Why? Sailing solo and non-stop around Antarctica, again: Lisa Blair

Hi, I'm Liz Guinness and welcome to Talking Australia, a podcast by Australian Geographic. Lisa Blair became the first woman to sail solo and non-stop around Antarctica. Now she's doing it all again in a bid to become the fastest person to complete the journey. As well as battling 8 to 10 metre swells and 50 knot winds, Lisa's also collecting information for scientific research. From monitoring water quality to mapping the ocean floor, Lisa's kept busy day and night.

We pick up the conversation with her just after she rounded Treacherous Cape Horn, the halfway point on her round-the-world solo sale.

Lisa, you just mentioned you're now more than halfway in your journey. How does that feel? Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

you know it's such a long journey like the boat part of this record is only one portion of the journey it's it's the finish line so to speak um and it's a project i've been working on for over a year and a half now um so yeah to hit cape horn and successfully around cape horn and then cross that halfway mark and be sailing back towards australia is a really um sort of monumental part of the record really so you've been at sea for 45 days now is that right

Today is day 46. Yep. Day 46. And for those people who... Yeah, super exciting and a long time at sea, I feel. But for those people who don't, haven't been following your trip, do you want to give them a little bit of a, you know, a backstory as to when you started and where you left from?

set off from? Yeah, of course. So I started out of Albany on the 21st of February. 46 days ago and basically i'm sailing solo non-stop and unassisted around antarctica it's a world record attempt so this is my second go at this record And the goal is to break the existing record set by a Russian sailor called Fedor Konyakov in 2008. He sailed solo nonstop and unassisted around Antarctica in 102 days. And so the goal is to try and do this record.

in sort of 80 to 90 days and then utilise the platform and the media coverage to raise awareness of climate action now and complete a whole... a whole bunch of citizen science while I'm down in the Southern Ocean because it's such a data sparse sort of region of our oceans. So I'm undertaking quite a lot of scientific work while I'm down here as well, which is very, very exciting.

So if you said you're halfway through and you're on day 46, it looks like you're certainly on track to make that 80 to 90-day window. Yeah, at the moment I'm well ahead. So I'm five days ahead of Fedor Konyakov on the record sort of timeline. And I'm almost 10 days ahead of my previous time from 2017.

Yeah. I don't know if many of your listeners, I was just going to say, I don't know if many of your listeners will remember the dismasting that happened last time. So this is sort of round two of the same record, but with a slightly different twist. I certainly remember listening to you talk about that moment of the demasting and I imagine you would never want to have to go through that again.

Yeah, hopefully not. We've done every possible proportion that's possible to make the boat as safe as possible. I guess the downside of it is that we had done all those precautions last time too. So there is that element of, I guess, luck out here in the Southern Ocean where things can just go wrong sometimes. So hopefully nothing does and I have a successful and safe voyage.

So have the weather conditions been different? Has the ocean been treating you more kindly this time around? It has been really... quite different uh than last time mainly the temperatures have been a lot lot colder um So last time when I sailed across the South Pacific Ocean, which is the largest ocean of the record, it's the largest ocean in the world, actually. And that brings us up to Cape Horn. It was the easy ocean, so to speak.

So it was the ocean where I had a lot of sunshine, not a lot of storms. I still had plenty of storms, but not massive. ones not frequently um whereas this time around I seem to be getting a lot more storms especially on the second part of my voyage and um and a couple of those storms were very violent um so just about I'd say six to seven days ago, I was in a pretty nasty storm before I rounded Cape Horn and it was generating waves up to.

