Solo sailing debutante

We talk to new Mini competitor Clemency Williams

Mini sailors have traditionally been grungy characters, an unholy blend of adventurer, high performance ocean racer and sea-going gypsy. So it comes as something of a shock that joining the Mini fraternity for the 2004 and 2005 season will be a glamorous young lady who last August announced her intentions on the cover of that last bastion of the English gentry, Country Life magazine.

Clemency Williams, 24, comes from one of Hamble's dynastic families. Her grandmother set up the historic sail loft on Satchell Lane, which was subsequently run by her mother until it was sold to Williams (no relation) and Lancaster in 1988. Her father, Professor of Hepatology Roger Williams, is an avid racing yachtsman having had a series of J/Boats, all named Jos of Hamble the latest being a J/105, which he campaigns at every available opportunity in the Hamble and Island Sailing Club's various series.

While Clemency's Country Life appearance might indicate that the Mini Transat is some form of Lara Croft-style alternative to Swiss finishing school for her, in person she is not haughty, nor does she have an outrageous legacy, indeed any legacy at all, with which to fund her ambition. She has quite simply caught the bug for offshore racing, shorthanded or otherwise, and is hard on the sponsorship trail just like everyone else.

Sailing-wise she was brought up in dinghies and raced with her father. "My father has always raced, so I have always been on board with him. I remember going Round the Island aged 10 and things like that. As to participating fully - that happened later on. And then I started running the boat and run it more and more professionally. That was when I came down from university. I had a bit of a gap when I was at Newcastle - I went sailing once and it was freezing and I capsized and it was enough to put me off, which seems strange now considering that I want to go off and do these things."

While Clemency sailed during the holidays away from her Enviromental Biology degree at Newcastle University, it was only when she moved south that she began racing every weekend. Eventually she ended up skippering Jos of Hamble whenever her father wasn't and has since graduated up to being a trimmer on Shaun Frohlich's IMX40 Exabyte II on which last year she sailed in the Hamble Winter Series and the RORC race to Dieppe.

The initial step in her short-handed sailing career was when she teamed up with Dom Akers-Douglas to campaign Jos of Hamble in the Royal Southampton Yacht Club's double handed races in 2002, a series they ultimately won.

"I’m not sure why we decided to do the Royal Southampton events," she says. "I remember thinking it would be impossible and then I did it and found out that it wasn't that difficult. And I enjoyed it a lot because it meant I could do it, I could drive... If there are just two of you it is about the shots you are calling all the time, so you are continually involved in the race, whereas when you are fully crewed you are allocated to your job, which I love - it is great, but you are not really involved unless you are doing the tactician or the driving jobs."

Winter of 2002-3 was spent in Australia where she got her Yachtmaster qualification and spent time teaching sailing on Sydney Harbour. Family friend Adam Gosling had introduced her to local sailmaker guru Michael Coxon and it was over dinner one night that they were discussing Liz Wardley's new Mini campaign. "They were saying that ‘she was mad and you’d never do anything like would you Clemency?’ I didn't know what is was so I went and found out what about it and thought it was alright..."

With the aim of doing the Mini Transat in 2005 it was suggested that she and Akers-Douglas compete in the RORC series in 2003, again double-handed aboard Jos of Hamble. This culminated in their competing two-handed in the Rolex Fastnet Race in which they were fifth double handed boat. By coincidence the boat which beat them was another J/105, sailed by two Mini Transat veterans - Paul Peggs and Simon Curwen.

Last summer she met Mini sailor Nick Bubb and sailed with Phil Sharp who has purchased Bubb's highly successful Magnen design from the 2003 season. In the autumn she signed up with Manley Hopkinson's company Boating Partners who are managing her campaign and importantly are pitching to secure her a sponsor and manage her PR. And this week she purchased her Mini.

Clemency's boat is the Simon Rogers-designed sistership to Jonathan McKee's Team McLube, originally built for disabled sailor Stuart Boreham and with the same unique keel arrangement - the keel both cants and can be hauled fore and aft. But unlike McKee's boat hers has not been campaigned and developed by one of the world's leading multihull helmsmen and subsequently by a double Olympic medallist/America's Cup sailor. Nor has it been sailed very much all - despite being built for the 1999 Mini Transat it is believed to have only around 250 miles on the clock. However it does hold the same distinction as Team McLube in that it recently dismasted.

The fact that the boat is without a usable mast is not a big issue as for this season the Mini class are changing over to carbon fibre masts. There are many people looking into the possibility of carbon wingmasts for their Minis, but Clemency says she is unlikely to go down this route.

