Forty Countries

We are holding fast at forty countries for the World Sailing Inclusion Championships.

I know this because I have spent the last few weeks staring at the entry list with the intensity of a woman attempting to increase international participation through telekinesis.

It hasn’t worked.

Forty it is.

And before I immediately start complaining that I wanted forty-five – which, obviously, I did. I probably need to acknowledge something quite important.

Forty countries is __________ enormous.

I’ll let you insert the adjective of your choice.

Apparently I’m not allowed to use mine anymore.

This is growth.

In a few days, 233 sailors, in 153 teams and boats, from 40 countries will arrive in Portimão to compete across eight disciplines at WSIC 2026.

I created this event because I wanted Para Inclusive Sailing to have somewhere meaningful to go. Somewhere that could put a world champion on the same piece of water as somebody doing their first international event. Somewhere Para classified athletes could compete for World titles while sailors who don’t fit neatly within Para classification could still belong. Somewhere developing nations could turn up before everything was perfect.

Somewhere opportunity came before perfection.

Limitless.

That was the idea.

The reality has involved significantly more trailers.

Those who read my last blog may recall that I was… frustrated.

Those who work with me may have selected a different adjective.

I wrote it late at night, because naturally all excellent communications decisions are made after 22:00 when you’re exhausted, angry and have spent the previous twelve hours solving problems you didn’t know existed when you woke up.

I swore. Quite a lot. I was angry. Quite a lot. And I subsequently received some entirely fair feedback that perhaps there were ways to express that frustration without deploying quite so much of the English language traditionally represented by asterisks.

This is growth.

Still annoying.

But growth.

I’ve always written this blog as me. Not Para World Sailing Manager Hannah. Not Four-Time Paralympian Hannah. Not Carefully Approved Corporate Communications Hannah.

Just Hannah.

Sometimes Hannah is articulate and thoughtful. Sometimes Hannah is tired and furious at 22:00 and thinks certain four-letter words are punctuation.

Apparently they aren’t.

Another useful professional development opportunity.

The challenge is allowing the second Hannah access to WordPress without letting her burn down the internet.

We are working on it.

Hannah2 has reminded me more than once that the internet does not necessarily require access to every single thought that passes through my head. She is, irritatingly, correct.

There is also a particular phrase which now appears to trigger an immediate physiological response in her:

“So… what happened was…”

I don’t know why.

It is normally followed by a completely reasonable explanation of a situation that has developed entirely beyond my control.

Hannah2 seems to hear it differently.

Her blood pressure rises. There is a pause. Occasionally she closes her eyes. And then, because she has now spent far too much time around me, she stops asking questions and starts stealing useful objects to fix boats.

This is what WSIC does to people.

But while I can own the delivery of my last blog, I don’t take back the frustration underneath it. The point of that previous rant was actually very simple:

I cannot want this badly enough for everybody.

I can chase. I can beg. I can find boats. I can write letters. I can argue for funding. I can send WhatsApps at increasingly antisocial hours. I can apparently operate a small international haulage company despite having no recollection of applying for an operator’s licence.

But at some point other people have to decide that this matters too.

And then something rather brilliant happened.

They did.

Somewhere amongst the ranting, swearing and me asking who exactly this mysterious somebody else was that everyone seemed to be waiting for, people started asking:

“What do you need?”

Even better:

“Leave it with me.”

Those four words may now be my love language.

People opened their contact books. They found money. They chased federations. They lent boats. They offered equipment. They moved trailers. They helped with visas. They contacted Presidents. They offered to coach people they had never met. They gave their time and, in some cases, their own money.

One country quite literally passed the hat around.

Manufacturers started asking what equipment our athletes needed and how quickly they could get it to Portugal. People who weren’t even attending WSIC started solving WSIC problems.

At some point I realised that the thing I had been shouting about; perhaps slightly too loudly and with an unnecessary quantity of Anglo-Saxon, was actually happening.

People had stopped waiting for somebody else.

They became somebody else.

That has humbled me a bit.

Don’t worry.

Not dangerously.

At 03:10 this morning, Justen from Grenada was still awake helping Jamaica work through their travel arrangements and trying to get them to Portugal.

Not his team. Not his country. Not his problem.

Except, apparently, it was.

Nobody appointed him Jamaica Travel Coordinator. There is no accreditation category for Bloke From Another Country Who Has Decided You Are Getting To Portugal Whether You Like It Or Not. There is certainly no medal for being awake at stupid o’clock sorting somebody else’s travel.

He just helped.

