MAIDEN – Review

Surprisingly exciting, with the narrative drive of a fiction film, the documentary MAIDEN tells the epic tale of the first all-women yachting crew to challenge the men in an around-the-world sailing race. With the spirit of high adventure, this documentary follows a young British woman, skipper Tracy Edwards, and her scrappy international crew as they take on the all-boys’ club world of yachting in the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World Race. This polished documentary is filled with exciting footage of the grueling, nine-months-long sailing race, as the women shatter assumptions about what women can do, in the fiercely competitive, physically-demanding world of sail racing. The docu also features archival interviews with Edwards and her crew, their opponents in the race, news footage and interview, combined with present-day interviews of Edwards and others.

The documentary’s title MAIDEN is the name of the sailboat that the crew led by British Tracy Edward and her international crew entered in the Whitbread race. It was a clever choice for a name, referencing the all-female crew, the re-built sailing ships’ maiden voyage, and their first-ever challenge to the all-male world of sail racing. The media eagerly followed the women’s attempt to break in to that highly-sexist world, but often with a gleefully expectation of failure. That changed to astonishment, when the determined women upended that pre-conceived notion.

Young Tracy Edwards fell in love with sailing in an era when women were excluded routinely from crews. Edwards talked her way on to her first crew by offering to serve as ship’s cook, although she was a rarity even in that lowly position. Despite the opposition, she managed to learn the craft largely on her own. After being repeatedly being excluded from joining an all-male crew in the era’s hyper-male boys club of competitive sailing, the frustrated young Brit decided to form an all-women crew to compete in the 1989-1990 Whitbread around-the-world sailing race. Tracy Edwards figured there were other women out there who were skilled sailors but who also had been relegated only to the role of ship’s cook.

Boy, was she right! When she put out the call for women to join the yachting crew, highly-capable women sailors showed up from around the world. Despite a lack of funding, opposition from racing officials and fellow yachting crews, false-starts in melding a team, and a crisis shortly before the race’s start, these admirable women came together to get the job done. Through pulse-pounding sailing footage, the docu details the the Whitbread race, a grueling competition, which required the competing crews to cover 33,000 miles spanning the globe in three stages over a total of nine months.

MAIDEN is an inspiring underdog tale, a story of determination and grit against myriad enormous challenges. No one made things easy for this tough team of resourceful women. The thrilling documentary MAIDEN tells their story,in entertaining fashion, in the tradition of tales of high adventure long associated with the sea.

Director Alex Holmes skillfully builds drama in telling the story of this little-known race. The sea-going sequences are undeniably thrilling and watching these young women scramble to meet the force of the sea is exciting. The women faced daunting conditions at sea but hostility in the yachting and sports worlds as well. It is amazing to see the amount of sexism these women, who only wanted the chance to sail, faced in the late 1980s. The documentary includes jarring archival footage of sports commentators and sailing officials disparaging the women and news footage of Edwards diplomatically responding to the attacks.

The press were eager to cover the all-women team, but often with a smug expectation they would fail. The media were happy to put the photogenic Edwards on camera, but this tiny, pretty young woman was also bold and outspoken Edwards, a small woman with an iron will who would not back down.

Media flocked to cover the story, many clearly revealing their sexist bias, peppering their coverage with mocking comments about mused makeup, cat-fights, and silly musings about who would fix the engine. While it sounds odd to contemporary ears to hear Edwards refer to herself as a girl or to decline to call herself a feminist, it is clear her focus is on breaking down barriers to women in sailing and that nothing will stop her, not the sea and not the men in media, sports organizations or the other crews in the race.

But tiny but mighty Edwards and her talented crew had a steel in them that the media didn’t guess but which comes across clearly. The crew of the Maiden set out with the goal only to finish the race, keenly aware that if they did not it would negatively impact women sailors ever after, but they did much more. It wasn’t easy, as the documentary shows, and the women faced both the challenge of finding sponsors, rebuilding a dilapidated sail boat, and public ridicule and more. And then they faced the life-threatening, unpredictable challenges of the sea.

MAIDEN is a tale of determination and high adventure, showing that you can’t keep a good woman down. It opens Friday, July 19, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars