I have been down in the South, Jules Verne and the Volvo, and what do I know about down there? I tell you what – it is just not a place for mankind. … It is very different to stand in a bar and say ‘I am going to do the Vendée Globe;’ it is quite another matter to be bouncing around in 30-plus knots upwind in really nasty weather.

Miranda Merron reached her midlife crisis early enough to make a successful leap into the world of professional sailing. Merron had applied her Cambridge University degree in Oriental Studies to a budding career in advertising, spending four years in Tokyo, Sydney and Paris with the legacy agency J. Walter Thompson.

A switch flipped in her mid 30s, and Merron tacked from the corporate world to off-shore sailboat racing. The shift suited her: Merron set a speed record in the 2009 Round Britain and Ireland, and took first in 2012 Transat Quebec-St Malo, the latter with her longtime companion Halvard Mabire.

Merron’s podium finishes continued through the first half of the 2010s. The Vendee Globe was the focus this year, and that included an entry in the Vendee Artique Les Sables d’Olonne, where she finished 17th and learned the lack of money for streaming internet to monitor the fleet doesn’t mean the end of the world:

• “That was how it was on the Vendée Arctique and I can’t complain. It is quite nice to think about three months being switched off, no gmail, no internet, no COVID news.“