When Nicolette Milnes Walker was 28, she set herself to be the first woman to sail solo and non-stop across the Atlantic from the UK to the USA. This was in 1971. Ann Davison had crossed single-handed in 1952 in her 24ft wooden yacht Peggy but she’d taken more of a cruise approach, pausing several times along the way. It had been a remarkable achievement by a remarkable woman. Almost 20 years later, Nicolette was planning something different.
Boats and equipment had changed during the boom years of the 1960s. Like thousands of other people Nicolette had built a Mirror dinghy from a kit. She’d been living in a Bristol University student flat and had to get it out through the window. By the end of the decade mass, founded in 1967, was just the magazine they needed.
