The 2014/15 Volvo Ocean Race was the first sailing race that I ever tuned in for. I was in college at the time—hard to believe it’s been 10 years—and photos from the likes of Amory Ross, Brian Carlin, and Corinna Halloran inspired a teenage version of me to set my sights on working in marine journalism.
Corinna Halloran was one of two onboard reporters for Team SCA, an all-female crew and the first women to compete in the race in about a decade. The team included notable sailors including IMOCA skipper Sam Davies; Ocean Race veterans Abby Ehler, Dee Caffari, Liz Wardley, and Justine Mettreaux; and Olympian/coach Sally Barkow, to name just a few.
“When we got our title sponsorship, we told them that we were not sailing around the world in a pink boat just because we are girls,” Barkow said in a presentation at the Women’s Keelboat Championships a few years later. “They came back and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s not pink. It’s magenta.’ “
“We were out there competing against the men on equal footing, but when the race was over, they got calls for their next campaigns. The calls just weren’t coming in for us,” she recalls.
These two anecdotes planted the seed for The Magenta Project, which aims to help bring diversity to the sport of sailing and in particular to elevate the careers of women looking to compete at the highest level. The program’s main undertaking is an annual mentoring scheme that pairs industry professionals with accomplished aspiring sailors looking to take their racing to the next level. Magenta Project alumni have gone on to have Olympic campaigns, work on IMOCA campaigns, and found their own projects, like Cole Brauer’s lauded Global Solo Challenge efforts.
This past year I was fortunate to be a part of the Class of 2024 and have worked closely with The Ocean Race onboard reporter and award-winning photographer Jen Edney. For the first time this year, the Magenta Project included onboard reporter and STEM/tech tracks to its program, alongside offshore, inshore, and foiling pathways for sailors. It’s increasingly clear that in order to achieve inclusion goals in the sport, advancement opportunities for women need to extend beyond athletes and include roles like team managers, media professionals, boat designers, and more.
For me, Jen’s input was invaluable. Whether she was offering positive affirmations or practical feedback on my portfolio, her guidance was a huge confidence boost. She was always available for a call to talk me off a ledge when I felt in over my head, and just knowing I had someone who’d been in my shoes not that long ago who could offer advice and guidance was so helpful.
I also had the opportunity to work on a documentary project with the other onboard reporter mentees, Flore Hartout and Lauren Zike. With such a specific career in a niche field, I’d never really had a peer group with similar dreams as I did before, and being able to compare notes with Flore and Lauren was an amazing benefit. Because we all have similar trajectories and goals, we were able to share resources, give each other feedback, and debrief about various opportunities. (Lauren even contributed an article to SAIL).
For another mentee, British offshore sailor Connie Stevens, a pairing with Clipper Round the World Race skipper Nikki Henderson offered the opportunity to really explore what her career trajectory could look like. “Niki is the perfect combination of the career side and the mental side. I met her at a time when I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with my sailing,” Stevens says. “She picked apart every single thing I said about what I did or didn’t want to do, which was fantastic. It really laid out what I wanted, and she’d been involved with so many different parts of the industry, so she had tons of perspective.”
During the program, Stevens joined an Ocean Globe Race team for the leg from New Zealand to Uruguay, an opportunity that Henderson encouraged her to take, reminding her that getting out there was the best way to know if being offshore was what she wanted.
“I would say, ‘I can’t grind as much as the guys,’ and she said, ‘But you don’t have to, think about what other skills you have, what else do you bring to the team?’ ”
That sort of confidence-building reality check was part of many of our conversations with our mentors, who often reframed the question of “why?” to “why not?”
The program begins with creating a detailed action plan for what each mentee hopes to achieve and how they plan to get there. Carlota Alonso, an offshore sailor who is campaigning to become the first Mexican woman to compete in a transatlantic race next spring, cites the action plan as one of the most useful parts of the program.
“The action plan and the way we did it was really interesting,” she says. “We were organizing SMART goals, and the way [my mentor, Clara Carrington] taught me about mindset was a big help and something I can apply through the rest of my sailing career.”
In addition to a mentor pairing, participants also benefit from monthly seminars with industry leaders and a large network of other program graduates. Magenta Project alums are well represented at most major international events, and there is usually a meet up scheduled so that mentees and mentors of different years have the opportunity to catch up. “I haven’t even met all of the other girls from our class yet, but wherever I go there are people I can reach out to and meet,” says Alonso.
This program and its industry-changing mission are run almost entirely through volunteer efforts and donations. It takes the work of many mentors as well as the Magenta Project leadership team, including Meg Reilly and Leah Sweet, and all the regional and pathway representatives. But through it, things are changing, goals are being realized, and hopefully, we are doing right by the legacy of the original Team SCA, who inspired so many more careers, dreams, and campaigns than they will ever know.
Applications for next year’s program are open now through September 1 and can be found at themagentaproject.org
