episode 19: ALICIA DE PFYFFER, SKIPPER

21 March 2024
Photo credits go to Alexis Courcoux and Vincent Olivaud
In this episode I talked with Alicia de Pfyffer, Spanish-Swiss skipper about her decade experience sailing super yachts and her transition to offshore racing.  She shares with us how "work" is actually an adventure and she finds herself honing her entrepreneurial and project management skills when not on the water. Alicia candidly speaks about the challenges of funding her offshore racing and the bold move she took to start qualifying for the Mini Transat 2025. And Alicia has some great advice for  girls and women who want to get into sailing.

BEST PLACE TO FOLLOW ALICIA AND LEARN MORE ABOUT HER:

If you'd like to support Alicia's Mini Transat 2025 project, head to her gofundme page. If you're interested in becoming a sponsor, contact Alicia at [email protected]

SHOWNOTES:

* Music by Chillmore from Pixabay
* Featured in this podcast: Alicia de Pfyffer * Mentioned in this episode: * Sources:

​​TRANSCRIPT

I'm Charlaine Jannerfeldt, and you're listening to About that outdoor job. ​

" Skipper de la Mini Transat 2025!!!! "

And that, listeners, is today's guest, Alicia De Pfyffer, professional skipper.

A quick note before we go on. Unfortunately, some of the sound quality during this episode isn't optimal. When you listen, you might think Alicia was already somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic when we actually recorded. It's not the case, but unfortunately, there's a bit of glitches. We've done our best to improve it, but thanks for understanding that even the best tech can't always get the best sound.

​Alicia was born in Zimbabwe. She grew up on the coast in the south of Spain and is now based in Lorient, Brittany. This French seaport is the stomping grounds of many renowned skippers, and it's the perfect training place for offshore racing. We managed to chat one evening after she'd packed in a full day of boating prep, fundraising, and race management. Yet, she's upbeat and lively. It quickly becomes apparent to me that the thing Alicia loves best after sailing is talking about sailing.

Your passion for sailing is quite contagious. Where did your love for the sport come from?​

" It's kind of funny because every weekend my dad would say, oh well, you know, we could go to Sotogrande and go on the sailboat, and I would always jump at the occasion and sort of always ask if I could bring a friend along. And they would always have to kind of be a different friend because, um, they would always end up being sick at the back of the boat while I was jumping up and down at the front of the boat and being really, really excited. Yeah, so my dad loves sailing and he always used to have these stories which were very inspiring to me. And although Tarifa's not, doesn't have that sailing culture, I was very sort of drawn to it and started doing all of my courses when I turned 18. "

I read in an article that by the time you were 18, you knew you wanted to make a living sailing. What steps did you take to make that happen?

" So I decided that I didn't want to go to university and my mom said, well, give Kathy a call who had a sailing school in Gibraltar, which is just up the coast from where we live, Trafalgar Sailing School and, you know, get, jump on a course. And so immediately I did that and I did course where we sailed to Morocco and back. And it was unbelievable. Just the feeling of being out there with all of these guys and kind of discovering sailing all together and starting, you know to kind of go a little bit offshore, although, you know, we had land in sight. And, um, and then I think the summer after that, I went and worked in a little "chiringuito" on the beach in Tarifa. Got all of my money together that I needed to do all of the rest of the qualifications, and then went off and started a career on big sailing boats, sort of super yachts.  And so for 10 years, I worked on these big sailing boats and probably covered around 40'000 miles, with a few Atlantic, six Atlantic or seven Atlantic crossings going up to Norway. Progress in my career and gained more experience. I was also gaining more certificates and diplomas. And, uh, in 2022 I obtained a ticket called, First Officer 3'000 gross ton. "

3:27
Alisha's now in her late 20s, and she's already been working on superyachts for nearly a decade. She's also already sailed across the Atlantic six times. She's also raked up nearly 40'000 nautical miles. And then she earned her first officer for 3000 gross ton competency certificate, which basically means she can pilot 3'000 ton vessels. That in itself is impressive, but her next move might not be what you'd expect.

So once you earned this new qualification, what was next for you?

