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Leagues of Their Own

It feels fitting to be writing about "Maiden," a documentary about the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, at the same time that the FIFA Women's World Cup is breaking viewership records and garnering national headlines across the globe. The women  playing soccer today are facing some of the same obstacles that Tracy Edwards and the crew of Maiden had to deal with 20 years ago: limited funding, inhospitable infrastructure, the belief of many that they are not physically capable... the list goes on. Director Alex Holmes ("The Ice King") takes a minimalist approach to telling Edwards' story. We are introduced to a young Tracy through home videos and personal recollections and quickly progress through to her leaving home and joining the crew of a yacht in Greece. From there Edwards learns of the Whitbread Around the World Race and makes it her mission to participate and then eventually to captain an all-women's boat in the race.

This last bit is the crux of our story; the Whitbread is a 33,000 nautical mile race that circumnavigates the globe over six legs. Forget having a female captain, or an all female crew; prior to this undertaking by Edwards, the few women who had participated in the race were permitted only the role of cook. The crew of Maiden and their goal of completing this race were pushing against a cultural weight summed up best by the difference in what the men and women would have deemed a success: Tracy thought it was winning, the crew thought it was competing well and finishing, the male crews thought it would be not having any fatalities, and several journalist assumed they wouldn't even finish the first leg.

There is an ocean of space between defining success as winning or simply not dying, and it was perceptions like this that the team faced from when they initially asked for funding all the way through to when they were out in open water. It is a monumental task to distill such a story down to one and a half hours and keep everything moving, and sadly, at times, Alex Holmes seemed dwarfed by it. There is so much subject matter here, and Holmes tries to include too much and then has to rush through other areas of focus just to keep time.

There are several moments throughout the story where the viewer really could have been pulled into an emotional scene, but the film moves on almost before you can digest what you have just seen. One moment while the boat is in the Southern Ocean encapsulates this; it is a true life or death moment for a competing crew and we are hearing radio communications of what occurred, but just as it sinks in how dangerous this race is, we have already moved onto the regular soundtrack and talking about the completion of that leg. It was an incredible anecdote and a testament to those involved, but as presented It feels like it was part of a different film.

However, the overall use of archive footage and modern interviews are effective and mostly keep the viewer engaged with the story. In the end, the story of Tracy Edwards and Maiden is so powerful that, while it may not inspire you to attempt the next around the world race, at the least it will make you want to spend an afternoon in a Sunfish.