The boat is currently in Falmouth but will be moved back to the Solent soon. "The plan is start sailing at the beginning of March, and then to sail, sail and keep sailing it, and get that time on the water and then try and qualify and race it," says Clemency. "Obviously if there are problems, they’ll need to be looked at but with regard to making modifications I really need to get the experience of the boat first. Then I will take it out and work on it and get it up to speed over next winter."

As ever with the over-subscribed Mini Transat it is necessary to qualify soonest and Clemency is wasting no time. Her first events will be in the Atlantic with two singlehanded races - the Select 6.50 on 1 May and the Mini Cup on 29 May, followed by the two handed Mini Fastnet in mid-June. This should provide her with the necessary 1,000 miles of Mini racing. Prior to this she hopes to get in the additional and obligatory 1,000 mile qualification passage but this will depend upon how comfortable she feels with her boat.

In the meantime there is the matter of funds. "I arranged to buy the boat and didn’t have the money, so I talked to lots of people and a small company which had the capital to do it (and don’t want to be named) bought it and I’ll charter it back off them back. They said if ‘you’re in trouble we’ll help you do it, because it would be cheaper than you getting a loan and selling your soul to get the boat’. So they own it for the entire period, but they are just buying the boat."

There is still the matter of getting the budget together for the running costs. "Boating Partners are approaching people about sponsorship, so there is sponsorship strategy going on there and they are being more commercial about it than me," she says. "It is something I need to be doing more of. At the moment there has been so much going on with the boat and this and that. I feel I have been steadily doing quite well, but now I need to up the concentration on looking for a bigger sponsor."

An added bonus for her campaign is that Nick Bubb, who pulled in some top results in 2003, but eventually was too late to get a place in the Mini Transat itself last year, is in the throws of building himself yet another Mini. Conveniently this is a sistership to Clemency's boat, built from mouldings made by Ovington Boats.

Generally she gives off a feeling of slight surprise that all this is coming to pass. "I never really realised that I could do something. I left university and I wanted to do medicine then applied to do law. And then I went travelling and worked for a bit and then had to get a serious job so I ended up doing estate agency in Ealing and I got quite bored after a while. Then I thought 'I’ve got to go and do something'. I did enjoy myself, but I am just too active and I hadn’t taken the initiative to go and do what I wanted to do."

While it would be nice to think that the likes of Ellen MacArthur were her initial source of inspiration, she says this wasn't the case. "Really I have become more familiar with these people as I’ve been doing this rather than them being people I have followed. Ellen MacArthur you couldn't escape, but Emma Richards and Sam Davies are people I have come across. I remember I went to look at Maiden when I was younger. So they haven’t really been the inspiration although they have become more inspirational the more I know about them and what they’ve done and the more I realise how hard it is to do what they are doing.

"I don't often look at people and do what they are doing. I am a bit headstrong with my own ideas about things. But as I get more and more informed and realise how hard these things are to do and what they have done to get there I get more inspired and impressed by what they have done. When you don’t know how easy it is to raise sponsorship and they make a sponsorship announcement, you think ‘that’s great’ but it's only when you are trying to raise sponsorship and they’ve got sponsorship you realise how hard it is to have got that."

Beyond the Mini Clemency says she would like to have a career as a professional ocean racer. "I don't necessarily aspire to being a high profile solo female sailor or do a Vendee. That is not the focus. I adore sailing by myself, but it is a learning curve at the moment and that is why I do it. I do enjoy the piece and quiet, but I also love being part of a crew. My passion is sailing and racing. I would love ultimately to be the navigator on a Volvo boat in 2009 rather than the Vendee in 2008. Talking to Nick [Bubb] he is very clear what he aspires to do - the Vendee in 2008." Also on the wish list arealso the Transat Jacques Vabre and the Figaro.

"So I'll do this project and then see what happens. A year ago, I didn’t know I had it in me to do all this. And before that I was an estate agent and at university I didn’t have a lot of confidence in achieving things - I just pottered along. And so maybe I finish the Mini and someone says or I think 'right, actually what I want to do is this...' I don't know how things will pan out. It is difficult to be rigid about these things. I am not doing this just as a bit of a challenge, I am doing it for the experience and to win. I love going offshore and I want to do it by myself."

Although she has yet to race singlehanded, she has certainly experienced it sailing doublehanded. "I just love doing everything, although it is not just about that. It is a wonderful feeling having set the boat up and it is creaming along and I have had a feel for it doing the doublehanded and Dom has been asleep and you are there with the boat and it is just like sailing a dinghy when you are younger. You can just go off for a sail, you don’t have to rely on a crew of 10 people to get you there. There are so many aspects to it. It is not just going off and doing some highly technical sailing on a race boat."

Echoes most certainly of Ellen MacArthur.

To read more about Clem - click here to see her website.