And that is increasingly what WSIC feels like. Countries helping countries. Sailors helping sailors. People who have already fought bloody hard to get themselves to Portimão turning around and asking who else needs a hand.

Justen is another of the quiet heroes of this Championship, and perhaps that tells you more about these forty countries than any participation statistic ever could.

We haven’t just built a bigger regatta. We are building a community that refuses to leave people behind.

Meanwhile, I appear to have diversified.

I thought I worked in sports development.

Apparently I work in logistics.

There have been Challengers on trailers, RS Ventures moving between countries, 2.4mRs appearing from various corners of Europe, wings, boards, foils, RIBs, sails and an increasingly impressive quantity of equipment accompanied by somebody asking:

“Hannah, how are we getting this to Portugal?”

Excellent question.

Welcome to Hannah Stodel International Haulage Ltd.

Our fleet consists primarily of other people’s vehicles, goodwill and blind optimism. Our logistics department is WhatsApp. Our business model is surely somebody is driving vaguely south.

Against all available evidence, it appears to be working.

There are boats heading towards Portimão because somebody gave up a weekend to load them. Equipment is arriving because somebody made a phone call. Sailors are coming because somebody found a grant, wrote a letter, made an introduction or simply refused to accept the first no.

The entry list doesn’t show any of that.

It just says forty.

Stoggs has been one of the people who has simply kept pushing. When progress has been painfully slow, he has asked the awkward question. When eventually has been offered as an answer, he has generally responded with the Northern diplomatic equivalent of that’s lovely, but when?

Stoggs in India helping teach starting procedures at the IDP.

He believed in what this Championship could be long before everything around it looked convincing.

And there are loads of people like that around WSIC now. Some you’ll see in Portimão. Some you won’t. Some have official roles. Others have simply decided that they can help, so they will.

Countries are lending equipment to their competitors. Coaches are sharing knowledge instead of guarding it. People are giving up weekends. Sailors are helping other sailors.

Every time that happens, WSIC becomes a little bit more like the thing I imagined when it was still just an idea.

It isn’t perfect. Neither am I.

I am impatient. I can be bloody difficult when I think an opportunity is being lost. I struggle enormously with we can’t when I think the actual answer is we haven’t tried hard enough yet.

I take things personally that perhaps I shouldn’t because, to me, the names in the spreadsheet aren’t numbers. They’re people I’ve coached, raced against, met at IDPs, written visa letters for, argued funding cases for and promised that we are trying to build something better.

So yes, sometimes I care too much. I work too late. I write the blog when I should sleep on it. I confuse persistence with the need to personally solve absolutely everything.

And sometimes I swear when a more sophisticated woman would probably take a thoughtful sip of tea and say:

“How disappointing.”

I am not that woman.

I’ve met her.

She seems lovely.

But I don’t want becoming more polished to mean becoming less honest.

The lesson from my last blog isn’t that I should stop being angry about things that matter. It’s that I can probably communicate that anger without setting fire to the curtains.

Progress.

Because beneath all of the frustration was something very simple.

I desperately wanted people to care.

And they did.

More than I expected.

That deserves saying just as loudly as the frustration did.

So here we are.

233 sailors. 153 teams and boats. 40 countries. Eight disciplines.

World champions and beginners. Paralympians and people about to cross their first international start line. Para classified sailors and people who may never fit within Para classification. Established programmes and countries still figuring out where they’re going to find their next boat.

All coming to the same place.

That is WSIC.

It isn’t inclusion as a slogan on a banner. It is giving people somewhere to go. It is creating the next opportunity. It is someone from Grenada sitting awake at 03:10 helping Jamaica get on a plane. It is a sailor lending equipment to somebody they might race against three days later.

It is somebody reading a slightly unhinged blog written by an exhausted woman after 22:00 and, rather than simply concluding that she should probably go to bed, apparently thinking:

“Right. How can I help?”

And for that, genuinely, thank you.

I asked people to step up.

You did.

I noticed.

Tomorrow I finally head to Portugal, which means it is almost time for the arrival of Calm Para World Sailing Manager Hannah.

I like her.

She gives the impression that everything is under control.

Those who have previously witnessed me in Event Director mode know the transformation is complete when the load carrier appears. Leg pouches, rip-off pouches, medical kit, tools, notebooks, iPads, chargers, cable ties and enough miscellaneous equipment to deal with most foreseeable emergencies and several deeply stupid ones.

Add two phones and four VHFs – currently lined up charging obediently on the side, making them comfortably the most compliant element of WSIC – and Calm Hannah is ready.

There are, however, three essential pieces of WSIC equipment I apparently cannot attach to myself:

Hannah2. Leo. Luis.

