“I was a very shy person and there was no way on earth I ever would have dared walk up to a crew full of men and say ‘Can I come racing with you please?’. I read loads of books about the Whitbread but I had no idea how on earth to get a foot in the door. “I’d see all the guys getting on board and going racing and I desperately wanted to do that.
Hare recalls at weekends gazing longingly at the racing boats coming and going on the Hamble River, but having no clue how to break into that scene. So I did come from a sailing family – but no racing.” “There were normally eight of us rammed into it – and it was very waddly, slow cruising. Hare’s parents – although keen sailors – were strictly cruisers aboard the family Moody 33. When Hare turned her sights on the racing, however, getting the necessary experience was a tougher problem. “They don’t realise how much they can get out of it by doing it.” “I think, as a way of getting into sailing, it’s quite underrated by an awful lot of people,” she says. Volunteering became Hare’s first stepping stone into offshore sailing and it’s an approach she still recommends to others with similar goals today. All I had to do was find the train fare and I could go and do that.” “These were mostly charities that provided sailing opportunities for disabled people and they were always looking for able-bodied volunteers.
She had been bitten by the sailing bug and Hare now found herself working part time jobs before school and at weekends to pay for the train fares to the coast to go sailing.ĭesperate for sea miles but without a boat of her own, she volunteered with sailing charities like the RYA Seamanship Foundation. “Seeing the world and adventure – that was it really that was all I wanted to do,” she recalls. Hare found the freedom sailing gave her ‘exhilarating’ and she soon recognised the sport’s potential to provide a gateway for international travel. And yet, you stick a teenager on the helm of a boat and they can make so many decisions. Teenagers are desperate to make decisions on their own and to have responsibility – but they’re just not allowed to. Later, as a teenager sailing in south west England she became aware for the first time of the feeling of freedom sailing can give you. “It was Swallows and Amazons – jumping off the boat, making rope swings, that sort of thing,” she says. She fondly recalls those outings with her grandad as fun ‘really adventurous’ experiences.
It’s not necessarily the ideal jumping off point for a career as a professional ocean racer and although Hare dabbled with the sport there, her love affair with sailing began closer to the open sea – sailing with her grandfather on his Folkboat on the River Deben near Felixstowe in Suffolk. Growing up in the landlocked English county of Cambridgeshire, Pip Hare’s nearest sailing club was on a large local inland lake. Or you can click one of the badges below to listen to the podcast episode in full. The article below is a taste of what the pair discussed during the hour long interview. British solo skipper and 2020-21 Vendée Globe competitor Pip Hare was Justin Chisholm’s guest on the latest episode of The Yacht Racing Podcast.