting to see if our anchor broke free of its moorings. Sam comes from sailing stock: one grandfather was a submarine commander and the other a powerboat racer pilot. Let’s get her sailing credentials out of the way – then we can move on to the important questions, such as: ‘How do you have skin that looks like a Clarins advert when you don’t sleep and your face gets ravaged by sun, salt and sea?’ With her blond hair and blue eyes, she appears wholesome, humorous and down-to-earth. Meeting me in London, she’s casually dressed in jeans, Uggs and a Roxy sponsorship T-shirt and jumper (her boat is owned by the sporty clothing label). (‘In the tropics, when it’s really hot, it’s better to do everything naked.’) If she needs luck, she races in her special knickers: ‘My girl boxers with “Lucky” in pink diamanté.’ Sometimes at sea she’s in oilskins other times she wears nothing at all. I like sailing with a big smile on my face.’ ‘Ellen thrives on driving herself to the point of misery. Is she the new Dame Ellen? ‘Oh no,’ she says. Sam will be one of just a few women ever to have attempted the gruelling race (in which Dame Ellen MacArthur finished second in 2001). ‘But I’m not going to think about that.’ Instead she aims to beat the record of 87 days, ten hours, 47 minutes and 55 seconds set by a man, Vincent Riou, on the same boat in 2005. She was one of only two women to compete in the Artemis Transat solo race from Plymouth to Boston last month and – despite hitting a whale and losing the use of her radar on her first night – came fifth: the first Briton and first female to reach home.Īnd, in November, she will set sail alone in the Vendée Globe – a 26,680-mile nonstop solo race that starts and finishes in France and takes in the perilous Southern Ocean. Or being stuck, as she once was – with no wind, in thick fog and in the path of an oncoming ship – seconds from death, had she not turned on her engine.īut that’s how life is for Sam, a 33-year-old Cambridge engineering graduate who once wanted to be a ballerina, still loves to dress in girlie clothes onshore and wears three tiny diamond ear studs and a belly ring. It’s hard to think of her sailing solo among icebergs, killer whales and vicious storms. The new tiller girl: shipshape Samantha When you see Samantha Davies pottering about in a teeny pink bikini on her pink sailing boat, Roxy, and spritzing her cabin with perfume, it’s difficult to imagine her facing waves the size of houses, 80-mile-an-hour winds and nights without a second’s sleep.
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