Interview by Joe Cooper
© Julia Wright/CBC
For those with good memories and/or a penchant for solo offshore racing, the name Lush will ring bells. The sound of those bells leads you to Tony Lush, one of America’s prominent early solo sailors, famously rescued in the Southern Ocean by Francis Stokes in the 1982 BOC.
A freelance delivery skipper and race boat preparatrice, Tony’s daughter Erica recently launched Lush Sailing (lushsailing.com), a campaign aimed at developing equitable opportunities for female offshore sailors and growing American development in the sport. She’s now preparing for La Solitaire du Figaro PAPREC 2025, a grueling singlehanded offshore series starting August 25 in Gijon, France. Each of three back-to-back races is over 600 nautical miles, and Erica will be the first American woman to compete and only the second American ever. We spoke via Zoom in early December.
Coop: Erica, hi and thanks for joining me.
EL: Hi Coop, and thanks for the invite.
Coop: What are you doing in India?
EL: I have a friend who runs a local charity here, doing community work in a village. I’ve been coming here for a while just to help out for a couple of weeks.
Coop: Wow, good for you. Are you a native Rhode Islander?
EL: Yup. Born in Providence Hospital and raised in Jamestown.
Coop: Can you remember your first experience of being in, on or around boats?
EL: Oh, yes. My parents had three boats when I was born. My earliest memories are of being on a small sailing dinghy with my older brother. We were tied off the transom of the family C&C 30 and my brother would “steer” and I would “trim.” If we got into too much trouble my parents would just reel us in.
Coop: How old were you?
EL: In diapers…maybe age two.
Coop: Yeesh, very OTJ then. When did you start formal sailing instruction?
EL: When I was six or seven, I started lessons at Conanicut Yacht Club in Jamestown.
Coop: Was this the usual Opti, 420 routine?
EL: Well yes, but not so much racing. My friend had been doing the racing thing and did not like it, so I didn’t do the racing.
Coop: Was there sailing for you on the family yacht?
EL: Yes. We did summer vacation sailing – Block Island, Cuttyhunk, Vineyard, and so on. There was always a week where we’d go with several families all sailing on their boats. Everyone had kids, and we all knew each other. We’d arrive somewhere; the yachts would raft up and the kids would jump into dinghies and go sailing.
Coop: Sounds like me…What are some other early memories?
EL: My parents liked to teach us about sailing, so when we were sailing the C&C my brother and I would cast off and tail on the headsail. My mother would coach us about how to do it; sail shape and related details.
Coop: Did you sail in high school?
EL: Oh, yes. I went to North Kingston High School and had a great time. As a freshman I was a kind of quiet, timid girl but the team were very welcoming and helped me get used to racing. It was a bit of an eye opener going sailing in February in a drysuit, but it was fun.
Coop: Where did you go to college, and did you sail there?
EL: BU. One of my line items for college was, “Must have sailing team.” So yes, I sailed on the BU Sailing Team.
Coop: You will know then there’s a large contingent of BU grads among the Newport sailing mafia…
EL: Oh, yes. I was frostbiting a Laser with Fleet 413 once, and had only sailed them a few times. I was sailing up to the beach and had to pull the daggerboard up, and in doing so capsized. I was “rescued” by a pair of prominent Rhode Island brothers who shall remain nameless (chuckles).
Coop: What did you study, and have you ever worked in the field?
EL: I studied Languages, and wanted to work in humanitarian aid, but when I graduated there was no work in that field, so not really except for volunteering with my friend in India…and now trying to learn/remember French.
Coop: How did you roll out of school and into the wider world of sailing?
EL: I came back to Newport and got work with the 12 Metre charter company in town, doing daysails and charters.
Coop: Ah, more OTJ education?
EL: Yes. There were only three of us aboard, and managing the boats, the sails and a dozen guests who knew nothing about sailing was challenging to say the least, but I liked it. Eventually I started being part of the racing crew. I was interested in the bigger boats, and learned a lot of seamanship on the 12s. I did that for seven years, going south in the winter to keep my hand in.
Coop: When did you get into serious offshore racing?
EL: My first overnight race was the Ida Lewis Distance Race. I tried to leverage that to a Newport Bermuda Race. That didn’t happen, although I did the doublehanded race back to Newport, the Bermuda Shorthanded Return, in 2022.
Coop: With Tim Kent, I recall?
EL: Yes. That got me connected to my first transatlantic passage.
Coop: Do tell.
EL: I met a fellow who was the skipper of a big Oyster that was going to the UK. I sailed across with him, and the background was they were looking for a stewardess for the following winter season in the Caribbean. Well, by the time we got to the UK it was clear I was, shall we say, not cut out for the hospitality side of big boat sailing…
Coop: Ah, I know the feeling. What happened next?
EL: Well, backing up a bit, in 2019 I got a phone call from someone called Tracy Edwards*, who I knew nothing about. She said, “We are sailing Maiden around the world. Are you interested, and can you be in Greece in 48 hours?”
Coop: Oh, if only you knew the number of sailing careers that started this way…go on.
EL: I showed up in Greece. The boat was scheduled to sail to India and onwards as part of the Maiden Factor program to inspire young girls and raise money for girls’ education around the world. We were supposed to leave promptly, first stop Egypt. The boat had come out of a refit, and everyone was ready to roll. Unfortunately, the boat was not. There were a number of issues. The large main hatch leaked and there were similar things, but the clincher was trying to reef in a squall. One of the mainsail cars got hung up on a splice in the luff track and we could not lower the sail to reef. The woman who was the rigger went up in a chair and had to beat the car over the joint with a rubber mallet. “OK,” the skipper said. “We get the message.” Back to Greece and finish the refit.
We spent another two weeks fixing everything; flat-out days. Then we left for India via the Suez Canal, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden bound towards the Seychelles. This was 2019 and piracy was still a big concern in that area, so we shipped a couple private security guys with weapons. The delay messed up the schedule with our partner in India, plus India is not a country where you can just roll up with a couple of guys with high-test firearms. Ultimately, we diverted to Sri Lanka, which was OK with the “two guys with guns” situation.
We spent two weeks in Sri Lanka, doing usual post-passage/pre-passage stuff. We dropped off some sails there at a big sail loft. Lots of sails are built in Sri Lanka, in huge factories. Anyway, we got cleaned up and departed towards Fremantle.
Coop: How far south did you get? Probably not so far in that relatively short and north leg.
EL: No, not very far. I got a lot further south in this recent Global Ocean Race.
Coop: Oh, you sailed aboard Maiden in the Global Ocean Race? The Don McIntyre Retro Whitbread?
EL: Yes.
Coop: Oh, well then how was that?
EL: Well, I came on as an alternate when I joined the boat in Cape Town, so I did not know many of the girls, so it was a little, oh, stressful for a bit. The idea of going into the Southern Ocean with people I’d known for a week was a bit difficult, but I got to know what they were made of pretty quickly. We never really had that much wind (well, for that area, about 50 knots max), but the seas were quite big, maybe seven or eight meters (23-26 feet). All in all, it was good. Going downwind in those conditions for a long while… not many places in the world you can do that. ■
We’ll finish up my chat with Erica Lush in the March edition. In the meantime, you can read up on her goals of racing in this year’s Figaro Solitaire in August and September.
(Part 2 of Coop’s conversation with Trish Sellon, which commenced in our December 2025 edition, resumes in April. – Ed.)
* The first and subsequent installments of Coop’s four-part interview with Tracy Edwards, MBE is at windcheckmagazine.com/article/women-on-the-water-tracy-edwards/
