The life and times of sailing's top female navigator

Adrienne Cahalan's illustrious career has spanned 18ft skiffs, the Volvo Ocean Race, Jules Verne, maxis and much more

No stranger to these pages, Adrienne Cahalan has recently had her autobiography published entitled Around the Buoys (geddit?).

For a non-bloke from Sydney, Cahalan has had (and is still having) an impressive career in our sport and is today a sought-after navigator both for inshore races and particularly for her real métier - offshore, ideally on large multihulls. In fact among the world's top pedigree navigators - the Capes, Hayleses, van Triests and Honeys - Cahalan is the only female.

Her recent successes in the navigator's role have included Steve Fossett's non-stop around the world record aboard the maxi-catamaran PlayStation, to winning the Reichel-Pugh super maxi match race aboard Wild Oats in last year's Rolex Sydney Hobart Race - a particularly wholesome result having only a short time prior to this been fired from Torben Grael's Brasil 1 sailing team for allegedly being 'too small'.

Around the Buoys kicks off with a chapter recounting the PlayStation circumnavigation. Aside from the technical details, the reader is provided with insight (including a lot of minutae that you never normally get to hear about - something of a theme throughout the book), into life on board PlayStation, at the time the world's largest racing multihull. Immediately one gets the sense that this will be an easy engaging book to read. Cahalan is a lawyer by trade and words come easily to her. There is no fluff, the text is tight and honest, including a mixture of interesting vignettes and her reaction to people from her fellow crew to skipper Steve Fossett.

There follows chapters about her Catholic upbringing as one of six children, her relationship with her parents and siblings, her schooling and the history of her family. Her first sailing experience was on a Hobie 16, and, yes, she admits, she may have taken up sailing in a more regular way as an excuse to meet boys... Equally intriguing are the paths she took (and the ones she didn't take) to sail her first offshore race, then her first Sydney Hobart to getting captivated by the romance of sailing around the world. However rather than solely focus on offshore racing, and probably the reason her experience and skills are so well rounded today, is that she also spent considerable time in dinghies, first a Laser and then when it was apparent she was too light for this, the all-important 12ft skiff that launched her 18ft skiff career.

Cahalan was lucky enough to helm Ella Bache in the Sydney 18ft skiff class during its heyday in the 1980s, when budgets were big, boats were extreme and there was TV coverage, the professioinally organised 'World Sailing Series' and the whole media jamboree surrounding it. It should be remembered this period was when Australia was sailing-crazy having just won the America's Cup. Cahalan covers the antics she and her fellow sailors got up to during her tenure in the 18s, including her Hollywood debut and the eventual class-destroying split between the Sydney Flying Squadron and the New South Wales 18ft League Skiff Club at Double Bay. In the middle of this she recounts her less than productive year out on the Olympic campaign trail in the Europe.

From the 18ft skiffs Cahalan graduated up to the rather different Whitbread Round the World Race and for the 1993-4 race signed up with Nance Frank's short-lived US Women's Challenge that ultimately turned into Heineken.As ever with the round the world race this situation was not easy and often highly political. Cahalan describes her edgey relationship with skipper Dawn Riley and her side of the 'outside assistance scandal' she went through following the discovery of email correspondence betweeen her and Ross Field during the race.

This was the start of Cahalan's long association with women's teams. She was subsequentally central to the Elle Racing team prior to the 1997-8 Whitbread and her account of this episode provides some good lessons in how a major campaign can go very wrong. Another top experience was being part of Tracy Edwards' Royal & SunAlliance crew on their Jules Verne Trophy attempt that ended with a dismasting in the Southern Ocean on the approach to Cape Horn. Cahalan was also later navigator on Tracy Edwards' Maiden II, setting numerous records. The book covers all of these episodes, the highs, the lows and the friends she picked up on the way..

The most profound chapter in the book covers the disastrous 1998 Sydney Hobart race when six lost their lives. Fortunately no one was lost on board ABN Amro, the boat Cahalan was sailing but they were forced out of the race when their rudder broke.

Towards the end of the book we get Cahalan's side of what transpired with Brasil 1 and her meeting 'Mr Right', to whom she is now married. For this reason, we imagine, the book sadly contains no raunchy bits from her previous relationships...

On a more serious note the book is an autobiography and although excellently describes Cahalan's development to her present status it is sadly the wrong vehicle for explaining the numerous qualities Cahalan possesses that have helped her get to her present position, in to addition to mere sailing skill, such as her keen legal mind and her humour . There is however a useful appendix on 'the Structure of a Sailing Crew'.

Around the Buoys is a great pleaasure to read, both entertaining and informative, and in essence is the well told, inspirational story of how a woman can reach the highest echelons of a male-dominated sport. We await the next installment and/or the official Cahalan biography....

Around the Buoys is at present only available in Australia and is not to be confused withthe less wittily entitled Around the Buoys: A Manual of Sailboat Racing Tactics and Strategy by Michael Huck. The book can be ordered on through Dymocks Australia.