The Royle Yacht
Above: Yachting with a Royle
Above: Yachting with a Royle
Above: Yachting with a Royle
MOST of Jo Royle's adult life has been spent at sea, braving whatever the elements care to throw at her. Today though, the reason she has a smile as wide as the Atlantic is because she's been sailing with her dad, Mick, the man responsible for her love of the ocean waves. ‘I always used to sail with him on holiday when I was younger,’ explained Jo, now a professional sailor and skipper for international company, Pindar. ‘We used to go to Devon and all of my holidays were spent sailing or travelling on boats. It's where it all started.
‘I don't see my family very much but I got to see them for the first time in months recently and my dad was sailing with me all week. It was fantastic. They do worry but I know they're proud of me.’ It isn't any wonder either. The determined blonde has gone from racing dinghies at Arnold School in Blackpool to living aboard a 26 foot boat she had renovated during university holidays. She worked her way up from deckhand to skipper, has trained amateur round the world sailors with Clipper Ventures, been a corporate race skipper with Formula 1 Sailing and is responsible the first Higher Education course for students wishing to work in the yachting industry.
The 28-year-old has clocked up more than 75,000 miles of sailing experience and has navigated some of the world's most rugged environments from Iceland down to Antarctica. She is also one of the few sailors to have circumnavigated South Georgia in the Southern Ocean. The latter, she tells me, was just for fun to help her friends break a World Record. They did it. ‘I took the boat and friends of mine did the journey in kayaks. They broke the record for the speed they did it in, I was just there for support. That was true dedication and I was definitely happy to be in the boat rather than the water.’ Most recently she has taken part in one of the world's biggest sailing races, the Transat Jacques Vabre 2007, with just one other sailing partner, Alexia Barrier from France.
The 4,300 mile race covers the old coffee routes from France to Brazil. As well as teaching themselves to survive on little sleep for the three week race, the pair had to bridge the language barrier. ‘She speaks quite good English and I speak terrible French and there have been a few misunderstandings,’ Jo joked. ‘We're racing 24 hours a day all on the clock living off freeze dried chicken korma. Lovely! ‘There's a lot of preparation for two little girls. Life at sea is not always easy. Alexia and I had to do 1,000 miles sailing to qualify for this race.
We set off in calm waters but 24 hours later we were battling high winds and huge seas and it went like that for the remainder of the trip. We're not butch so we have to work really hard to get the best out of the boat.’ At sea Jo has seen first hand the impact our everyday lives have on the environment. She now works with international environmental charity, Earthwatch, to raise public awareness. ‘I'm really lucky to spend all of my time at sea,’ explained Jo. ‘But it is here that you see the true effects happening right in front of you. It's important to look around and appreciate the environment you're living in and learning how to take care of it. ‘You see the change in the amount of wildlife there is, or isn't, and places that were previously covered in ice are now ice free.
It is so noticeable and people need to know what is happening.’ Her dedication does come at a cost and when I spoke to Jo she told me her boyfriend had decided to call it a day the night before. ‘He said he was having a relationship with a boat,’ she confessed. ‘And I guess he was really but that's the way it goes.’ But you can't keep a good girl down and the Preston sailor is now preparing for her biggest race yet, the Global Ocean Challenge. It was take place this September and she will again sail with Alexia. She said: ‘I love sailing with just one other person because it means you do everything on the boat. You have to be a jack of all trades. It's good though, it means we can't waste time and I don't get the chance to sit still for a minute. Perfect.’