eight meters in height so that's if you imagine sort of like a four to five story building as a wave and uh the problem wasn't necessarily the size of the waves it was the wind causing the waves to break so you've got a building size wave and then you've got 50 knots of wind on top of it um and the wind here is a lot colder than anywhere else so that lower temperature air means it's more dense so it actually applies more pressure to the sails um so to give you kind of a

bit of an indication of how the winds work is a rough rule of thumb in the southern ocean is that 30 knots of wind here is equivalent to roughly 50 knots of wind in say sydney harbour where it's a bit warmer um and then if you convert that to kilometers per

you're looking at about 80 to 90 kilometers per hour. So for me to be in a storm with 50 knots of wind, I'm getting easily 110. 110 120 kilometer per hour winds so um yeah it can be pretty extreme out here it certainly sounds like and when you just quickly when you say it's cold what kind of temperatures are you talking about

Yeah, so the coldest we got down to was 3.5 degrees on deck, but it's currently right now four degrees on deck. So yeah, it's pretty icy out here and the sea temperature is dropping quite considerably.

at the moment just based on how close I am to the Antarctic Peninsula but most of the Pacific crossing the sea temperature temperatures were above 10 degrees um it's more that air temperature dropping and then you've got the wind chill factor on top when you've got you know 30 to 50 knots of wind and sea spray and possibly

pouring rain and hail and sleet and all those fun things that you get out here oh my goodness so you know obviously looking at radars that that kind of weather or those kind of waves are blowing in so you've got you know um

eight to ten metre waves, you've got 50 knot winds, you know it's coming. What do you do? Yeah, preparation is key. any good storm and um and and that starts actually before I go to sea so I prepare the boat to take all of these hits by the weather um before I've even left port and then At sea, what I do is a general whole boat inspection before a storm. So I go around and I check every...

shackle, every bolt, every fitting that I can access on board the deck of the boat and just check nothing sort of coming loose or vibrating or showing any signs of wear and tear or damage. I go through the boat and I overhaul.

all the steering cables and the autopilots and I checked that my batteries are full and that everything's charged up ready to go because you know obviously storms is where most things most commonly go wrong so to have everything prepared to the best standard possible before you enter those conditions is part of that survival strategy then depending on the forecast i can do a number of techniques

to survive the storm so one technique is called deploying a drogue and a drogue is um like a fabric parachute that you stream out the back of the the boat and mine is um a series drogue they call it which is basically 150 little tiny scoops or cones on a long piece of rope and you deploy it out the back of the boat and it

basically holds the boat stationary to the waves and stops the waves being able to sort of knock you sideways and then roll you um so i can deploy that or i can um put the boat into position called hove two where you basically tack the boat, which is where you go through the wind with the sails and you change the direction of the boat, but you don't change the sails over. So you leave the sails on the wrong side of the boat. And so the jibs on the wrong side of the boat and the mainsail center.

And then... by putting the helm up to the wind, you can actually stall the sails out and drift sideways. And this drifting is creating a slick in the water and the slick is what saves you. Funnily enough, it causes all of waves to break on the edge of the slick rather than against the hull of the boat. And you can survive pretty amazing storms by being hoved too. So that's the technique I've used so far.

Wow. I mean, I'm not a sailor, I'm first to admit, but that sounds incredible to happen. It was definitely that last storm I had kind of... Three big hits from the waves. Like I get knocked down really regularly in those conditions where the boat's slapped by a wave. and we basically get knocked 90 degrees over so we get knocked down and back up again but i had um one wave hit us so violently that it

It's like my boat weighs 10 tons. It literally picked us up like a matchstick and just tossed us across the ocean surface. And as it broke, it didn't go over us or under us. It just dragged us along the sea.

see surface with it so we got not only like kind of tossed on our side and then airborne and thrown we then got kind of pushed about 50 meters across the surface of the ocean um and all you can hear is just like that roar of the breaking white water around you as the whole boat's just engulfed in ocean So, yeah, it was pretty hectic just recently. Yeah, hectic is one word. Other people might use the word terrifying, Lisa. Yeah, you know, extraordinary.

