Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast

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This month Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast tells the dramatic story of French offshore sailor and Vendee Globe winner, Charlie Dalin.  On January fourteenth 2025 Charlie Dalin sailed across the finish line of the non stop solo round the world marathon in first place. For Charlie Dalin the offshore sailor, the win put him at the pinnacle of a very elite group.  But for Charlie Dalin the man, it was the start of a whole new challenge. 
Robertson sat down to talk with Charlie Dalin almost a year after that Vendee win.  It's been a year since winning the biggest title in offshore sailing, but for Charlie, it's been a complicated time, because a year before crossing the Vendee start line, Charlie Dalin was diagnosed with cancer.  He chose to keep it a secret.  He raced under the remote supervision of a cancer specialist, and he won.  The toughest solo offshore challenge in sailing.  And in doing so he set a new monohull solo circumnavigation record that took a stunning ten days of the existing record.

Robertson and Dalin do discuss the cancer diagnosis, but this is not the defining part of Dalin's story.  In this, Part 1, they discuss his early life, one as a young boy, then man, obsessed with the sport of sailing.  His stories of chasing the dream are enchanting, from dusting the snow off the boats in the dinghy park, to a mis-communication with a complete stranger in the Yacht Haven in Cowes....
"So I thought I was going to go for another twilight sail, so I met him late afternoon....and he started showing me all this safety gear. and  I knew British people were into their safety but I thought that was a bit much for a Friday night event.  At the end of the safety tour of the boat he picks up a sailing map, deploys it and says 'so we're here going there!'  and that's when I realised I was going to sail double handed with him to Brixham!  I thought I was going to be back in my tent two hours later but no!!..... I thought I'd be back on Firday night and I was back on Sunday in Cowes!"
The duo discuss Charlie's route in to the IMOCA world, via the Figaro Solitaire circuit, and eventually discuss his two Vendee Globe campaigns.  For the sailor interested in offshore sailing, this is a must listen chat, Charlie Dalin's Vendee stories are compelling.  Of his repair in the Southern Ocean he compares the fix to that of Apollo 13's, as his team gathered around the available spares of his boat at the team base back in France to figure out a fix...:

"Everyone here in Mer Concept, they gathered, It was a bit like the Apollo 13 mission you know, they had a list of everything I had on board, and they said 'right, he's got this on board, what can we do', and they sent me this repair programme with so many steps to make this replacement bearing for the foil!"

Charlie's first Vendee Globe was then heavily effected by redress time given to other competitors involved in the dramatic rescue of PRB's Kevin Escoffier.  It meant Charlie took the runner's up spot by a matter of hours, despite crossing the finish line first.  It's a result he's not at all bitter about, and readily admits focusing on how he could have regained those lost hours, rather than the negative thoughts of a lost win.
The duo end Part One with his thoughts post that first Vendee Globe, but also looking forward to the 2024 edition, the edition he would go on to win....
This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via most popular podcast outlets. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].    
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This month Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast tells the dramatic story of French offshore sailor and Vendee Globe winner, Charlie Dalin.  On January fourteenth 2025 Charlie Dalin sailed across the finish line of the non stop solo round the world marathon in first place. For Charlie Dalin the offshore sailor, the win in 2025 put him at the pinnacle of a very elite group.  But for Charlie Dalin the man, it was the start of a whole new challenge. 
Robertson sat down to talk with Charlie Dalin almost a year after that Vendee win.  It's been a year since winning the biggest title in offshore sailing, but for Charlie, it's been a complicated time, because a year before crossing the Vendee start line, Charlie Dalin was diagnosed with cancer.  He chose to keep it a secret.  He raced under the remote supervision of a cancer specialist, and he won.  The toughest solo offshore challenge in sailing.  And in doing so he set a new monohull solo circumnavigation record that took a stunning ten days of the existing record.

IN this, Part 2 of their chat, Robertson and Dalin do discuss the cancer diagnosis, but this is not the defining part of Dalin's story.  In Part 1, they discussed his early life, one as a young boy, then man, obsessed with the sport of sailing, his first Vendee Globe, and in this, Part 2, they discuss preparations for his second Vendee campaign, and ultimately, hi disgnosis with the cancer that, didnt manage to slow him down around the planet.
It's a touching and somewhat sad tale, of a man used to balancing risk and reward being faced with something he has little control over.  But control it he did, as he set a blistering pace around the world.  He beat the race record by almost ten days, setting that new sixty four day solo monohull circumnavigation record...:
"The last part from Brazil to France was exceptional.  I didn't do a single gybe or tack from Brazil to Brittany, so it was just crazy, you know.  Just one single tack for days and days and days, not a tack or gybe in the doldrums, nothing.  You know, just one tack from Brazil to Brittany, just crazy you know!"

The duo discuss Charlie's win at length, but also then revert to the big secret Charlie carried around the world with him.  Only his medic and closest family knew his situation.  His team, and the hundreds of thousands of Vendee Globe fans watching his remarkable progress, were oblivious to his struggle. So when he finished the race, he was very quickly in surgery.  He revealed his diagnosis and then released a book detailing his story - "La Force Du Destin" (The Force of Destiny).  It's an emotional tale, with the highs and lows you'd expect from a career leading up to a Vendee win, but punctuated, rather sadly, by a an ending that is still yet to fully play out.

