This next episode is a wonderful interview with an amazing person Lungi Mchunu from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Lungi is a sailor, a polar explorer, and a climate change activist. She was the first African female to sail to the Artic. What started out as a dare has led her to endless possibilities and to her personal legend. She has battled fear, pushed past her limiting beliefs and social conditioning, hitched a ride to the ends of the earth, came face to face with death yet she’s still filled with love, enthusiasm, and determination to continue her climate change advocacy and highlighting the importance of the polar regions to the rest of the planet.

I met Lungi as part of the amazing women’s global leadership program for women in STEMM, named Homeward Bound (www.homewardboundprojects.org ), that both of us were lucky to be chosen to participate. The program ends with a journey to Antarctica to find ourselves while seeing first-hand the effects of climate change. Covid has postponed our trip but I hope to meet this amazing Lungi in person either on the ship to Antarctica or around a campfire somewhere on this planet.

In this episode, Lungi tells us about her time when she joined a sailing expedition to the Artic, losing herself in the beauty of the Norwegian fjords, and including the time where she had to be winched to safety onto a helicopter and camping at Svalbard when an Artic storm hit for a week and she saw was surrounded by walls of sea water.

She’s currently working towards completing her Pole-to-Pole ambitions with her training commencing with the Arctic Circle trail in Greenland during the peak of winter in 2021 and sailing around the world solo in the next edition of the Vendee Globe.

Lungi expressed some great inspirational one-liners during the interview:

· What would you do if you are not afraid?

· There is no such thing as being cold, just wrong clothes!

· Find your limit and go beyond it.

· You go out to these crazy places, only to turn inward…….

· The world has some ways of opening you up.

· Do whatever makes your heart skip a beat.

And not to forget a saying by Lungi’s mother – When a child is born, their hands are closed in a fist with all their blessings and talent and then they open their hands. Then they  spend the rest of their life finding it again.

It was a such a wonderful time spent with Lungi. I leant so much about exploring a realm I do not normally think about – the ocean. From learning you must give a lock of hair to King Neptune as you sail across the equator to not letting limiting beliefs stop your dreams.

I hope you enjoy this interview.

You can follow Lungi on @Lungisails on IG and Facebook.