Meet Lisa McDonald

Nautor Challenge's new skipper and the America's Cup sailor formerly known as Lisa Charles

A slight blip in her career came during 1989 when she became very successful in the glitzy fashion house of DKNY. Lisa explains: "I took a brief break from sailing during 1989-90. I feared I was living a misspent youth, sailing rather than going back to school and doing something grown up." She went to New York in the hope of studying fashion design and more by luck than judgement got involved with DKNY. "I had a very grown-up job there for six months, which was absolutely brilliant , I was in charge of my own department in the company by the end of it." After six months in New York she realised that all she could think about was the boats and so returned. "Since then Hamble is really the first place where I've settled down as a grown up," she says.

Lisa's sailing CV is impressive. In 1993 she did the Fastnet as part of American Nance Frank's short-lived Whitbread campaign (prior to the boat being passed on to Dawn Riley and renamed Heineken). Although she did not do the 1993/4 Whitbread she joined Riley soon after as part of Bill Koch's first ever women's America's Cup challenger, America3; a campaign she was involved with from start to finish. But her disappointment over not doing the Whitbread was short-lived. After a stint on board Tracy Edwards' Royal & SunAlliance catamaran, she jumped ship to join EF Education in the 1997/8 Whitbread.

Last year Lisa was in full swing for the Volvo Ocean Race, trying every possible avenue to find sponsorship for an all-female campaign, but unfortunately to no avail. Although Nautor Challenge's offer has come very late in the day Lisa is absolutely over the moon. "As you know last year, my colleague Katie (Pettibone) and I were looking for funds. We actually knew that we were starting to look quite late, because we had to finish trying to win the America's Cup (with Dawn Riley on America True) and then also try to put together a sponsorship search for the Volvo."

They made good contacts and had an impressive amount of feedback, but their deadline for building a boat passed before anyone signed on the dotted line. "We thought we'd have a look around and see if there are any opportunities to take part in any other teams. At that stage they were still putting together their programmes so we've both gone off and done other sailing and other work to keep involved in sailing."

See tomorrow for part two of this interview when Lisa describes how she is going to prevent her campaign being an also ran...