Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography

by Richard Branson

  Thankfully, the experienced crew swung into action and we managed to change course and get out in one piece. Rather than limping across the Atlantic and having the hurricane catch us up, we decided to head for Bermuda. For twelve hours, we got the most beautiful downwind sail. As the excellent sailing conditions continued, our sickness went away. I sat on top of the boat with my kids and we shared one of the nicest days of our lives. It made the whole trip worthwhile.

  A couple of weeks later, I heard the terrible news that the Virgin Money boat had turned over in more dangerous weather at sea—the keel had snapped. It makes me shudder to think how easily that could have happened while we were in the middle of the Atlantic. In all likelihood, there would have been no more challenges for us; no Virgin Money, no grandchildren and you certainly wouldn’t be reading this book.

  —

  When I asked Holly and Sam if they had enjoyed the experience, I could see that familiar yearning for more adventure reflecting back at me. That’s the thing about taking on challenges—once you get a taste for them you can’t let go. It’s no surprise that both of my kids have a thirst for risk-taking, and some of my most treasured memories are from when we have embarked upon challenges together.

  In 2014, I joined Sam on his 1,000-kilometer journey from London to the summit of the Matterhorn. The Virgin Strive Challenge was a new adventure Sam and my nephew Noah dreamed up on their way down Mont Blanc after we climbed the mountain in 2012: to run, row, cycle, hike and climb entirely under their own steam all the way from the UK to the top of one of the world’s most formidable peaks, the Matterhorn. Noah and Sam pulled together a core team of ten to complete the whole trip, with 350 others joining en route, myself included. The challenge would raise more than £750,000 to invest in projects that offer alternative ways of supporting young people in the UK to thrive in life, not just in exams.

  My mum acted as starting marshal as the Strivers set off on 20 April. By the time I joined them in Switzerland they had already completed three back-to-back marathons, been thwarted by Hurricane Bertha’s aftershocks as they tried to row the Channel, and cycled over 100 kilometers from France into Switzerland. I surprised them by turning up in full cycling gear. The hills were turning into mountains as we made tracks for Verbier. It is a particularly tough climb, and, turning the tables on that record attempt across the Atlantic, Sam took me to one side and offered some support.

  “I’ll hold back with you today, Dad, and we’ll help each other up the hills.”

  He didn’t know I had a surprise up my sleeve, though. “I’ll be fine, Sam,” I told him. “I’ve been training. You go to the front and don’t worry about your old man. I’ll see you at the top.”

  Sam was worried my old-fashioned bike—or, more importantly, my old-fashioned legs?—wouldn’t be able to hack it. The locals told us the record for making it up the hill is twenty-five minutes, and we estimated it would take us an hour and a half. After ten minutes I was floundering toward the back of the group when suddenly I got an extreme burst of pace. Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli had a look of pure shock on her face as I flew past her. Verbier’s top fitness coach appeared equally confused as he struggled in vain to keep pace with me. Finally, I met Sam near the front and zoomed past him without comment, eventually getting up the hill in twenty-four minutes! When Sam reached the top the best part of an hour later, the only part of my body aching was my face, from grinning too much. Sam looked absolutely knackered, and flabbergasted that his dad had outdone him. After I got him to agree to get me a polka-dot jersey as honorary King of the Mountains, I decided to reveal my secret: I had a special battery-powered bike! With all the sneakiness of a Lance Armstrong, I had hidden it below the Strive branding under my seat.

  “You bastard!” said Sam, with a giggle.

  That night we gathered at Verbier for a very special occasion: I was going to propose to Marion Bartoli. We had got on swimmingly when she competed in the Necker Cup the previous November. But there was a sore moment when, playing beach tennis, Marion lost her Wimbledon winner’s ring. I got out my trusty metal detector (there’s plenty of buried treasure from the original pirates of the Caribbean) and began searching. We looked and looked to no avail. Six months later, we found it and now I was determined to put it back on Marion’s fair hand. I gathered everyone around at the Lodge and got down on one knee. I’m not sure what Joan would have made of it—Marion’s fiancé certainly looked perplexed.

  We got back on the road the following morning for a seven-day hike to Zermatt. After a straightforward first day climbing to the Cabane du Mont-Fort and taking in the views of the Grand Combin, I was feeling fresh. But by day three it really got tough, with howling winds pushing against us and rain thundering relentlessly down. As visibility deteriorated, huge boulders were dislodged all around us and tumbled down the mountain. Torrential rain and the constant uphill terrain were getting to everyone and the tension only mounted as we tiptoed around rocks, fearful of starting an avalanche. All aching limbs were worth it, however, as we reached the top of the peak, turned the corner and the sun miraculously appeared. It was a moment I’ll always treasure as we all fell silent and looked on in wonder. Once the sunshine returned, things got a little easier and everyone was able to make it to Zermatt in one piece. From there, the mighty Matterhorn loomed ominously in the distance, one last challenge.

  At the base of the Matterhorn there is a beautiful church; its graveyard is full of the remains of climbers who came to grief on the mountain in the past. It was 3 a.m. when the Strivers set out from the tiny lodge we were huddled in to begin the dangerous ascent. The stars were lighting the way for Sam, Noah and the team. The conditions were getting dire. Sam, among the fittest of everyone, was seriously ill with altitude sickness and was lying on the ground in the snow retching. But having got this far, he was fighting hard and determined to make it to the top with his cousin. His guide, mountaineer Kenton Cool, who’s summited Everest eleven times, advised Sam to turn back with 200 meters to go. Being so close, Sam was determined to carry on.

