THE LATITUDE 38 INTERVIEW
Lia Ditton
This isn't a story about a rower. Even though Lia Ditton has been training in San Francisco for a March 2018 attempt to become the first woman to row solo across the North Pacific, and even though she's already rowed the Atlantic doublehanded, Ditton is a sailor. The 37-year-old is a veteran of the OSTAR and Route du Rhum and was captain of the trimaran featured in Waterworld. Ditton looks at rowing as an extension of being a sailor, and says that to be successful, she needs to train as if she were preparing for a 'round-the-world race. Ditton is also an artist, and talks about the aesthetics of water, sometimes describing the ocean poetically (she called waves in a hurricane "walls of swirling white and jade") and has done installations inspired by her sailing ventures. She's British, and laughs often and robustly, punctuating her thoughts. But she's also very matter-of-fact, even understated. "So rowing the Pacific," she shrugs, "should be just like rowing the Atlantic . . . but twice as long [laughs]." Latitude: So where are you in your program? Lia: I'm training, which means hours and hours of rowing. And now it's hard, because it's summer and the wind and tides are strong. I thought that I would be able to handle these conditions by the time I got to this stage, but the reality is that 25 knots of wind is still 25 knots of wind [laughs]. I moved here because I thought San Francisco Bay would be a great place to train. And I wasn't wrong! I’ve learned a lot about maneuvering the boat and about the Bay. How will you be navigating? Same as on a sailboat — I'll have a small laptop attached to a sat phone and GPS. Unlike a sailboat, I'll only check it once a day. I'll pick a course for the day with a margin of 10 to 15 degrees and try and hold that. I have a compass right in my eyeline, but the card isn't reversed and I'm rowing backwards. So I pick a number and try and stay close to it, but it's not a real number, because I’m not going in the direction for which the compass would be relevant [laughs]. The main thing for this attempt is the navigation. I began wondering, "Why are people failing?" And I became fascinated. And after a while, if you start to study why people are failing, you start to think, well, maybe I could learn from what they've experienced and succeed. But in truth, a lot of it is the wind and the weather and cards that you're dealt. And there's not a lot you can do about that, apart from react in the right way. Most people that go to sea in an ocean rowboat, nine out of ten are not seafarers. They're not sailors. They're people who climb mountains and run marathons across the desert. They're adventurers. And this to them is the ultimate adventure. So I wanted to look at it from a mariner's perspective. And to me that meant training somewhere like San Francisco. Somewhere where you could get conditions that were equal to or greater than an ocean. Also, you need time in the boat. A Vendée campaign is four years. And the race is 100, 150 days at sea, and this row could be anywhere between 100 and 180 days at sea. Tell us how you got into sailing. When I was 11, Josh Hall came to my town. He was preparing for the BOC Challenge, and groups of school kids were taken to see his boat — Spirit of Ipswich — which was in the town center on its cradle. We were asked to draw the boat in the pouring rain, sitting under an archway. My drawing won the competition and I got to meet Josh and climb up the ladder to see the boat. I wore the T-shirt I won until it wore out, and I listened to the cassette of his journey many, many times, and certainly that would have inspired me. Until then, I didn't know you could sail around the world. At university I studied fine art sculpture, and I went to India Page 86 •
Latitude 38
• September, 2017
to learn to carve stone. But I got sick, so I went on to Thailand and stumbled on the Phuket King's Cup Regatta. After the race, there were lots of boats looking for crew to go back to New Zealand, Australia or Europe. And I thought, "Oh wow, this is an adventure that I should do!" I thought, "OK, I don't want to go straight there, I want to go past all of these countries. I'm in no rush, right? I'm 21 [laughs]." So I joined a cruising boat, and it took five months to get from Thailand to Turkey. And that changed my life. The boat had no technology at all. It had an autopilot that drove in a straight line on calm days only, no life jackets that I can remember — it had an inflatable dinghy that was referred to as the 'liferaft'. We had a handheld GPS. The captain was a sextant user, so having a GPS was a big deal [laughs]. It was a real old-school ocean voyage, with a kerosene stove and no refrigeration. There were no showers; we swam in the sea to wash. My skin was gritty with salt, which I actually liked. All of our drinking water was in barrels, and we collected rainwater and some of it went green [laughs]. And I didn't mind! I had no point of comparison. I'm glad that was my first experience because I didn't know any different.
"Most people that go to sea in an ocean rowboat, nine out of ten are not seafarers. They're not sailors. They're adventurers." What did you do next in sailing? I went to the Caribbean and discovered the American raceboat scene. I had a great couple of years racing on Brightstar, a Reichel Pugh 70-ft sled. I had to talk my way into boats — many of which had "no girl" rules — sometimes by making sandwiches for 18 people. But that was often the only way to get on board. The captain would go, "oh well she's useful, we'll take her." Or, "oh well she's light, so she can pack the kite." For years I accepted that catering was the way to get on those boats. Then I sailed on Roger Sturgeon's Rosebud, which was one of the first TP52s, and the winning TP52 at the time. It was fantastic to be part of a winning team, a real gift, because I learned what it took to be good. We went out on the racecourse — say in Antigua — for ten days before the race, as a team, with a coach. We did start after start, spinnaker hoist after spinnaker hoist, drop after drop. Our maneuvers became incredibly slick. By the time we got to the race, I would think, oh, we're racing, because I didn't need to pack the kite after we had just hoisted it. I could sit on the rail! Racing was so much less physical than our coached sessions.