Chris Yip 0:02 Welcome to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip, the official podcast of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. Each month, I sit down with someone from our vibrant global community to talk about what places them at the heart of designing bold solutions for a better world. You'll meet alumni, students and professors who are making a difference across a range of fields, including some where you may not expect to find them. My guest today is Melodie Schaffer, after completing degrees in both chemical engineering and biomedical engineering, here at U of T, she went on to a successful career designing biomedical devices. More recently, she's made a big pivot to the world of offshore racing, where she became the first Canadian woman to complete around the world sailing race. Melodie, welcome to the podcast. Melodie Schaffer 0:54 Thank you very much. My pleasure to be here. Chris Yip 0:56 Yeah, this is gonna be exciting. I remember what two months ago, I was listening to the radio on the way in to work, and and, and so, you know, it's Metro Morning, you're kind of like half asleep on your way to work, and I hear your voice. I'm like, I recognize that voice. I don't know if you want to recount a little bit about that, that interview. Melodie Schaffer 1:15 Yeah, it was, it was the lead into the boat show. It literally was the day before the boat show, and I got asked to come and share about what it is that I'm doing, because this race around the world I did last time I was first, the only Canadian boat, first, only woman in the entire race, first Canadian race around the world. So they asked me to come in and share about it. And I had my boat at the boat show. So it was trying to share some of, really, what it's like when you're out there in seven minutes. You know the race is 174 days long, and you summarize to seven minutes. Chris Yip 1:47 So that race was 2023 right? Melodie Schaffer 1:52 Yes. Chris Yip 1:53 Again, first Canadian boat, first Canadian woman to do the around the world race. You were awarded the Canadian Rolex Sailor of the Year Award that year. Melodie Schaffer 2:01 Yeah, I was, I was so honored to get that like, humbled and truly honored. When I went and did that race, I did it so much on my own. I didn't have a lot of support from different people, I just went and said, Hey, I'm going to try this. And off I went. But every port I was in, there were eight legs in that race, and so you'd have stopovers time for repair, fix the boat up, and then prep for the next leg. Every port I, Canadian flag was flying high, and I was really proud to be Canadian and out there and doing it. Can we make a story, yeah? Chris Yip 2:34 Sure. Melodie Schaffer 2:34 The boat is in shambles right now, and we're working away. We're taking everything apart. But one of the things I did in the last race. Well, when I got the boat was when the mast sits on top of the cabin top. And just like in hockey, you know, when they put the loonie underneath the ice (Chris: oh yeah, yeah) at the Olympics, I put the loonie and the dime under my mast. And so everything's off right now, and I'm like, I cannot wait to go and put the loonie and the dime down. I'm going to silicon them in place so they don't move. Chris Yip 3:03 What you just said about the boat, it would be, it would be up to you, it would be awesome to get a sticker that said U of T Engineering. Melodie Schaffer 3:10 Oh of course we can, yeah. Chris Yip 3:14 We'll sponsor! Anyway (laughs). Melodie Schaffer 3:15 No, we can. And Chris, honestly, if there's a way you can come and see the boat and you some idea of all the systems and the complexities, and that's that engineering brain, and that the problem solving. It's definitely a part of what I'm doing. Chris Yip 3:32 First off, congratulations all that. And thank you so much for promoting Canada in that way to go around the world, especially these days. And then you were rewarded two other awards, I guess, in subsequent years, right? Gerry Roufs Melodie Schaffer 3:45 Roufs, yeah. Chris Yip 3:47 An offshore sailor award. Melodie Schaffer 3:48 Correct. Yes. So last year, in 2024 I got that award. So he was a Canadian that had also raced around the world, and in his, I think, second attempt, he lost his life (Chris: right.) And then I won the, I went down to New York City for the Women of Inspiration Awards and won the Women of Inspiration Sport Award. Chris Yip 4:07 Right, this was the inaugural one too, right? Melodie Schaffer 4:09 Correct. Chris Yip 4:09 First time so... Melodie Schaffer 4:10 That was huge. Chris Yip 4:11 Yeah. Melodie Schaffer 4:12 I'm not 25, I'm 56 right? I'm not a spring chicken, and I went off, and I'm chasing this, and it's, it's really tough sometimes, but it's also like you just have to go for it. Chris Yip 4:24 Right. We're gonna talk a little bit about how you got into the sport of sailing, I think, but also talk a little bit how engineering is either foundational to it or helped you along the way. But we'll go back at times tell us sort a little bit about where you grew up and how engineering sort of appeared as a trajectory. Melodie Schaffer 4:42 I grew up in Toronto. I went to Bishop Strachan School for high school, I knew as a student, you always get asked, and I do it to my well, no longer, but to my kid's friends, hey, what do you want to be and when you're like 13 or 15 or even 17? Honestly, so many people