An offshore sailor, endurance athlete and triple world record holder, Pamela Lee is gearing up for the biggest challenge of her career to date.
It’s an overcast – but surprisingly clammy – Tuesday morning when I meet Irish sailor Pamela Lee at the Greystones Marina. After exchanging hellos, we nip into Scéal Bakery for a quick coffee before she walks me over to her boat – or her “second home” as she describes it.
Originally from Greystones, but now based in France, Pamela sailed back to Ireland to compete in the Round Ireland Yacht Race earlier this summer. A gruelling offshore challenge of more than 700 nautical miles, it took her around the Irish coastline as she raced day and night through changing weather, physical exhaustion and minimal sleep.
“I’ve been sailing my whole life really,” says Pamela, who inherited a love of the water from her father. “It’s always been a family hobby. All of our holidays were in the camper van, somewhere on the coast of Ireland with canoes or anything that would float. I think we had a piece of polystyrene for a surfboard at one point!”
A stint in Sydney introduced her to offshore sailing, which she explains as “not just day sailing, sailing for a long distance out to sea, usually over at least a weekend.” “I started walking the docks in Sydney, knocking on doors, handing out my CV, chatting to people. I got taken on to a few teams, and they trained me up.”
It wasn’t long before her hobby turned into a lifelong passion and ultimately, a career. When she got her yacht master qualification, other avenues began opening up to her and it was in France that she decided to give things a real go. “In France, it’s a fully professional sport, like rugby or football. It’s all built on sponsorship. The teams are selected, like any sport, on merit. So I could see that if you were good and you worked hard, there was the potential that you could be on a team. That gave me a glimmer of hope,” she recalls.
This November, Pamela will take on the biggest challenge of her career to date when she’ll compete in the legendary Route du Rhum competition. One of the world’s toughest solo sporting events, it’s held once every four years and will see competitors race more than 3,500 nautical miles alone across the Atlantic Ocean. Should she succeed, Pamela will become the first Irish sailor to ever compete in the event. The fastest anyone has done the journey is in 15 days; she estimates it will take her approximately 18 days or so.
How does one prepare for something like that? Practically speaking, organising sponsors. Last year, she launched the #empowHer racing project, a partnership she hopes will support her in finishing the Route du Rhum. A platform for meaningful change, it leverages the power of ocean racing to drive progress on critical issues such as equality, diversity and sustainability. As it stands, only 5% of skippers are women, she tells me.
“We’re still missing 100k worth of sponsorship to really get the project done. I’d love to have an Irish company or a few Irish companies come in, to get behind the messaging and share the journey and the project.”
Naturally, there’s also a lot of mental and physical preparation needed too. “And a certain degree of blind faith,” laughs Pamela. “I try not to get too stressed about the uncontrollables. Just do your job, be well prepared, have the boat well prepared and then really, no matter what happens, you should be able to sort yourself out. In theory.”
On board, supplies will be limited to keep weight down. “You’re trying to make the boat as light as possible,” she explains. She’ll have enough provisions for about 20 days, which she can prepare on board with a jet boil (a sort of gas-fuelled portable stove). Her bed will be a hammock of sorts, the toilet a plastic bucket and her only company will be a Michael D. Higgins mascot teddy she was gifted by a friend. “In the lead up to a race, I’ll start trying to nap during the day so that my sleep cycle is a bit more broken… My sleep is completely controlled by what’s going on. You have to figure out how to be quite adaptive and take opportunities when you can,” she tells me.
While she doesn’t expect to have much idle time to write in a diary, she does plan on keeping a log – more for her to look back on and learn from than anything else. “I want to keep a tap on how my mental state is at certain times,” says Pamela, who will be working with a coach to help with this beforehand. “It’s surprisingly hard when you’re out in the boat in your own little world. Things that you think would be easy become much more difficult. It’s a funny thing.”
What is she most looking forward to when she finishes the race? Seeing her team on the other side. “It’s never really sure you’re going to get to the finish line until you [actually] get to the finish line,” she notes. “There’s a moment when you see members of your team and you just think, ‘We made it’.”
This year, the finish line is in the Caribbean on the French island of Guadeloupe. So, she’s also looking forward to a piña colada in the sun and jumping into the ocean – both will be very deserved rewards!
Pamela will embark on the Route du Rhum on 1 November. Follow her on @pamybefree on Instagram to stay up to date and track her progress across the Atlantic.