This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley’s own website - www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].
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This month Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast hosts talented British offshore sailor Will Harris, as the acclaimed offshore professional joins Double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson to discuss all things offshore, IMOCA sailing and his career to date.
In this Part 1, the duo get things underway with a brief reflection on Will's podium place finish in the recent 2025 Transat Café L'Or, which saw him sail to a second place finish sailed with 11th Hour Racing's Frankie Clapcich.  From there the pair go to back to discuss the early day's of Will's sailing life, growing up in the landlocked southern UK county of Surrey before studying Oceanography at Southampton University.  Will's successful application into the then flourishing Artemis Offshore Sailing Academy ultimately allowed entry into the legendary French Solitaire du Figaro scene, and a 2016 Rookie of the Year award...:

"The cool thing with the Figaro is that....because you're solo on the boat you have to be good at everything on it, you have to be good at trimming it, you have to be good at living on the boat, you have to be good at the navigation, and because the level is so high you really have to get into the details on everything, so I think from one year of Figaro sailing you can learn so much more than someone who's done five years on any sort of other race course."
From there Will's reputation steadily grew, and now, at just 31 years of age, he is widely regarded as one of offshore sailings bright rising stars, a lap of the planet with Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia in 2023 in The Ocean Race cementing Will's place in the upper echelon of the sport.  Over the past decade, Will's emergence in the IMOCA sailing scene has been concurrent with the move, within the IMOCA fleet, to high performance offshore foiling, a development that Will has been quick to embrace as one of the fleet's key proponents of data driven high performance offshore navigating...:

"When you're solo and short handed you have to add in this human aspect of 'OK, the routing tells me to do fifteen sail changes in the next twenty four hours, that's just not realistic and it's not fast' so you have got to take that data, and what the computer and analytics is telling you to do and you've got to add that human aspect of 'OK, what's really realistic and what does my gut tell me to do and what does my experience say is going to be the best thing to actually do.' rather than just going what the computer says."
This first part ends just as Will is about to take on the 2023 Ocean Race as co-skipper on board Boris Herrmann's "Team Malizia", a story which continues in Part 2.
This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley’s own website - www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].
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This month Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast hosts talented British offshore sailor Will Harris, as the acclaimed offshore professional joins Double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson to discuss all things offshore, IMOCA sailing and his career to date.
In Part 1, the duo get things underway discussing Wil's early sailing life and his decision to make offshore sailing his career.  This edition, Part Two of Will's story kicks off with the start of the 2023 Ocean Race, which sees Will Harris co-skippering Team Malizia with accomplished offshore sailor Boris Heermann.
Robertson and Harris look back on Team Malizia's eventful performance in the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race, an edition which saw them take two Leg wins and set an unofficial 24 Hour Monohull Speed record with an average speed over 24 hours of 26.7Kts over a distance of 641.13 nautical miles!  Will's recollections of the race also take in the harrowing mid-ocean repairs to the mast, as well as an emotional realisation on the final leg of the Race...:
"For some reason (the map) highlighted Surrey on the navigation map and it was a mind blowing moment for me, I'd looked at that map all the way around the world, I'd seen the Southern Ocean, I'd seen Cape Horn, I'd seen Cape Town, I'd seen Brazil, all these places in the world and suddenly I was looking at my home town where I grew up for fifteen years....and it was only fifty miles away or so and that was when it hit home to me 'we've just sailed around the world' in less than six months and now I'm less than fifty miles from where I first dreamed of doing this."
This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley’s own website - www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].
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This is Part 2 of podcast host and Double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson's chat with the first American woman to have sailed non-stop, alone, around the planet - the remarkable Cole Brauer, who took time out from an Admiral's Cup campaign to sit down and talk about her remarkable career to date.
In Part 1 we hear how, aged just 29, American Brauer crossed the finish line of the Global Solo Challenge in her Class40 First Light.  Throughout the first episode Brauer discusses her late discovery of the sport, a passion for sailing offshore and how she found herself taking up the opportunity of a solo round the world race.
Brauer had backed herself, seized the opportunities and soon found herself on the start line of the solo non stop Global Solo Challenge.  It's an inspiring tale, that over the race, Brauer would share with a growing number of fans.  Throughout the 130 days, her following grew by the thousands, so much so that she currently boasts more Instagram followers than almost any other sailing based account on the photo sharing platform...:
"After the first month we went from ten thousand followers and I finished the first month with one hundred thousand followers, and then it just accelerated from there, where we were just getting seven thousand followers a day, and these people were real, they were real like your Mom and Pop just watching this, who had no idea, anything about sailing."

The social media aspect to Cole's story leads to an interesting discussion as she reveals to Robertson the good and the bad sides of daily posts to hundreds of thousands of followers.  The duo also then discuss Brauer's feeling of responsibility as a role model, a position she takes very seriously, and her feelings on the lack of opportunity for women in the sport...:

"I'm living in a van in the parking lot.  And the guy next to me is making ridiculously more money than me.  Why...?  It's because he asked for more.  Because he walked into the room and he realised with what he was worth."

It's a topic Brauer is passionate about, but she also discusses this in an eloquent and powerful manner.

Shortly after the interview, Brauer went on to win the Admiral's Cup as part of Monaco Yacht Club's two boat Jolt team.  She is currently co-skipper onboard IMOCA Malizia, competing on the Ocean Race Europe.

This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley’s own website - www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].
Support the show