Well, guess which is why you're out in the middle of the ocean and I'm not. Perspective is everything, right? Yeah, absolutely. I like that. And so are there ever occasions where you're simply, it's you? done all your prep you've battened the hatches you're down in the cabin and you're just waiting it out Yeah, those storms. Every storm like that. I actually put myself in the navigation station or my bunk. They're the two areas where I allow myself to ride the weather out because...

You don't want to be in an open area of the boat when you take a hit like that. And I was in the nav station when I took a hit like that and I was sort of lifted up.

and crumpled into the side of the boat in the corner but the navigation stations the sort of smallest area of my boat so it's the least i like the smallest area to be tossed or thrown across the boat um so yeah and i have body armor built into my base layers so I actually wear that 24 7 so if I get any bad tosses or throws it's in theory to stop me breaking bones

And then I also have a crash helmet if it's really, really bad that I can wear if I need to go on deck or if I need to be in an open area of the boat where that's falling is a real risk. Then I've got a big crash helmet that I put on and I look like I'm riding my bicycle, but I'm in the Southern Ocean. Have you had to deploy that at any stage yet? Not yet, no. No, and I didn't use it last time either, but it's there if I need it. So I know that you have done this journey before.

what's the impetus to do at this time to beat the Russians' record? Yeah, well, I guess, you know, going through the Dismarsting for me was a pretty... traumatic experience and and people can go back and to listen to that other podcast that we recorded a couple of years ago um but basically like I nearly died a few times that night and it was quite jarring in my confidence but

Also, it took away something that I had been working for years to achieve. So I had spent four years at that point to get to. the start line of the previous antarctica record and then it was all taken away in a moment when that mast came crashing down in that storm and while i was able to restart the record and finish the record with one stop it wasn't quite the same and

And so I always sort of had this inkling in the back of my mind that give me a few years to kind of like get over the trauma of it. And I'd be going back to the Southern Ocean and tackling it again. And I also previously really tried to get the science side of things happening because nobody sails in the oceans where I'm sailing. And in fact, yesterday was the first time.

I saw land in 45 days and the first ship I'd seen in 45 days was around in Cape Horn because no one's down that far south. They're all so much further north because I'm operating in that intense storm belt the entire time.

of the record. And so to be able to go back and not just have it be around a girl on a boat sailing around Antarctica in this personal quest, but be able to really deliver something of value to our scientific communities and to our you know general population worldwide uh to me was just

It was an opportunity I didn't want to miss. And so I spent the last year and a half forming the project up and finding scientific partners. And it's also the United Nations decade of ocean science this decade. So it fit just beautifully. I'd had enough other projects that I'd done between the last record and this one to really process that dismasting. And in fact, it was the writing of the book, Facing Fear, that was published by you guys, which details that.

story which really helped me process and I guess overcome the dismasting and make me ready to go again.

So the scientific research that you're talking about, do you want to unpack that a little bit for us, please? Yeah, there's quite a lot going on, actually. So I basically put my hand up. And I reached out to a number of different organisations and I said, hey, I'm the crazy lady who's going to sail solo around Antarctica. How can I make the boat of benefit to our communities and what data?

can i gather that's really going to have value to you um so i ended up renting from the the volvo ocean race now now called the ocean race um a subsea research unit which is basically like a mini lab that's bolted into the sail locker in the front of my boat and that is taking water in and processing it through the system. and then discharging it out the boat as a 24-hour cycle. And it's taking data the whole time. So it's collecting acidity, salinity.

chlorophyll pco2 and basically like an array of um ocean health monitoring um sort of measurements um and it's also monitoring the amount of carbon that we're absorbing into the southern ocean so that carbon like the southern ocean is a bit of a hot spot for carbon processing in our oceans so it's really important to get an indication of how well that that's occurring or how poorly that that's occurring and um and the measurements i'm getting are giving us some

forms of indication on that. So that is then going to be published worldwide through couple of platforms one's called imos which is the australian um sort of monitoring of ocean data um and then there's an international one called ocean ops which is run by the world um meteorology organization and the United Nations and so it goes up on those platforms and then scientific groups worldwide and they can

access that data and they can use it for their global modelling and their better understanding of climate change. So that's one element.

