It’s just been announced that Isle of Wight-based yachtswoman, Dame Ellen MacArthur, has decided to retire from competitive sailing.
Her reasons? To apply here ample enthusiasm to environmental campaigning.
Those of you who heard the interview we did with Dame Ellen or the her speech at the Eco-Island conference back in March 2008 will know that she’s very environmentally minded.
One of her major points was that modern living is detached from the resource that it consumes.
In her Desert Island Discs interview today, she’ll say it was a trip to a remote island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic where she spent two months camping (filming for a TV series, we think) brought her decision.
She said: “I never thought that anything in my life could eclipse sailing, I didn’t think it was possible.
“But after being in South Georgia, after learning these lessons I suppose, and the more I researched into it, the more frightened I got and that has really scared me to the point that I can’t go back to sea and go around the world again because this really matters.”
Ellen MacArthur Trust to continue
Ellen says that she won’t be giving up sailing, or her charity work, “I still sail, I love sailing, I’ll still sail for pleasure, I sail for charity – the Ellen MacArthur Trust for kids with cancer, leukaemia,”
For the full details listen in to Desert Island Discs on Radio Four this morning at 11:15 or read the BBC story about it.
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image: a crop of a great portrait of Dame Ellen MacArthur by Julian Winslow. See a larger version on Flickr.
