Ellen MacArthur

(http://www.ellenmacarthur.com/)

One of the people who impresses me the most is a woman. She is only 29 years old, but has probably seen and done more in her life than people twice or three times her age. She is the fastest solo sailor around the planet. Her name is Ellen MacArthur.

Ellen was born in 1976 in Great Britain. She sailed for the first time at the age of four, when one of her aunts brought her on her little boat called "Cabaret". Here was the start of Ellen's passion, which would lead her around the planet. Ellen spent all of her time and money to buy and read books about boats and oceans. When she was eight, she saved the money her parents gave her for school meals to buy her own boat. She finally bought it at the age of 13! She obtained a yachtmaster diploma at 18 years old and began to work on 60-foot boats. She also started to race across the oceans with (and against) the greatest sailors in the world. Ellen first appeared in the public eye in 2000, when she took the departure of the "Vendee Globe" (a non-stop race around the world) and came in second!

First of all, Ellen is for me a perfect model of someone passionate. She has built her life around her passion for boats and seas and she is a great example of a woman who does something every day in which she enjoys every single second. For me, doing something you like every day is very important to lead a happy life. Ellen is quite young, and she is also a small woman, but she showed the entire world that she was determined to do what she loved. She showed she could race against people older, stronger and more experienced and that she could do better than them! She is unremitting and a hard worker, she knows what she wants and she does everything needed to reach her goals. In 2000 she rounded half of the world to go on reconnaissance for the next race around the world! Ellen MacArthur is also a kind woman who used her notoriety to support associations for HIV-positive children.

For all of this: her kindness, her decisiveness, her bravery and her passion, Ellen MacArthur is for me a Role Model. I don't want to be like her or to do the same things, but I aspire to work and fight for what I want, to make my life happy and to fill it with as much passion as hers.