Additionally to that system, we've also rented a microplastic sampler. So I've been taking microplastic samples every day for this entire record, twice a day, actually. So I've just... taken the 90th microplastic sample of the record which is really cool and how do you do that yeah so that's this system that same sort of water flow through system part of the water tees off that scientific unit and goes through this microplastic sampler.

And it's a little cylinder shaped system where you have these filters. And basically you have two different size filters we've taken. So I have a 100 micron filter, which is a more fine, refined filter. And I have a 500 micron filter, which is a larger kind of. mesh size to catch those slightly larger bits of plastic. And what we're doing is we're running the 100 micron filter for a two hour period every day. And that is giving us our pin drop.

isolated location of sampling at the real fine sort of data set and then we're running the 500 micron filter for 22 hours so the rest of the time in a 24-hour cycle we're running that 500. micro and filter and that's giving us that broader understanding of how much extra plastic might be there that we're not catching because we're not doing so many filter changes.

And then that's getting processed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in conjunction with IMAS when I come back from the record. So I'll be sending all the samples up to them in cans. and they'll be processing that and then again we'll be utilizing that data to become freely available to global scientists around the world and then I'll be using that. to roll out a series of school talks that I plan to do post record where I hope to just sort of highlight.

plastic pollution as an issue and leave students with goals and activities that they can do to minimise their own plastic pollution. So that's another element of it. Where I'm sailing, there is no data. I'm the first one to get data in a lot of the areas that we're sailing through because no one's gone through here before with a sampler. There's plenty of data sets off Antarctica and off the main continents and the main shipping lanes.

ocean race or the ocean race also took um the micro plastic sampler when they sailed around the world um but they were much further north than where i have been sailing so there's a few areas where we've overlapped such as point nemo where it'd be really interesting to see how their data set from about five years years ago, I think it was, will match up to my data set now and to see what the difference in pollution levels might be.

in an area like point nemo um and for anyone who doesn't know point nemo is the pole of inaccessibility so it's the most isolated location in the planet from land anywhere in the world so you're over 1600 nautical miles from land and you end up closer to the astronauts in space than any person on land so to find pollution there and they did find pollution there um and microplastics in our oceans is is you know pretty terrifying really um

So, yes, I've been collecting microplastic samples and then I'm also partnered with the Bureau of Meteorology and I've deployed two drifter boys so far, but I've got... eight in total that I'll be deploying on board this trip and they're weather drifter boys so they effectively become little localized weather stations and ping back sea surface temperature and barometric pressure.

via a satellite network for three years to the Bureau of Meteorology database and that then allows them to get a greater accuracy with weather forecasting.

globally and um and we've also modified one and turned the boat into a weather station so i have a modified drifter boy in one of my lockers that's pinging back barometric pressure 24 7 from the boat to the French Bureau of Meteorology of all places and so I'm a I'm a data set when you get a weather forecast that gives you those images with the ISO bars and whether it's going to be a storm here or a storm there.

I'm now a data set giving a greater accuracy to that weather forecast because there's not a lot of data sets in the Southern Ocean in comparison to you know, closer to the equator or where there's high traffic zones, where there's plenty of data. So, yeah, the more data we can deploy out here, the better. I've also deployed an Argo research float, which is...