don't know. And I knew I. I was interested in science and I was interested in medicine, and biomedical engineering was quite new then, so the only way you could do it was it was a master's degree, and I chose to chase that dream, rather than just straight medical dream and chemical engineering I did. My older brother is chemical engineer, so I'd heard a lot about it. He's nine years older, so quite a bit older, but I heard a lot of stories from him about engineering. You know, obviously, as a young high school student, he's going through engineering and I heard the stories, and I'll be very honest, I didn't fully appreciate all that chemical engineering encompasses but in my naive mind, maybe at that time, I thought it was sort of one of the more broader engineering and so that's one of the reasons I went for it cool. Chris Yip 4:42 And I was gonna say there's, there's, there's a nice synergy here, because my undergrad is from Chem eng, I was director of Biomedical Engineering, so it's like, we're twinned in that context, right? But then you went into biomed. Melodie Schaffer 6:01 Then I went to biomed. So I did four years. Well, obviously my I did chemical engineering, I took a year off, backpacked around the world. So essentially, I did like a gap year and but before I did the gap year, I got an accepted to do my master's degree. I had a professor to work for. And then I, after graduating, over that four months, I had six different jobs saving money to go and backpack around the world, and the backpacking around the world. I mean, you won't I know it was a long time ago. It was 1992 but it was about $10,000 I spent in 11 months of travel (Chris: right.) so it was pretty simple living. You learn a lot about yourself, you learn about the world, and you really grow as a person. And I think that's so valuable. And then I came back and did my master's degree, and I know when we spoke before Chris, I said, when I came back to school and I had to sit down and learn again because I'd had a year of, I'm going to say adventuring. There were challenges in its own way, and I came back to just sort of scholastic learning. I could only sit down for like 15 minutes at a time maybe, and then I'd have to get up and pace about and then sit down again to try and study. I had to re learn how to study and like book learn. But you can, of course, you can. You can learn anything. Chris Yip 7:23 I was going to draw analogy. The taking the year off, the self contained, self financed, effectively, ability to go around the world. Maybe this is the parallel what you were going to do must have been an amazing opportunity, sort of prep, in a sense. Maybe you didn't realize that time prepping you for what you're going to be doing later on. Like, how do you become resilient? How do you just conquer all sorts of weird challenges at the time? Right? Melodie Schaffer 7:47 That's a really good link. Good on you. Yeah, it's very true. And again, I even now next race I'm going to go and do it. Do I know how I'm getting there fully? Do I know the challenges to face? I don't, but I know I'm going in that direction, and I just have to keep going in that direction. And that is that sort of, there's a little bit of determination, and there's certainly resilience, and as I've learned going through all of this, and maybe the age I'm at, of just also being kind yourself. You know, when you have setbacks, okay, it's not the best day. It hasn't gone your way. It's okay, you know, it doesn't mean you won't succeed. And I've sort of learned, instead of being really frustrated by that, to just be a little kinder to myself and say, All right, this is what today was, and tomorrow's a new day. Chris Yip 8:35 Right. I think that, and that's a wonderful perspective, right? Because I think one of the challenges that we've faced when we talk to students, when they come in, they've sometimes they have this, everything's planned. It's all laid out, you know, it's compartmentalized. We're going to do this, this, this, and it's all packaged. It's all ready to go. And this idea of dealing with uncertainty, something which engineers are kind of trained, in a sense, right? Complex, ill defined problems dealing with challenges which you didn't think about. They just come out of left field. Did you have to plan for the problems you get are not problem set ones where you can do in like a half an hour or an hour. The real world problems are so much bigger. Melodie Schaffer 9:15 I remember the biggest, I think the one of the biggest, I don't want to say shocks, challenges I faced, new awareness. I faced with engineering was in high school in general. They teach the course, and your tests are based exactly on what you've been taught. (Chris: right.) And you come to engineering, and they teach the course, and you have your tests and your exams, your midterms and your quizzes, as they quietly say, and you get questions. You're like, oh my god, what is this? You have no idea what it's about. It is so far from sort of what you've done within class, and that was really hard as a student. You just that's really, really tough. That is what life is. You do get hit with those challenges. I think engineering do. Such a great job of teaching you how to manage problems and and face things when you don't, you don't expect it, and you don't know when it's it throws you sideways. And you just say, All right, well, what do I know? Right? And you lay out