Maggie Adamson is Shetland born and bred. Growing up on an island that’s no further than three miles from the sea and well known for its ceilidh music – one could say that it was almost fate that Maggie would grow up to be a well-renowned fiddle player and World Champion Sailor.
We were lucky enough to catch her on dry land long enough to chat over her recent win, her upcoming plans and how you go from a skipper on an old fishing boat to a World Champion Offshore Sailor.
Maggie’s journey to competitive sailing is not all that unfamiliar. At 11 she started in dinghies and fell in love from there. Her summers were spent out on the water and she eventually started competing. She would come down to the mainland once a month to train with the Scotland squad: “Slowly over time, the boats started getting bigger, I worked on the Swan, a 60ft gaff ketch, an old converted fishing boat. We compete in Tall Ships Races giving young people experience onboard sailing ships. It was through the Swan that I gained my Ocean Yachtmaster ticket. During Covid I got into the offshore sailing, that would be used for the tall ship races and we take young people onboard to give them a bit of an experience. It was during covid I got into the offshore sailing.”
Her cruising experience with the bigger boats and her racing experience with the smaller boats allowed her to make the transition into offshore sailing quite seamlessly. A season down on the south coast training turned into more than a few, and before she knew it she began competing with her co-skipper Calanach Finlayson.
In Offshore Double Handed Sailing, there are two people in the boat. Maggie along with her mate are in charge of navigation, sail changes, and helming when they’re onboard the boat: “I love it, it’s a great discipline because you’re never sitting down, there’s always something to do.”
In October of 2024, the two entered the World Championship Offshore Double Handed Sailing race in France, their surprise win came at the very last moment: “We were hoping for a top five finish, but we just kept pushing. We saw where the wind was coming from so went to it and went ahead of the two boats in front, it was pretty exciting stuff, we didn’t say anything to one another until we had crossed the line and knew we had definitely won.”
What makes the victory that much sweeter for the pair is that they managed to beat the French in front of them. Maggie and Cal went against all odds to win this race, the first British pair to ever win (they also have a Scottish flag on their boat): “The French have training camps that start from a young age right up to adulthood, they’ve got big corporate sponsors as well, so they’re very well set up and they’re fantastic sailors which helps,
“They were very gracious (when we won) but you could tell they were gutted that we had beaten them.”
In comparison to other forms of sailing, the doubles offshore doesn’t see the same support as those disiplines that are included in the Olympics. There are no pathways for young sailors to work their way up from governing bodies.
There is a proposal for offshore sailing to be included in the 2032 Olympics in Australia, but we’re a long way off just yet. Hopefully, soon, we will see more pathways for the sport and funding at a grassroots level.
In April Maggie and Cal will be taking to the high seas once again. This time they will sail 2800 across the Atlantic – starting in the South of France and finishing up in the Caribbean. The boat that the pair will use in the transatlantic pursuit will be fully equipped with the latest technology to help guide them. From entering weather into a computer to mapping the fastest route across, along with actually sailing the boat, all of these come with their own challenges.
Firstly knowing how to use them but secondly how they fare against the sailor’s intuition. As a youngster Maggie explains that she never felt that her gender held her back, everyone on Shetland had some sort of connection to the sea and everyone just mucked in, it wasn’t until she got to the bigger races and events she felt that people didn’t take her as seriously as her male counterparts. Luckily once they saw her out on the boat those doubts were firmly put aside: “Sailing’s a lot more about tactics and skill as well as the physicality of it, so quite often you’d be racing all together but the results were separated by gender. You’d be quite surprised by how many of the men were actually beaten by the women.”
Having a co-skipper is so vital to the end goal, it’s not just Maggie on her own trying to balance everything on top of the navigation and sailing: “We always have a discussion before making decisions and pass ideas off to each other. I think that’s worth an awful lot, the race we’re going into is mixed so it has to be a male and female and I think that’s been really good for the women coming through because you’re absolutely competing on a level field with all the other guys, there’s not a separate class for women its everybody all together and it’s really important for sailing as a sport to give those opportunities.”
It’s a sport that for most of the time, you’re cold and wet and wee bit miserable but for Maggie that doesn’t outweigh the sense of achievement, freedom and independence that comes from excelling in the sport the way she has: “There’s so many different aspects involved in sailing that there really is something for everyone, you just have to find your niche.”
This will be her third time crossing the Atlantic and I think its a safe bet to say she’s looking forward to it, as well as the arrival in the Caribbean: “The last time we arrived there we managed to land in the afternoon, it was sunny, everything had dried off and I was handed a rum so it was the perfect place to finish the race.”
In this upcoming race, the crew will have satellite communication onboard so will be able to keep in touch the whole time and keep followers up to date through their website.
The team are still looking for sponsorship for the race, if this is something you’d be interested in you can get in touch with GRM Marketing by emailing: gordon@grm.agency
A truly inspiring story of Maggie Adamson and her commitment to offshore sailing. Her dedication to putting Scotland on the map in the offshore sailing community is remarkable. A great read for anyone interested in sailing and women in sports!