Poor planning.

Hannah2 would be enormously useful in a rip-off pouch. Ideally she would deploy automatically whenever she hears:

“So… what happened was…”

This would give her time to take my phone away, check nobody has given me access to WordPress and assess whether whatever comes next requires communications support, adult supervision or, increasingly, tools.

Because Hannah2 has also developed an alarming habit of stealing useful items to fix boats.

I feel partly responsible for this.

Leo is different.

Leo annoys me.

This is important to establish.

Occasionally he goes around me instead of through me, at which point I threaten to yeet him into the sea. Sometimes he does something irritating enough that this becomes less of a metaphor.

But the deeply inconvenient truth is that we work bloody well together.

He knows how I work. I know how he works. He can normally tell from approximately three words of a WhatsApp whether I need him to fix something, find something, talk me out of something or simply acknowledge that yes, the latest development is indeed ridiculous.

So, while I reserve the right to threaten maritime disposal at any point during the Championship:

I need Leo.

He is unavailable for other work until the 11th October.

After that, normal yeeting arrangements may resume.

And then there is Luis.

Oh, Luis.

Luis has spent months telling me some variation of:

“Hannah, it will be fine.”

I have spent months responding with the emotional energy of:

“BASED ON WHAT, LUIS?”

And yet, somehow, this man has continued pulling things together.

Boats appear. RIBs appear. People appear. Pontoons become accessible. Problems I have been staring at for three days suddenly acquire solutions. I ask how something is going to happen and Luis gives me the reassuring confidence of a man who either has an excellent plan or has decided that reality will eventually bend to his will.

I’m still not entirely sure which.

The other complication is finding him.

Luis cannot be tethered.

Luis cannot be contained.

Luis is free-range.

He can be standing directly beside you and then, through a process not currently understood by science, cease to be standing beside you.

You ask:

“Where’s Luis?”

Someone replies:

“He was just here.”

Of course he was.

Luis is always just here.

He exists permanently five minutes before the point at which you require him.

Someone saw him at the crane. Someone else thinks he’s on the pontoon. A RIB leaves the harbour and you briefly wonder whether Luis was on it. Eventually he reappears carrying a radio, some rope and somebody else’s problem.

I say:

“LUIS. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Luis says:

“Hannah, no problem. It will be fine.”

There is a problem, Luis.

There are seventeen problems.

You are six of them.

And then, infuriatingly, he fixes the thing I was looking for him about.

So perhaps – and I am recording this publicly so he can frame it, Luis might have had a point.

Some of it may actually be fine.

I reserve the right to withdraw this statement upon arrival.

By Day Three I fully expect the communications plan to contain five official VHF channels and one unofficial channel entitled:

HAS ANYONE SEEN LUIS?

And that, apparently, is the crack operational unit about to deliver the biggest Para sailing event we have ever attempted: one Para Manager carrying half her office on her body; one Hannah2 operating simultaneously as communications safety catch and increasingly competent boat-fixing thief; one Leo under constant threat of maritime yeeting; and one completely free-range Portuguese host insisting everything will be fine.

Forty countries. 233 sailors. 153 teams and boats. Eight disciplines. Five fully charged VHFs.

We are ready.

Well.

The VHFs are ready.

I’ll take it.

And yes, I still wanted forty-five.

Obviously.

There were another five tantalisingly within reach. Five more flags that, at various points, I genuinely thought we might get over the line.

Some came incredibly close. Some ran into funding, visas, logistics or timing. Some just… buggered off somewhere along the way.

I know who you are. No need to make this awkward.

There are sailors I desperately wanted to see in Portimão who won’t be there. There are programmes we haven’t reached yet, countries where opportunity still doesn’t exist and a handful of nearlys that I will inevitably continue mentally converting into future entries.

That frustrates me.

Good. It should.

The day forty feels sufficient is probably the day somebody else should have my job.

But perhaps I can want forty-five while also being immensely proud of forty.

Another development.

At this rate I’ll be emotionally mature by Brisbane 2032.

For now, the spreadsheet has stopped moving. The negotiations are nearly over. The boats are heading south. The visas are either arriving or responsible for several people developing stress-related eye twitches.

Now comes the slightly inconvenient bit where we actually have to deliver the thing.

What could possibly go wrong?

Don’t answer that.

Seriously.

Nobody answer that.

See?

Growth.

Oman showed us what could happen when this community came together.

Portimão is what happened next.

Forty countries didn’t happen because I wanted it badly enough. It happened because eventually, wonderfully, hundreds of other people wanted it too.

That might actually be the bit I am proudest of.

I shouted for help.