what you know, and then you look at the problem again, and you try and figure out how you're going to navigate forward, and maybe there's one solution, or maybe there's three solutions, and engineering teaches you that skill set. It's brilliant. Chris Yip 10:27 I think what's interesting is that you are now applying that in the context of sailing, but in the context of a very challenging, grueling situation. Can you talk a little bit about how that things that have happened during a sailing competition where your engineering you've dredged up something from your undergrad, just like, oh, or approaches that you take? Melodie Schaffer 10:49 For sure. So when I go and do the sailing offshore racing, means, essentially, you set off for shore, and I might be gone for a week or five weeks, and in the middle of the ocean, there's no one around. I only have what I have on the boat. I can only carry what I can physically fit on the boat, and I'm limited in space, so I always have backups and redundancies for all my systems. But when something goes wrong, it really is up to me to figure out and my teammate. I don't have Canadian Tire, I can go and reach out to for spare parts. Chris Yip 11:02 No Amazon delivery. Melodie Schaffer 11:25 No Amazon deliveries, like the Apollo movie, you know, where they're like, well, these are the parts we have. How do we manage it? That's exactly what it is for me out there. And I think the engineering knowledge for sure, gave me the training, and then I built on that with the offshore that when things go wrong, first you make it safe, and then I the offshore knowledge taught me to go and either sleep or have a cup of tea or go have a meal. And just think about, how many ways can I solve this? And then what's the risk factor with the different ways and all of that's engineering. Chris Yip 12:00 I literally love what you said about sort of stepping back, pausing making a cup of tea, because often you see people sort of react really quickly, right? Sort of the adrenaline rush comes in and you make, like, bad decisions because they're rash. I guess it's different if you've got a hole in the boat, okay, that's got to get fixed right away. Melodie Schaffer 12:18 Well, especially you make it safe. And I had to learn that as a sailor, because I'd done a lot of, I'm going to say club racing and pretty intense stuff. I raced pretty seriously when I was young, and something goes wrong or something happens, everyone runs forward, you manage it, you run, run, run, you do it. And I got taught for offshore, you never run forward. You never I mean, there's moments, there may be occasion, won't you, but in general, you don't, because you might trip as you're doing it, and then you get washed overboard. And I had to learn in the last five/eight years, hang on, move forward, manage it. You don't always have to run. And I had to get taught that as a 50 year old. I think it's a brilliant skill set of okay, got a problem, we have to react and act on it, but do it in a sensible way, Chris Yip 13:06 Yeah, in a controlled way. Because I think the adrenaline rush throws you off. You sort of see this as sort of first responders. They don't run to things. They're very methodical, and they lay it out because they know that. I think if you rush speed, actually can cause a problem, right? Melodie Schaffer 13:20 That's it. Chris Yip 13:21 So your background is chem plus biomed. If you were to look at your boat and everything that's happening, could you weave all of engineering, all the disciplines, into the race or the boat itself and the strategies? Melodie Schaffer 13:37 Yeah, I think just about, honestly, I've got a water maker. So there's a chemical aspect. I'm desalinating water to make water. The entire boat is mechanical. It's also chemical, because it's all pipes and fittings, industrial engineering, the layout of the boat, okay, I think mining is going to be hard for me to do, but electrical, for sure, electrical is there aerospace as far as innovative design and smart design with it as well, because weight counts, and my boat space is very, very limited and every time I tack or drive my boat, I move all of my equipment across the boat and so you're that's the industrial side. You're sort of looking at the layout of it all. How are you using it? No, it's all of it. Chris Yip 14:24 It's all there, like the system side, the materials. Melodie Schaffer 14:26 Materials for sure, yeah, of course, materials. And in the first year of engineering, still the same. It was first year for me, was general engineering. And you do, you know, one course, one course in every engineering. And so you have a little sort of a little connection, a little learning moment in different even graphics. I remember graphical engineering, how to write, and you're like, but that 3d thinking that was huge. If you look at it's be the same on freighters. I've not worked. Freighters, but or pilot boats, or tug boats, whatever, or submarines. You have a limited environment, space and again, how do you manage it? It's the same as being in a rocket ship. How do you manage it? For sure, that's it would apply. Chris Yip 15:15 I was going to ask a slightly different question about the boat itself. So I guess the number, the number first of the size of the boat. Is that how it works? Melodie Schaffer 15:23 Yea it's class so I race a boat called Class 40 so it's a 40 foot boat. It's a race boat, the double handed