" I remember going back to work and just thinking I was doing this job where I wasn't inspiring anyone, yet I had done something that was massively challenging in a sense. I don't feel this motivation and this challenge that I used to feel before I had this diploma and the minute that I started feeling that I started thinking more and more about offshore sailing, I started talking to a few people who had done some offshore sailing,  especially the captain that I was working for. He lived here in Lorient. He was from here. And he said, Alicia, you have to go and do the Mini Transat. Like, I can do two things. I can either give you a higher salary or I can, you know, send you off and you go and do this project. So, um, that's kind of where it all started. "

Her chance encounter with Edouard Golbery propelled Alicia into the world of offshore sailing.​

" And how it all kind of developed was around the time when I was deciding that I wanted to make the transit and I met Edward Golbery and he was my co-skipper of last year and he had done some offshore sailing. He had done a race from France to New York. He had done the Mini Transat and he attempted to put together a Vendee Globe project. So he had a lot of experience. And he said to me " Alicia, listen, what I can propose to you is that we do the Transat Paprec. And I looked at him and I had no idea what that was. I'd never heard of it. And he said "Yeah, it's on a Figaro Beneteau 3." I had no idea what that was either.  And little did I know that this Figaro Beneteau 3 was like this offshore, extremely technical, foiling, mono type racing boat. So like every single boat in the class is exactly the same. And the only things that change are the skippers. And I was like "Yeah, let's do it. I've done six Atlantic crossings. Why not? This sounds great." So next thing I left my job, thank God I had some money in the bank from my working, and moved to Geneva and we started this search for sponsors. "

6:08
Is it difficult to transition from salaried work on superyachts to basically project managing your own offshore adventure?​

" It is extremely difficult to transition from having a very, very good salary, working on this luxury super yacht, having a chef, having, you know, your shampoo and your everything paid for, not paying tax,  and traveling around the world and meeting loads of great friends, to going and managing a project. "

Deciding to take part in a race like the Transat Paprec is basically like starting a business. You find yourself wearing all kinds of different hats, entrepreneur. Project Manager, Fundraiser, Operational Manager, Media Specialist, and Skipper.  It doesn't sound like there's much time to spend on the water sailing when you embark on this kind of project.

" We talk a lot about the difference between the outdoor job and the 9 to 5 job. We were working 12 hours a day or plus on our laptops. And, you know, if we could get a run in in the day, then that was just huge. At the end of the day, I didn't mind that that that's what I was doing because I was working towards this goal. This goal that I was going to sail across the Atlantic double handed in this race which was extremely popular and it was going to be a huge challenge and I kind of saw this as such a, uh, what's the right word, like so prestigious, you know, in a way. And it would have been just this huge challenge if I'd managed to achieve this goal. "

Alicia is very transparent about the difficulties in getting funds for this type of project. For almost three months, all their energy was spent trying to find sponsors without great success. They then decided it was time to gamble it all. 

" So for those three months, we pushed and pushed and pushed, and then three weeks before the start of the race, Ed and I looked at each other and we said, okay, we have one chance. There's this one prospect that we had, this one CEO that we'd been talking to for a while.  Let's give it a go. Let's send him a message, say that if he, you know, if he doesn't join in 24 hours, we're shutting down the project. And we sent him a WhatsApp message and he replied saying don't shut down the project, go for it. And I kid you not, we packed our bags, went up to France, signed the contract. We had no money in our account yet, but with, you know, just by that one WhatsApp message, we're probably committed to around 70, 000 euros of race inscriptions and rental. "

With hindsight, why do you think it was so hard to get that big sponsor ticket you needed?​

" At the beginning, that was really hard because I was selling a project which I'd never sailed on the boat before and I didn't really know the feelings that I was going to be feeling when I was out there. So we find ourselves in front of these CEOs selling a project which we weren't 100%,  I wasn't 100 percent sure of what I was actually selling. So it's kind of hard to have that enthusiasm. So the beginning was extremely hard and I can see a massive evolution from, you know, back then to now. I feel a lot more confident and that's, I think, a huge part of it. "

9:05
​​So you secure the funding, but that's not your only obstacle for the race. You're now fully committed to, and that starts in just under three weeks.

" The funniest thing about it was that I'd never even sailed on this boat before and yes, you can say that sailing on any boat is, you know, all boats are more or less the same, but um, but Ed and I had never, we had done a bit of sailing in Mallorca together, but uh, there was a lot of training to do. We're going, we're going against the best, the Figaro 3 class is the training ground for the Vendee Globe. It really is the training ground. So when we arrived there, you know, we did the first prologue, which is a three hour race before the Transat and there, Ed and I found ourselves for the first time racing against all of these guys. We hadn't done any professional training. And of course we didn't have the speed of the boat or anything. And so the next days we were going out training, trying to figure out the right settings of the sails and the trimmings and the mast, you change the tension in the mast. So everything just makes a huge difference. And yeah, and then my second race, uh, was, was, was the Transat Paprec where we left for 20 days and 4, 000 something nautical miles. And off we were on our way to St. Barth. So yeah, it was crazy. "

The 2023 edition of the Transat Paprec was just the start of Alicia's journey into offshore sailing.

