Interview with Liz Wardley, 2 December 2023
This was really such an incredible experience, I'm mutuals with offshore sailor Liz Wardley on LinkedIn and we'd talked in DMs a few times and met IRL at the Ocean Race Newport stopover in 2018 and accidentally when Maiden was at Mystic Seaport last year. I worked up the courage to ask her if she'd be interested in being interviewed for this blog while I'm home on sabbatical this winter and she said yes! We had some trouble working out the time difference because Liz is currently in the Canary Islands getting ready to leave for the World's Toughest Row, a 3000-mile transatlantic rowing race to Antigua, on 12 December. But she took almost an hour to chat with me about childhood jungle adventures, the lucky moment that got her into the Ocean Race, pesto, rubber duckies, and what she has over Jimmy Spithill.
Timestamps:
0:54: Early Days
5:10: The Sydney-Hobart Race
15:32: The Volvo Ocean Race 2001, Amer Sports Two
20:07: Offshore sailing in France
26:03: VOR 2014, Team SCA
29:40: VOR 2017, Turn the Tide on Plastic
32:25: Liz in lockdown
34:44: The Maiden Project
36:30: The Ocean Race 2023, WindWhisper
41:37: The World's Toughest Row
47:06: (Not) Getting Philosophical