We were given it through the Bureau of Meteorology from the CSIRO, and that is this two metre long kind of cylinder shaped torpedo device that you deploy in the ocean. and it floats around for a couple of years, and basically it has this internal oil bladder that regulates its death, and it'll sink down to 500 metres.

and it'll record measurements all the way down and then it'll sit at 500 meters for like a week and then it'll float back up and record measurements all the way up and then ping that data back to um the csro database and then um and then it'll go back down and sync again and it's part of a global sort of ocean monitoring system. So I've deployed one of those and I'm also taking part in the Seabed 2030 program, which is actually a citizen science driven program that's volunteer based.

anyone can do it who's got a boat who goes out. So definitely get in touch if you are a sailor or have a boat. And basically you put a data logger on the boat and it just logs your depth. the whole way around. And so obviously when I'm in five kilometre deep water, it's not registering the depth because it's too deep. But when I'm passing over things like seamounts or the continental shelf of South America.

america such as cape horn um then it's looking all of those data sets and the intention is that they're creating an underwater atlas off citizen science data that'll be released in 2030. So yeah, there's lots of prongs of projects taking place on board climate action now at the moment. Well, it doesn't sound like you're just sitting around twiddling your thumbs at all, Lisa.

No. Although I must admit when you were saying you were taking water samples for microplastics, in my head I had this vision of you with a little test tube leaning over the side of the boat, scooping up some water twice a day. How ridiculous. Yeah, using one of those man wearing nets. Yeah, exactly. It's much more accurate this way.

That's too funny. So, I mean, look, I know the people that have listened to the podcast you and I did a couple of years ago probably caught a lot of this information. But for those who didn't,

Just in terms of day-to-day eating, sleeping, taking care of yourself, what does that look like? Yeah, so it's pretty varied depending on where I am and what the conditions are like. And it's actually kind of different than last time because I have this performance element that I'm trying to.

to do as well or deliver on um so so last time when i sailed around antarctica i was going to get a world record just by finishing i was going to be the first woman in history to do it and i am the first woman um But this time, because I'm trying to break fit or cognac off, you've got that extra kind of... pressure I guess where you're always thinking okay do I need can I make the boat faster can I you know what's my performance like as I'm sailing trying to out

pace federal cognac off around antarctica um so i'm getting a whole lot less sleep especially with all the science side of things taking place and taking up a fair amount of time um but i do try and average I think I'm getting around four to five hours a day on sleep on average. And sometimes I generally can get a little bit more than that, but I'm pretty sleep deprived at the moment because I've been close to land.

when I'm this close to land, I can't really sleep for a long period of time because there's an increased risk of traffic. and unknown factors at the moment i'm nearing an area of the ocean called iceberg alley so i'm having to sort of monitor and stand watch a lot more frequently because of those things so When I'm in high, high sort of density areas, I sleep roughly 20 minute micro sleeps and I'll do a four to six hour period of 20 minute micro sleeps. But within that four to six hour period.

I'm up and on deck probably two or three times within that period of time to adjust the sails or to maybe do a sail change because the wind's increased and I need to shorten my sail area or maybe the wind's eased off and I need to increase my sail area. or I need to tack or jibe the boat or do some sort of sailing evolution.

And then when I do get up, I check in with my shore team. So I have a system on board where I text my shore team to tell them basically that I'm alive and I've survived the night and I'm still okay. And then I... fill in the logbook. I do my initial, I'm also taking partner sleep, chronic fatigue sleep research study. So I fill out my sleep diary. And then I have some breakfast after doing a quick death check.

I live on porridge at sea. I don't know why, but I love it. And I have a hot bowl of porridge. It's like dessert for breakfast. It's the best. have an assessment of what my day is going to be like so i might have things that are broken that need maintenance so then i am working on those i might have a storm front coming through so i'm paying more attention to my weather forecast i'm spending an hour or so

going over the group files and making an assessment of how I might manage that storm system. I might have media obligations such as chatting to you guys. So I fulfill all of those things during the day and then. And then I have another meals, which is always freeze dried food for dinner. And sometimes I'll have a protein shake or something during the day just to tide me over.

if i have been up for a longer period of time and then yeah and then it's night time again so i tend to at the moment because i'm on the a whole other side of the planet from australia I'm actually still trying to operate pretty close to Australia time zones. So I'm pretty well awake most of the night and I sleep most of the day.

