Beating the Blowfish

For several years Emma Pontin worked in the City of London, smartly dressed and doing daily battle with the London underground. Then, aged 32, she embarked on a completely new career as an ocean racing yacht skipper. Hours before the start of a transatlantic yacht race she was to skipper in 2006, Emma took a phone call that would dramatically change her life once more. She had invasive breast cancer. She has to return home immediately for a life-saving mastectomy, and over the coming months she endured debilitating chemotherapy and radiotherapy, followed by a second mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Throughout her ordeal she continued to sail, race and instruct, with the mind-set that if she could still sail then she was still alive. She did indeed skipper in that transatlantic race just a year after that diagnosis, and then in the infamous Sydney to Hobart Race. She continues to battles the elements, as she has battled her cancer, and she draw inspiration from the sea in beating off her most threatening adversary. Written with humour and candour, Beating the Blowfish is a very personal story of two years in a young woman's life, offering a unique insight into the experience of breast cancer.