by Levi J Parsons
SYDNEY, July 26 (Xinhua) -- An Australian sailor returned to her home in the state of Queensland on Tuesday evening, as the first women in history to circumnavigate Antarctica solo.
Lisa Blair began the treacherous 184-day journey back in January and had to battle a number of near-death experiences during the voyage.
"The most amount of wind I encountered was 70 knots," the 32-year-old told Xinhua on Wednesday.
"Which to put it into perspective, you would lose the roof of your house at about 60 knots."
"I also had waves the size of a three-storey building, severe knock-downs and a blizzard at sea."
When Blair originally set off, she had her sights set on breaking the 2008 record for the fastest solo, unassisted and non-stop trip around the continent, set by Russian Fedor Konyukhov.
But 72 days into the effort, disaster occurred when the vessel's mast snapped in seven-meter swells.
"When it came down it was dark, I heard a massive bang, It was deafening the sound, it was so aggressive, so loud," Blair explained.
"When the rigging wire gave way, I looked out the hatch and the mast itself was just jellying around like a belly dancer."
After three and a half years of planning, Blair imagined her aspirations of completing the trip were over.
But after the boat was able to limp back to a South African port, the sailor realized she could salvage the the journey.
"It was going to be possible to get a new mast in Cape Town and undergo repairs and it wouldn't be too late in the season to finish the trip, so once I knew that I gung-ho and straight back into it."
Blair's love for sailing developed while working as a cook and cleaner on a charter yacht in the Whitsundays in her home state when she was 20, from there her passion for the ocean grew, along with her advocacy for environment.
"I formally renamed the boat Climate Action Now and the whole focus of the campaign was to positively inspire people to take an action toward the environment that is for the positive."
Blair invited community members to email messages of climate action that they're doing in order to help the environment, the messages were then digitally transferred to post-it notes, which were wrapped and sealed to the hull.
"As I'm sailing around Antarctica I'm carrying hundreds and hundreds of individual messages from community members about actions they are doing toward the environment," Blair said.
"I ended up going for more of a racing boat, that I could then sail slowly. So if you get a high performance boat and you sail it at 50 percent of its performance, you are still sailing quite fast but you don't have to push the boat."
As for what's next, Blair said she is just very happy to finally be at home with her family, but will definitely look to plan more ocean adventures soon.