As I get closer and closer to Australia and I'm changing time zones, that'll sort of change and I'll start getting the first half of the morning and I'll be going to bed sort of midnight. and so on and so forth so um at the moment local time it's 4 30 here which is basically the middle of my night um and yeah and

but I didn't go to bed until 10am this morning. So I was up all night. That's kind of my day. I would be a basket case. I can't even imagine micro sleep to begin with and then sleeping, you know, the way that you're doing. So hats off.

Miss Lisa Blair? If I hit a point where I get too sleep deprived, I start having like two-year-old toddler tantrums and like full hissy fits. You throw your porridge out of your high chair. You throw your porridge out of your high chair. Basically, I throw my toys on the floor and I scream. And that's always my indicator that, okay, I need to change my priorities from performance to sleep. And I try and bank a little bit more sleep in those periods and get out of that.

sort of mental state oh my goodness you kind of it's that question isn't it if you have a tantrum in the middle of the southern ocean does anyone hear you does it did it even really happen it's one of those funny things exactly It never happened. Never happened, right? So I'm just wondering, with all that work and trying to sleep and gathering information and monitoring storms,

Do you ever get the chance to watch a beautiful sunset or what is it about this that fills you up? Oh, yeah. No, it's one of the things you have to prioritise that, the sort of be in the moment moments.

but yeah i i definitely like i had um a period of time half about halfway across the pacific where i had dolphins on the bow almost every afternoon and so i'd just go up on the bow and watch them play and um and it was freezing cold outside so i'd be all rugged up and i'd just sort of stand there for hours and just watch them swim and play and dive and they're riding these waves and they were just having so much fun

um and you've got so much bird life out here like an incredible amount of bird life in fact i learned recently that the southern ocean has the highest density of birds per square area than anywhere else in the world um and so you've got all your storm patrols and your um yeah albatross and the likes out here and they're just beautiful to just watch them and it doesn't need to be a sunset you can just sit on deck and watch them glide and it's just like a meditation almost um

And I guess, like, I definitely get the sunsets and the sunrises and those beautiful moments, magic moments, I guess you'd call them. But it's also that sense of being... almost so connected to the ocean because you're out here and your entire survival is on the moods and the shifts of mother nature and on the ocean and how it's going to play out um but it's also

you end up so in sync with the ocean. Like you learn the rhythms and you can feel the almost the mood change at sea as a storm comes through and you can feel the anticipation in the air and that. part of the journey is a really incredible part of the journey that um you know unless you've sailed for a really extended period of time at sea not many people really would get to to sort of learn that um

And it's one of the big reasons why I love doing what I do. So, yeah, I definitely get those sunsets. That sounds like a really beautiful... full stop to our conversation today, Lisa, unless there's something else you'd like to share with everybody. I think that was a lovely chat. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. I feel like I should, I need to let you go back and

sleep or eat or do something that's far more important than talking to me. Well, I mean, the only other thing is if anyone wants to support the project, I'm still struggling.

financially to fund all of this and quite a lot of science and the likes is being funded. myself uh so uh if people are in a position to support they can go to the website there's multiple ways that they can do so um and i blog daily i send videos back daily and photos back daily so make sure that people follow um go to the website lisablairsailstheworld.com and um join us for the ride and if you go and check out the tracker you can actually see federal konyakov's boat

and my previous boat from 2017 so it looks like um you know you can see them on the tracker and see where i am in relation to them whether i'm sort of ahead or behind on the record, which is great. Rest assured, we're all going to be, you know, cheering for you as you head through Iceberg Alley and then make your way home. Take care and let's try and check in again, perhaps when you're...

closer to home and see how you're going. Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Liz. I really appreciate that. That's it for today's episode of Talking Australia. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out. Write us an email, podcast at australiangeographic.com or find us on Instagram at Australian Geographic. And if you go to australiangeographic.com.au slash Talking Australia.

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