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This month Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast hosts talented British offshore sailor Will Harris, as the acclaimed offshore professional joins Double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson to discuss all things offshore, IMOCA sailing and his career to date.

In Part 1, the duo get things underway discussing Wil's early sailing life and his decision to make offshore sailing his career.  This edition, Part Two of Will's story kicks off with the start of the 2023 Ocean Race, which sees Will Harris co-skippering Team Malizia with accomplished offshore sailor Boris Heermann.

Robertson and Harris look back on Team Malizia's eventful performance in the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race, an edition which saw them take two Leg wins and set an unofficial 24 Hour Monohull Speed record with an average speed over 24 hours of 26.7Kts over a distance of 641.13 nautical miles!  Will's recollections of the race also take in the harrowing mid-ocean repairs to the mast, as well as an emotional realisation on the final leg of the Race...:

"For some reason (the map) highlighted Surrey on the navigation map and it was a mind blowing moment for me, I'd looked at that map all the way around the world, I'd seen the Southern Ocean, I'd seen Cape Horn, I'd seen Cape Town, I'd seen Brazil, all these places in the world and suddenly I was looking at my home town where I grew up for fifteen years....and it was only fifty miles away or so and that was when it hit home to me 'we've just sailed around the world' in less than six months and now I'm less than fifty miles from where I first dreamed of doing this."

This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley’s own website - www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact [email protected].

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