Dame Ellen MacArthur is to concentrate on environmental work.
Round-the-world yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur is retiring from competitive sailing to concentrate on environmental campaigning.
The 33-year-old says a trip to the Atlantic island of South Georgia this summer, where she joined a campaign to save the albatross, made her acutely aware of green issues.
Appearing on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs today, she says: ‘The more I researched into it, the more frightened I got and that scared me to the point that I can’t go back to sea and go around the world again because this really matters.’
She adds: ‘I never thought anything in my life could eclipse sailing, I didn’t think it was possible.’
Dame Ellen, who was 28 when she became the fastest person to sail solo around the world, says she will continue to sail for pleasure and to raise money for good causes.
She tells host Kirsty Young: ‘I still sail, I love sailing, I’ll still sail for pleasure, I sail for charity – the Ellen MacArthur Trust for kids with cancer and leukaemia – but as long as this challenge is there to be communicated, will I invest four years of my life to sailing round the world?No.’
Dame Ellen says that, if allowed one book and a luxury on a desert island, she would take the SAS Survival Handbook and a ‘little purple worm…a big fluffy pipe cleaner with eyes’, that she has previously taken on her voyages ‘to make me smile’.