" And now I talk a lot about that race because that race was very much an adventure. And then to see how we progressed throughout the season, where we trained pretty much every week together. And we did the Transat Paprec, then we did the Tour France à la Voile, which is a race that goes all the way around the French coast. And then we finished the season with this race that left from Venice, where you're literally leaving from the Plaza San Marco in Venice and then you're going up the canal, sort of jiving our way out the canal with all the vaporettos, and the people taking photos, and the lovers kissing, and the tourists. And there was just this whole ambiance around it, and you could smell the pizza, and the pasta, and it was honestly... And then we're there with everyone clapping and taking photos. And then we just knew that we were leaving for eight days to sail around this country, all the way to Genoa. And what was unbelievable about that was coming in second place after just one year of training. So that's kind of where I really decided, right, this is it. I need to I need to start my Mini Transat project. "

Alicia's focus is now fully on the Mini Transat. It's a solo and unassisted transatlantic race aboard a small 6. 5 metre sailboat. The race starts in France and finishes in the Caribbean. It's held every second year, with a next edition scheduled for 2025. There's a rigorous qualifying phase in place. You don't just rock up to the start line. Sailors have to qualify by covering one of two specific 1'000 nautical mile courses, in addition to having 1'500 nautical miles of ocean racing completed with their mini boats.

You said, I need to start my mini transact project. What's the motivation behind that need? 

" Feeling challenged, which is something that I had kind of lost. And at the same time, I was learning something. I was learning and I was challenging myself and I was making videos. I'd never really made videos or written a blog or anything like that. And so all of this was kind of extremely exciting and I loved it. And I loved how many people sort of hooked onto the project and hooked onto the story and the adventure and are following me and are inspired by what I'm doing, and, you know, send me little messages like " Alicia, you've got this, keep going.",  "You're going to make it, we're going to get you across the Atlantic." So I think that's really, really special. And that's what really motivates me and keeps me going now is to see how many people I'm inspiring around me. "

12:59
And you're trying to share that passion for taking on challenges too. Tell me more about that.

The more I sort of build this project, the more I want to revolve it around inspiring the younger generation, you know, to face their challenges, to get out into nature and to do whatever their dream ism, you know, whether that's climbing a mountain or swimming across the straits or anything. Something that sailing has, which is super special, is that you don't have to sort of be a sailor to feel the things that we feel when we're out at sea. "

My next question might seem laughable, but here goes. Is there ever anything close to a typical week in what you do?

" No, there isn't is the honest answer. But I think you can start to build a more structured week once you have the funding. And it's finding the funding that's really hard because you're spending a lot of time on the computer instead of being out there doing what you need to be doing, which is training, preparing mentally, preparing physically and working on your boat to get it ready. So yeah, once you have the funding, then it kind of goes more to project management. Whereas before it's more like building a business and putting it together. So yeah, you do have those two different parts. And at the moment I'm getting out on the water when I can. And when I'm not on the water, I'm in front of my computer sending emails and on phone calls. But yeah, I dream of that, of that moment where I can say I'm training three times a week on my boat and the rest of the time is dedicated to sponsors and to doing, you know, media coverage and to training physically because then you have that nice balance where you can also find that time for yourself, which is extremely important. And that comes down to very simple things like eating well and preparing yourself for a race with rest and a personal life, of course, which we all tend to forget. "

It's not because names like Ellen MacArthur, Jessica Watson, and Florence Arteau have become more common knowledge that the sailing world is any less male dominated. And sure, the 2023 edition of the Ocean Race had more female sailors than in any of their previous races over the past 50 years, but that was still only 28% of the competitors. The 2021 Vendée Globe had 18% female skippers. So yeah, it's still male dominated. 

As a female sailor, do you get raised eyebrows or funny looks when you tell people what you do? 

