The next Ellen MacArthur?

We speak to former YJA Raymarine Young Yachtsman of the Year Katie Miller about her solo sailing aspirations

It sounds like the script for a reality TV show: a take a girl from the centre of England miles from the sea, and set her the challenge or reaching the top of the tree in singlehanded offshore racing. Over the duration of the series she fights and struggles through numerous highs and lows taking step after step up the ladder until she ultimately ends up competing in the Vendee Globe...

Sound familiar? The script is old certainly, the show in which Ellen MacArthur has already starred and it is doubtful if anyone - man or woman - could ever top Ellen’s achievement. Will there ever be another person who can pull off a second place in the Vendee Globe aged just 25 as she did? Not in our lifetime.

Nonetheless, like the best soap operas, there is always a second series and on this occasion the subject is 21 year old Southampton Solent University student Katie Miller. She comes from the Midlands metropolis of Birmingham, not Derby and shares the same drive and determination, if not perhaps the near pathalogical tendency to hoover up and store information Ellen showed at her age. She’s taller, but squint slightly and she even looks vaguely similar to the girl from the first series.

Miller makes no bones about the degree to which Ellen has inspired her. She first discovered sailing when she went on a family holiday to Greece aged 14. “My sister and I were plonked in Toppers for a week while my parents learned how to sail a Bavaria 28 or something. In the second week we all went yacht sailing, which is how it all started,” she recalls with just a hint of Brummie twang. “And we went back home to Birmingham and I got a Solo which had been on my nan’s neighbour’s drive for as long as I could remember. So I bought that and I sailed that at Chase Water and we kept doing the sailing holidays and I got my day skipper...”

Miller cemented her relationship with Ellen when the Ellen MacArthur Trust, which takes children who are victims of cancer on sailing trips, were looking for volunteers to raise money during London Boat Show 2004, the year Kingfisher was parked on the forecourt outside. “I went down and stood on Kingfisher in the freezing cold shaking tins and then they asked me to go back and crew in the summer,” says Miller. “And it has gone from there. The summer after that I was a voluntary logistics manager, helping organise all the trips.”

But the event that got the sailing press’ attention was when two years ago, in a complete re-enactment of one episode in Ellen’s career, Miller bought a 21ft Corribee and sailed it singlehanded round Britain on an identical route, anti-clockwise and through the Caledonian Canal, only she started from Southampton, while Ellen set sail from Hull.

“The Ellen MacArthur Trust - that provided the inspiration for the trip around Britain and I wanted to do something a bit more pro-active for the charity and obviously Ellen sailed around the country when she was 17-18ish and talking to her about that it was something that really interested me. So as a result I organised it and went and did it partly for myself as an adventure, but also, more importantly, for the Trust itself.” At the time Miller was a year older than Ellen was when she made her lap.

While Ellen famously saved her dinner money to buy her Corribee, Miller says she worked weekends and persuaded her friends to work in shops stuffing bags, etc to raise the money to buy the boat. “It cost £3,000 which was quite an achievement in the last two years I was at school. The funds for fitting out the Corribee and for the Ellen MacArthur Trust I got through sponsorship. Raymarine were very helpful, because they kitted out the boat with electronics and there were a few key donations as well.”



In terms of her career, the most important aspect of her Round Britain expedition was that she received the YJA Raymarine Young Yachtsman of the Year Award in 2007 (as Ellen had in 1996 after her lap). This, she confirms, has certainly open some doors for her as she has moved forwards.

Last year Miller spent the season sailing the Royal Southampton YC’s doublehanded series on board Jerry Freeman’s Figaro 1 Fluffy. This she says was a great learning platform for her next step: the Royal Western Yacht Club’s OSTAR in 2009. To this end within the next week or so she should have completed the purchase of the Offshore Challenge’s Figaro 2, as previously sailed by Sam Davies and last year by James Bird.