offshore boat around the world. It's an evolving design to the newer boats are different how they look. I have engineering questions. I have it right now. I'm getting sails for the next race and in my last race, my it's called the j1, my head sail, the sail at the front of my boat, it runs up the forstay, which holds my mast up. When I did the race, it was tied in place at the top and bottom. So twice in my last race, the sail tore terribly, and it's slapping away. And of course, I'm in a big wind when it happens, slapping away terribly. I can't just lower it down. I don't have a halyard. The only way to get it down was to go up the mast. So now I'm going up a 60 foot mast in five meter waves, in 2530 knots of wind. So you imagine your boat, how much the boat's moving. You imagine at the top of the mast, you're holding on with one arm, and with a knife, you're cutting a rope on a crazy, crazy, ridiculous system. They've now changed the design a little bit so I can make that change. I have so many questions on I have measured my mast, I've measured my forestay, the logistics, this locking system I have now I'm working with a sail maker in Toronto, I'm working with one in Europe. It's all engineering. It's all engineering and math and and also being able to say at a point, this is as much as I know, I need your knowledge now. I need your advice and your knowledge, because I'm beyond what I know, and that's also a really important life skill to have, because I don't know every system perfectly on my boat, and I keep learning, and I love that. I think that's part of part of me. I really am an engineer and when I got into offshore, and I got challenged again in the sailing aspect, but also in learning on the boats, I have to know the water system, I have to know the engine, I have to know electrical, solar. I don't know every system perfectly, but I know enough, and I can make it work. And if it goes wrong, I can troubleshoot, and then if not, if I can't solve it, I can ask questions to get help. That's engineering. Chris Yip 17:43 Another part of engineering is interpersonal team building and all that kind of stuff. And I'm interested because we ask our students to build teams all the time and learn to work with people. How does how does that work for you? Melodie Schaffer 17:54 So in my learn well as I learned about offshore one of the things I was taught was even with a group of 20 people on the boat. So I've been on big crude boats too. You know, if you see someone go to the bow, go towards the forward of the boat and sit alone, they just need space. And just give them space, and maybe a few hours later, check in and say, Hey, how are you doing? What's your day? And so I sort of appreciated that, because in normal life, we can always walk out of a room or onto the go for a walk in the park. You can't do that offshore. You I've got 40 feet, and really I probably have 15, 20, feet, because parts of the boat I don't really use. You have to respect that, and that's part of your job, and it is that dynamic. And when I'm out there, we're only two people. One of you is on watch working, one of you is below deck and you might be eating and you might be doing navigation. You might be repairing something. When we sleep, we sleep for three hours. You get a three hour nap when you lay down to rest so I set my alarm for three hours get you through one REM cycle. That's why I do the three. But then I might be up for 10, 12, 15, hours, so I'm sleep deprived and I'm tired, and we all get edgier and grumpy when you're tired. And you also have to learn to look at yourself and say, I'm feeling you know, we all have moments. It's like a marriage where you come home, you've had a bad day at work, and you you're you're not as you should be with your spouse, and you realize, well, actually, that's on me, right? And you have to balance that. And it's the same out there, and it's the same with any team. Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting, because you're right. I mean, in normal context, right? Someone can go take a walk, right? You can walk out of the room. You could. I'm not, I'm not going to talk to you for a week, right? Like, well, let's, let's calm down, and we'll reconvene in in a few days but you can't do that in a boat. I can't and when I'm out there again, we're working as a team. Obviously, we're pushing, we're racing, we're doing it. This other person I sail with, this is a person that's going to save my life if something goes wrong. I am in an environment that if something goes wrong, I have no one else to help me, maybe for a week or two weeks. When I give talks about it, I say, when you're on the ocean, the closest person to you is an astronaut in the International Space Center. So that's 400 kilometers away, and sure could be 2000 sorry, different units, 2000 miles away. You are alone out there. So you have to make it work. You have to one of the things I did, a race called the clip around the world race and it was 20 people, all different levels of experiences. And what they said was, so I'm much a racer, very much. I want to win. I'm out there to win always. And they said, but for some people that come into this race, they've never crossed an ocean before. They've got the skill set to do this. They've never and so maybe they've come to the race and their goal is to cross the ocean, and my goal is to win the race, and maybe someone else's goal is to become a professional sailor, and there's 20 of us. We have to make all 20 goals come together to some team ethos of this is what we're doing, and that applies in work and in engineering and in any project you do, obviously, when you're working, there is a goal project, but maybe people are coming from different vantage points of how they accomplish that. Chris Yip 21:26 So so we've been talking a lot about about engineering, and I know that you're affiliated associated with the J. Edgar McAllister Foundation, right? Which gives out scholarships to engineering students. