Cold, hard facts of Antarctic bid

Solo yachtswoman Lisa Blair aims to set a sailing record around Antarctica. Source: Barbara Yendell / News Corp Australia

IN space no one can hear you scream. In the vast vacuum between the southern tip of Tasmania and the ice floes of the Antarctic no one will be able to see Lisa Blair's jaw drop, either, as nature's agonising beauty makes her gasp in pain.

Lisa grew up on the Sunshine Coast and hadn't seen snow until two years ago. That's when a great white curtain came down onto the mountainous waves of the Southern Ocean as her yacht roared over them like a big-wave surfer on the ultimate high..

It was so cold she couldn't feel her fingers; couldn't feel her toes except for an excruciating burn as though she was standing on a hotplate instead of a heaving deck.

On December 14, Lisa hopes to celebrate her 30th birthday by sailing out of Albany, Western Australia to set a record-breaking course around Antarctica for 90 days. She wants to become the first woman to circumnavigate the frozen continent, solo, unaided and unassisted.

Only two men have performed the feat and she plans to shave 12 days off the 2008 record of Fedor Konyukhov, a Russian artist and Orthodox priest who looks like mad monk Rasputin and attacks long-distance pilgrimages to the South Pole, North Pole and the summit of Mount Everest with religious zeal.

He once rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and as Lisa prepares to chase his Antarctic record Fedor is in a row boat dodging sharks, whales and tankers on his 200-day odyssey across the Pacific from Chile to Brisbane.

Lisa reckons she can top his time for the 16,400 nautical mile Antarctic voyage by averaging 7.5 knots non-stop for three months. She says she might occasionally hit 28 knots with the teeth of the wind snapping at her stern and on a good day will churn through 300km of the world's coldest, roughest water.

She will face perils, pitfalls and savage snowstorms as gale force winds whip through her cold, wet clothes. Condensation will build up in her cabin like rain and she will be in constant danger of a terrible, lonely death amid 30m waves. Aaaaaannd loving it.

"The fact it is so hard, so challenging is what grabs me,'' she says. "There will be extreme conditions but I'm prepared for whatever Antarctica throws at me.''

Lisa's parents had their honeymoon in Nepal and her childhood holidays were spent hiking across Fraser Island and cycling across wide stretches of Australia.

In 2005, during her summer holidays from visual arts and education studies at Lismore's Southern Cross University, she took a job as a yacht hostess in the Whitsundays.

"That's where I fell in love with sailing," she says.

She and three friends then took 12 weeks to sail from Samoa to Hawaii in a 40-footer and when 16-yeat-old Jessica Watson completed her circumnavigation of the globe in 2010, Lisa tossed in her job in a jewellery shop at Maroochydore's Sunshine Plaza for life on the high seas.

With just $20 in her pocket she pledged $80,000 to be part of the crew on a 68-foot boat called Gold Coast Australia contesting the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

She raised the money for her entry fee partly by cycling from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast and organising raffles at pubs along the way.

Finally she sailed out of Southampton on July 31, 2011 and for the next year she and her crew under skipper Richard Hewson led the 10-boat fleet around the globe, including a stretch across the freezing Southern Ocean. For the past eight months she has been skipper of a yacht in the Whitsundays but she has moved back to the Sunshine Coast to prepare for her great race with the help of Bruce Arm, a former boat builder who helped Jessica Watson's campaign.

Lisa is entered in the solo trans-Tasman yacht race which leaves New Plymouth, New Zealand on April 20 bound for Mooloolaba and she hopes to raise money to charter a yacht for the event while she waits to find the perfect 50-foot Antarctic vessel.

"We're looking at spending $200,000-$300,000 for the Antarctic boat and then another $100,000 strengthening it," she says, "but raising the money is as tough as the race."

Lisa remembers how the Australian navy was sent to pluck the stricken English sailor Tony Bullimore out of the Southern Ocean in 1997. She says they won't be needed this time.

"I'm going a lot further south than him," she says, "and I'll be prepared as best I can for any emergency.

"If something does go wrong there's probably no point in sending anyone out to rescue me, anyway.

"I'll be so far south I'll probably freeze to death before help arrives."

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