The 1980s look about as woke as the 1950s in "Maiden," Alex Holmes' documentary about an all-female sailing crew. Billie Jean King had already beaten a male tennis champ in a televised match; Sally Ride had already become the first woman in space; Margaret Thatcher, England's first female prime minister, was still in office; but glass ceilings were as thick as ever. When Tracy Edwards, a young British sailor with ambition and skill, tried to join a professional yachting crew for the legendary Whitbread Round the World Race, she found her gender a problem.
"We're not having a girl," Edwards recalls one crew telling her.
Today, that sounds like a lawsuit; back then, it was business as usual. Edwards fought back by finding her own sailors, buying her own boat and becoming skipper of the first all-female crew to enter the Whitbread, in 1989. The name of her ship: Maiden, a clever bit of wordplay that upends old notions of femininity. In a rousing, often riveting documentary, Holmes recreates the journey of Edwards and company (including Long Islander Dawn Riley, the only American on board) as they fight for respect, make history and, not least, play to win.