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about the foundation and how you got involved, or are being involved, or becoming involved in the foundation. Melodie Schaffer 21:44 I'm delighted. I think it's a great, great uncle. Yes, so family member, but I grew up knowing about it as a young child. My dad worked for the foundation, and as and he would share stories. You know, few times a year you come into the university and work through, you know, they review how the money is being applied, or how they can, I don't know what students it should go to, or how to promote it, and so I grew up knowing about it, and my brother's been working with the foundation for trustee for, I don't know how many years, a long time anyway, yeah. And just at one of the lunches luncheons a month ago, and my brother gave a summary of it again, and I know the story, but hearing it again, it really made me give a lot of respect to this great, great uncle. Because he came to University in, I think it was 1888 and so my brother said, this is horse and buggy time, like so long ago. So so long ago, and back then, if you would get into university, generally, families didn't have money to pay for it, not really. And there would be maybe one scholarship a year. And so if you were the very lucky one person to get the scholarship, then you could go to university. You could afford it. Most people couldn't afford it that way. So John Edgar, was that super bright one, got in, got a scholarship, and his brother forget he was older, younger, I think older, actually didn't get a scholarship, couldn't go to university, and he worked for a couple years, saved his own money, and then came back and started university. And when John Edgar did it, he did civil engineering. And the first year, I think it was 24 students and by second year, it was only 10 students. And I remember as an engineering student, oh, gosh, they give that terrible line of opening, you know, you're welcoming thing, look to your left, look to your right, next time you look, you're like, gosh, that's grim. But in his case, the fact that more than half the class was gone wasn't that they'd failed out or couldn't be successful, it was they couldn't afford to go, and so he he went through engineering, he got a job, he worked all over the place, way back then was very, very successful, and there the crash hit 1929 hit and lost every, he lost everything. And he went back after that, probably in his 60s by that point, and he rebuilt his career, and he rebuilt his wealth. And obviously, as he came to end of life. He decided that he didn't want anyone to be in a situation that his brother was in or his friends were in, that they couldn't go to school if they wanted to go to school, and finances were holding them back. He didn't want that to be the situation. So he created this trust, this to provide some funding for students, so that anyone, if they're driven and want to do it, they can. He had the foresight to do it and I think it is a wonderful legacy and every year we celebrate the awardees of the McAllister fellowships and... Very broad group of people, all the different reasons and all different sparks of their own self driven interest and inspiration, of why they want to go and do this so it's beautiful. I love, I genuinely love his, it was forward thinking, and I loved his sort of gratitude of, he was very successful in life, and really he was lucky in some ways. At that moment when he graduated, he was number one, I guess, in his class, and got in, and he was grateful for that. And he didn't just sort of stand on it and say, Well, I'm great. And that's how it is. He looked at this and said, Well, how do I make this for other people? Chris Yip 25:37 Right. Melodie, thank you so much. Melodie Schaffer 25:40 Thank you very, what a delightful time, thank you so much, Chris! Chris Yip 25:43 It was a ton of fun. A great conversation. I do think we do need to have a field trip. Melodie Schaffer 25:48 Yeah, you gotta come see the boat. Chris Yip 25:50 See your boat, and we'll put a sticker on it and... Melodie Schaffer 25:53 Yes, please. Chris Yip 25:53 Yeah, wishing you all the success but this has been terrific. Thank you. Melodie Schaffer 25:57 Thank you. So I working hard on the boat I'm going to go to the next offshore race, which begins August 31 and I will be eight months on the ocean, racing around the world. Chris Yip 26:08 We will send you short text messages. Melodie Schaffer 26:11 Love it. Thank you very much. Chris Yip 26:12 Alright thanks. Thanks again for listening to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip. If you want to catch up on past episodes, and to make sure you don't miss the next one, please subscribe. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more. Just look for Coffee with Chris Yip. 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