" Um, if someone says "Oh, what is it like to be a female in this environment?" well, I don't actually see myself any different. So I don't even want to answer the question because you're undermining me by just asking it. And I feel confident that I know that I can do this and that I'm strong enough, that I'm mentally strong enough, physically strong enough to get myself across the Atlantic safely and be performant. "

The barriers limiting women in their outdoor jobs, they're still often just not addressed by the dominant gender in the workforce. But with solo offshore sailing, it's a bit different, isn't it? You're competing in the same race regardless of gender, and if anything, the general public often raises what they perceive as the barriers to success for women skippers. The physicality of the sport. How do you see this? 

" A lot of people ask me, you know, what is it like to be a woman? You know, you're sailing on this boat, which is extremely physical and, you know, you're out in these conditions and yes, we're out on the same boats in the same race, you know, in the same conditions. And I'm dealing with it just fine. And sometimes even better because we have different ways of using our energy and our minds work different. And so there's two different sides to what I'm trying to say. One side is, for example, with Ed working as a team, him as a male could bring things to the table. And me as a female could bring things to the table and together we could really build something super strong. And I really loved being able to sort of realise that. And then the other side is because I grew up with two brothers, they never, ever, ever said "Alicia, the waves are too big for you. You can't go surfing." or, um, "The wind is too strong. You're going to blow away.". Yyou know, there was never these comments. It was actually quite the opposite. They would always say "Ah, you're crazy. Let's go kiting." or whatever or "At least you don't do that trick. It's too dangerous in these conditions, crazy." But when they said it was more, I don't know, they wanted me to be careful but not because I was a girl just because I was excited and wanted to try it and I always had that and I feel like in a way I was super lucky because I know a lot of girls don't have that or haven't had that sort of upbringing. "

17:55
Change is happening. The Ocean Race, they did have an increase of 10% in female sailors competing over nine years. Back in 2015, it was only 18%. And last year, they did reach 28%.  Are you also witnessing this increase in female sailors in your day-to-day?

" So, yes, it is still a very male dominated sport but I think it's changing massively, especially the Mini Transat. There's a lot of girls that are throwing themselves into these projects. I see it when I'm walking down the dock, and that's what's really nice is that we can ask each other, you know, for assistance, for help. And I get asked from men just as much from females for how do you do this or what do you do, and I ask just as much advice. So I think we're working towards building a more mixed sort of community. "

Part of the mission of the series Women in Outdoor Jobs is to share the stories and experiences of women like Alicia, who've successfully made the outdoors their living. So that women who want to achieve that for themselves can benefit from their learnings and advice.  This is what Alicia would say to you if you want to enter the field of sailing. ​

" Give it a go because everyone's going to be welcoming and we're going to be there to support you 100%. Sailing is a very, very tight community. Ask for advice. Send me a message on Instagram and I can put you in WhatsApp groups where there are over a hundred girls who are doing projects like mine. You know, whether it's a Bonde project, whether it's a Mini Transit project, a class 40 project, any sail project, whether it's a project of I just wanna go sail around the world, or I just want to do my basic sailing course. "

19:44
A big thank you to Alicia for taking the time to talk with me. You can find her on Instagram @alidepfyffer. Other resources are listed in our shownotes.

Thank you for listening. You can find About that outdoor job on Instagram, our website, and your favourite podcast listening platform. You can support our podcast by following and leaving us a review. A review really helps make our podcast more visible so others can discover it too.

This episode was produced and hosted by me, Charlaine Jannerfeldt.  

Hi again. I just wanted to add a few more words about Alicia's Mini Transat 2025  project.  As you heard during the episode, a huge part of what needs to happen when preparing for such an adventure is to secure the funding. Alicia's grateful to have technical partners like Smartwool, Sika Group, and Makita SA. They provide material and equipment support, but her biggest challenge is finalising financial support.  So with the start of the 2024 offshore racing season looming, she took a really bold step. She launched a crowdfunding campaign. Friends and family, who know her determination, her drive, and her talent, jumped at the chance to contribute some financial support to help see her achieve her goal. She's just 2'305 euros shy of her goal. So if you believe in Alicia's endeavor, if you want to see a young woman compete in this epic offshore race and be part of her story, head over to our GoFundMe page. No amount is too small, and if you have any leads for sponsorships she still needs to secure, don't hesitate to drop her a line. She'd love to hear from you. Like I said at the top of this episode, when Alicia's not sailing, she's more than happy to talk about sailing, and her enthusiasm is contagious.
We'll be cheering you on, Alicia.  Thank you for listening. Bye. ​