To buy her new boat Miller has had to raise the almighty sum (for a 20 year old) of £80,000 (plus VAT), substantially more than her Corribee. So how has she managed this? “A couple of companies in Birmingham basically, I am not supposed to say too much at the moment. It is quite interesting, considering I only have the Young Sailor of the Year Award and my trip around Britain to my credit and a year racing on a Figaro 1 last year. It is bit of a risk on their part, but I am thankful for it.” Eons ago didn’t City of Birmingham sponsor one of Tony Bullimore’s first boats?

She admits it helps being a girl in the quest for sponsorship. “Undoubtedly. It makes a change. There are not many times you can say that”.

So why a Figaro 2? “The plan was always to do the OSTAR and the boat has to conform to the STIX [stability] rule, which is a minimum of 33 and a Figaro 2 is 34. And when I have done the OSTAR the plan is to do the Figaro circuit for two or three years after that.”

Miller’s schedule effectively fits in with her degree - at preent she’s coming up to the end of her second year studying Yacht Production and Surveying in Southampton, one of the sister courses to the famous yacht and power boat design degree course.

“Basically the OSTAR fitted in with university. A Figaro circuit wouldn’t at the moment, nor a proper Mini campaign. So if I get the Figaro this year I can do all the Royal Southampton doublehanded series, the Petit Bateau singlehanded series and some of the RORC races as well. So I have a good training program before the OSTAR which I can obviously do when I finish uni.”

However at present Miller is uncertain whether the OSTAR will be her personal graduation present or if the race will come first. “I think I might have to miss my final year exam,” she confides. “I have already told them, and they have said ‘that’s fine’. They can defer my exams until August. Since I have already paid the deposit for the OSTAR, the OSTAR comes first...”

Lacking a competitive sailing track record, Miller recognises that she is on a steep learning curve and plans to do everything she can to rectify this. She also recognises that to move forwards she needs to sail with as many people on as many different kinds of boats and in different positions as she can. Hence this year she is also racing with Simon Curwen (still the Brit with the highest ever placed finish in the Mini Transat) aboard his J/105 Voador.

Plus she will have her own boat. “The plan is that I’m going to sail the doublehanded races with a different skipper every time, so I can learn off them. And Nigel King is going to do some sailing with me which would be great because he is a Figaro sailor now. So that is the way forward.”

But the big step forward can only come when Miller takes the plunge and heads for France to immerse herself fully in the Figaro racing world. “The plan is to move to France after the OSTAR and go for it properly,” she confirms. “Looking at who competed in it [the Figaro] last year, it scares me slighty, turning up young and green and probably last. I don’t expect to go and play in the Figaro circuit and perform really well the first time around which is why I am planning to give it a good go and give it two or three years if not more before anything else.”

The perennial problem with British people attempting to do the Figaro is that Ellen didn’t do it (Miller is not adhering to the script!) and therefore no one in the UK outside of the sailing world has heard of it. In addition to this the Figaro tends to be very well subscribed with 50+ boats regularly competing in the Solitaire.

“People get the wrong idea when you get consecutive positions in the 20, they don’t realise you might only be 45 minutes behind first place,” says Miller. “They just look at 23rd position and presume it is not particularly good. Sam did it and she did it really well. I think it is proven to be the way to go if you want to learn how to sail solo properly. It is going to be challenging.”

Miller’s ultimate aim - probably, she says - is the Vendee Globe in 2016. “It seems like a long way away but I think it is going to fly past.” Obviously with IMOCA 60 campaign cost skyrocketing there is now the convenient stepping stone of the Class 40. “The idea is to do Figaro for a few years and then get on a Class 40 for the TJV doublehanded and then do a couple of years in a Class 40 before the ultimate leap into an Open 60.”

‘Is this the next Ellen MacArthur?’ is a headline we have used before we think, but Miller is certainly on the right track and few would debate that the Figaro is best school out there to learn solo singlehanded offshore racing.

So “lights, camera: action”. Let series 2 unfold.