Mini Mini sailor

The Daily Sail meets Liz Wardley, the antipodean answer to Ellen Macarthur...

I practically leap out of my skin when standing in the foyer of Vaudray Miller yachts, I am greeted by a short ghost. A little like the climax to an episode of Scooby Doo, this turns out to be Liz Wardley, barefoot as ever, and covered head to foot in dust from fairing the rudders of her new Mini.

Despite being just 23 years old, Wardley has quite some experience under her belt having already sailed around the world as bowman on Amer Sports Too - she was the youngest person in the Volvo Ocean Race. She first cut a name for herself when aged 19 she skippered an Elliott 11 in the Sydney-Hobart, again the youngest person to do so, and a year later returned taking the same boat and crew to a class win. Last summer Wardley got over the post-Volvo lull by teaming up with Finnish sailor Pia d'Obry aboard a Mini and won the class' two-handed Demi Cle race.

Gripped by the bug of Mini racing Wardley was initially contemplating entering the 2005 Mini Transat, but instead was convinced to pull her finger out and go for this year's race instead. With just over a year to get to the start line her situation was compounded by not only having to get a boat, but also having to qualify for this heavily over subscribed singlehanded transat, a process that requires a 1,000 mile passage along with 1,000 miles covered on the race course. Then, of course, there was the problem of money...

"I knew I wanted to do the Mini, but I didn’t think it was realistic given the time frame and my not knowing how to build a boat and not having enough money," says Wardley. "I delivered a Mini over to England and mucked around on Maiden and got sick of not knowing what I was going to do. So I decided to build a Mini and take it on."

She heard on the grapevine that Kiwi Mini sailor Chris Sayer was building a new boat having lost his old one following a collision last year. Although he had not raced his new Mini against any of the French boats, it seemed sufficiently close to what Wardley was looking for and the deal was clinched when Sayer agreed to let her use his moulds for free. "Chris had the experience of the 1999 race and then he and Brett [Wakewell-White] spent a long time developing the last boat and they have made very slight modifications since," says Wardley.

She arrived in Auckland in late August and the first week in September she found herself at the Vaudray Miller boatyard in Henderson on the outskirts of Auckland helping Sayer fair the moulds for his boat.

Working to a tight budget she could only afford to undertake the project if she built the boat herself - it is relatively hi-tech carbon/foam boat remember - but wisely employed a boatbuilder from Vaudray Miller for the first three months to assist her. "It was he and I during the day and then I’d stay up at night taping the bulkheads in or laminating. He’d comeback in in the morning with the brain’s trust side of it." Sayer, building his sistership alongside, was also able to provide advice.

Laying up the carbon skins, the foam core and post curing the laminate took two weeks for each hull. Shortly before Christmas they fitted the bulkheads and interior before putting the deck on. The canting keel mechanism was installed while the hull was still upside down. They then spent considerable time fairing the boat before finally painting her two weeks ago and sticking on the characteristic giant Mini class numbers - 439 - on the bow.

Her boat and Sayer's are identical save for some modifications in the cockpit such as the positioning of footblocks and jammers, due to her height - if Ellen has been described as elfin, Liz is super-elfin. The only other difference is that Wardley has opted for a single tiller arrangement.

When The Daily Sail visited, the boat had just been painted and was looking not far from competition. The bulb had still to be fitted and the twin transom-hung rudders were about to go on. However Wardley thinks she'll wait before launching as it is easier to fit electronics, etc in a dry shed than on the marina.

There remains two significant problems: money and finding out whether or not she has a place in the Mini Transat.

"The money I earned on the Volvo - that ran out about a month ago," admits Wardley. She still needs cash to make the mast (she has the tube). Her old employers, Doyles are doing the sails - although this extends to them cutting out the panels, while she and some friends will be assembling them. "Then we have a couple of technical sponsors, such as electronics from Mainstay Marine (B&G), Brett Bakewell-White are holding off on their design fee until I find a major sponsor. Ropes came from Freddie Mafioli."

She needs a further NZ$16,000 (£5,600) for shipping and, she estimates, the same figure again to get to the start line. "Realistically I need another NZ$16,000 but I’d still be scraping the barrel. There’s still safety equipment and everything. At the moment I am getting on with building to be honest. Once the boat is floating there should be more time to go and look for sponsors - but I’m useless at it!"

Finding money is going to be tied in with her qualifier. Wardley says that they have the agreement of the class for her and Sayer to race each other between Tauranga and Noumea (New Caledonia) - a distance of 1,080 miles. She will then sail on to Sydney and then back to Auckland - a round trip of around 4,000 miles - prior to shipping the boat to Europe at the end of June.

In Sydney, where she used to live, Wardley says she hopes to find the elusive cash sponsor. "I've got a lot more chance there. I spent three years working in Sydney around the marinas."

Unfortunately building in Auckland means that she and Sayer cannot compete in any of the official class races and they cannot qualify for the Mini Transat conventionally. They are therefore applying for two of the six 'wildcard' slots available. "They are for late, unique and overseas entries or that was what was written in the last rule book - so we fit all of that basically! They’ve said we have to send in a CV, and proposal of what our programme is all about and why we want to do the Mini.

"So we’ll do our best. We’ll do all the miles... Chris is taking the attitude that we’ll get over there. That’s what he did in 1999 - he just rocked up. Everything we’ve planned to do we’ve asked them, and they have come back to us with a positive response."

Their boats will arrive in France in early August which will give them three weeks of preparation time prior to the start of the Mini Transat on 7 September from La Rochelle.

Wardley will certainly provide the Mini Transat with some colour. She will be one of only two women taking part and at 23 will be the youngest, although two years older than Ellen when sailed this race in1999 ("I want to beat her result," says Wardley). She will also be the event's first entry racing under the flag of Papua New Guinea, where she was born and brought up.