YBW Poll - Which female sailor has inspired you the most?

Rosie Swale, no question. I'll freely admit I was a very impressionable teenager when I first read her book but it made me realise sailing wasn't just a blat round the cans. I crewed on a boat out to the Azores not long after reading it - at that callow age I hadn't even thought about simply asking around to see if there were any opportunities.
 
Honestly? The young lady who was to become and still is mrs Westhinder.
She had learned to sail dinghies as a teenager and when she heard I wanted to give sailing a try, she encouraged me to look for an opportunity to crew on a yacht. I was hooked at the first attempt and we have been sailing together almost as long as we have known each other.
 
I was expecting all the Brits to answer "Ellen MacArthur". She's certainly my favorite, but that is partly because she is a distant relative, which is wild because I'm an American with a Greek last name.
 
interloper said:
I was expecting all the Brits to answer "Ellen MacArthur". ..
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It's not that by replying with someone else's name that one is in any way denigrating the others or 'voting' against them, be her Ellen MacArthur or any other.

It's instead that the premise of the question, and the rather small list of suggested names, is patronising. There must be hundreds, probably thousands, of inspirational women sailors, which the many suggestions in reply to this thread confirm. So isn't it time such ridiculous questions become a thing of the past? Ridiculous because it's chauvinist, implying that being inspirational is unusual for women, and only happened recently to boot (and this in the centennial year of the suffragette movement).
 
For me at the moment it also has to be Dame Ellen. I'll be brutally honest...from what I've seen in the media I don't think she is a desperately charismatic or engaging person, and I found some of her tearful "it's so unfair" video slots in the past a bit wearing. However, her dogged determination earns my utmost respect, and yeah, if someone could psychologically analyse me and assure me that I would not top myself, I'd gladly give some long distance stuff a go on an IMOCA60, however even if I could somehow manage the sailing aspect, a few months of living in a container and begging for sponsorship would have made me say "sod that" long before I got to the start line. I've also done some sailing on an older generation IMOCA60 and do not underestimate for a second what a big challenge that is for anyone, let alone (trying to be PC here) a diminutive girl as opposed to a big gorilla. And...let's not forget, she was the fastest around the TG track for a long while, and the calculating, steely way she managed that spoke volumes about her approach to competition.

I'd also say...if she does it...Golden Globe sailor Susie Goodall will rate highly. It's one thing to be flying around the planet in a ball of spray in a custom built IMOCA60 spending a huge amount of time every day looking at weather and position data and talking to the shore team. It's a whole different kettle of fish to do it in a ploddy old 36' cruiser without modern navaids and data feeds. Absolute respect to her if she pulls it off.
 
I'm with jdc. It is sad that this question is asked.

That said, my (long) list includes Beryl Smeeton, most definitely. For those who have never heard of her: she and her husband sailed one of the first 'cruising' yachts to round Cape Horn, in the 1950s. Beryl was on the helm when their boat was pitchpoled in the Southern Ocean. She was thrown overboard, surfaced 30 ft from the boat with a broken collar bone, eyed up the state of the boat and realised the only way she would be rescued was under her own steam. So she swam back to the boat. That's how it's described in 'Once is Enough', Miles Smeeton's account. But think about it: she swam back to the boat in a sea that had pitchpoled their 40+ ft boat, with a broken collar bone.

Jeanne Socrates is my living hero.
 
For me it's a tie between Ellen Macarthur and Beryl Smeeton; and the latter didn't just do so well sailing as recorded in the book ' Once Is Enough, ' she also hiked solo around China earlier on when it was unheard of - the amazing lives of her and husband Miles are in the book ' High Endeavours. '
 
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