  As the drama was unfolding below, I circled above with the door to the helicopter open, very concerned for Sam. I couldn’t believe that after surviving so many adventures myself, my son had followed in my footsteps but wasn’t going to make it. We could barely see what was going on. But by 9 a.m., with every last drop of their energy, Noah, core team Striver Stephen Shanly and Sam took the final steps together and reached the summit of the Matterhorn. I cried with delight from above. It was a spectacular sight; I wished I could have been down in the snow with them.

  Mostly, though, I was scared about Sam’s condition, which was deteriorating fast. Noah and the others had to hold him up as they unfurled a flag on the summit. My helicopter was short on fuel, and as we veered away from the mountain a rescue helicopter was on its way up. It was unsettling, knowing I could do nothing to help Sam and worrying whether he would be able to make it down the mountain. After an anxious wait, the rescue team attached him to a winch and he held onto a rescuer as he was carried off the top. Sam opened his eyes, somewhat delirious and unsure where he was. Thankfully they got him into the helicopter and safely down the peak.

  By that point I had landed and was waiting anxiously back at base with Sam’s wife, Bellie, and Holly. When Sam arrived and staggered out of the helicopter to us, we gave him the biggest hug, wrapped him up and got him inside. Neither Sam nor I could stop laughing through our tears—him with pain, me with relief and happiness. We were fortunate to have him back.

  Rather than relieved at being alive, Sam was just disappointed he hadn’t been able to complete the climb down the mountain. His sister reassured him: “The challenge was only from London to the top of the Matterhorn—nobody said anything about coming down again!” I felt so proud of Sam, Noah and the whole team for overcoming so much adversity and defying the odds to complete their journey. They had traveled thousands of miles in a month of body-breaki
ng endurance tests, with the purpose of helping young people less fortunate than themselves. They had banded together as a family. That’s part of what adventure is all about. I pledged to myself to clear my diary next time and join them on the whole trip.

  —

  Having saved our lives on the Atlantic with his quick thinking in 2008, I got the chance to return the favor to Ben—now Sir Ben—Ainslie in 2015.

  That January, Ben was sailing around the BVI with his new wife Georgie Thompson. As we waved them by, it never crossed my mind that they would need any help from us. After all, Ben is the most successful sailor in Olympic history. His miraculous America’s Cup exploits, when he inspired Oracle Team USA to victory from 8-1 down, will quite possibly go down as the greatest comeback of all time. He clearly knows what he is doing on a boat!

  But Ben had a serious mechanical problem on board and was very quickly heading for a dangerous reef, a sunken ship and a very unromantic end to his honeymoon. He was forced to put out a distress call for assistance and our water sports team rushed out to meet him. The furling system broke on the mainsail and it became so twisted that the sail couldn’t go in, out, up or down. Our team raced over and between them managed to climb the mast and cut the sail, just about avoiding a bigger calamity.

  As they made it back to shore I skipped down to the beach to meet them.

  “I thought you were the best sailor in the world,” I said cheekily.

  Ben accepted my invitation to stay for a while and it was great to catch up with him.

  The following year Ben invited me out to New York to be the sixth man in his Land Rover BAR team for the America’s Cup World Series. I knew it would be an initiation by fire, but I was confident I could handle it as I took my position on the back of the catamaran. Soon we were absolutely screaming along in very rough waters.

  “How are you doing back there?” shouted Ben.

  “It feels like being in a washing machine!” I bellowed back.

  After about twenty minutes, the extremely tough conditions got even worse. Ben turned to me and said: “Richard, I’m sorry but I can’t have you on the boat anymore, it’s just too risky.”

  I reluctantly agreed and went to the chase boat to watch the races. It was a day of constantly shifting and dying breezes, meaning that any team could have won—which is exactly what happened. The British team were superb, but had some bad luck. They had been in position for a race win when the wind completely died and they began to drift off course. Then a series of unexpected wind changes catapulted Emirates Team New Zealand from dead last, to win both the race and the regatta. Land Rover BAR ended up coming in fifth in the race and fifth overall in the event—a frustrating result after a succession of brilliant starts.

  Afterward, I said to Ben: “If you’d kept me on board the whole time we would have won every race—I’m a jammy bastard!”

  CHAPTER 23

  “Somebody mentioned the word ‘hurricane’”

  After the accident in July 2007, Scaled’s propulsion testing program was shut down for about a year. Then, as there was no certainty that the propulsion system was completely safe, Scaled embarked upon a long program to replace the carbon-fiber oxidizer tank with a unique aluminum-lined tank. It set Virgin Galactic’s development back a long, long time, and cost a huge amount of money, but it was obviously the right thing to do. I urged patience from everyone involved and remained highly optimistic we were on the right track.

  While the propulsion plans took a backseat, Scaled pushed on with the crucial work of testing the mothership and spaceship. At the same time, we debated when Virgin Galactic should start accepting reservations. I was keen to get the ball rolling as soon as humanly possible, but was reminded of the story of Pan Am’s aborted space program in the sixties. One of my favorite scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey is when the director Stanley Kubrick imagines guests flying on a Pan Am flight to a Hilton Hotel in space. I had always wanted to turn it into reality (with Virgin Galactic replacing Pan Am and Virgin Hotels replacing Hilton, of course) and wasn’t the only one. After the moon landing, Pan Am began adding names to a waiting list for flights to the moon. Their conservative estimate on a flight date was the year 2000. Almost 100,000 people signed up to the list over two decades, and Pan Am handed out First Moon Flights club membership cards. It was tremendously exciting and great for the brand, but enthusiasm for space travel slowed at the same time as Pan Am’s profits dwindled. In 1991, nine years before their aspired space launch, the company went bankrupt. The First Moon Flights club never got close to becoming a reality: I didn’t want Virgin Galactic to go the same way.

  With the technical development plans back on track, however, Virgin Galactic’s London team focused upon our sales strategy. I’ve always found the best market research is to ask the people closest to you for their opinion, and then steadily branch out. All my family wanted to go to space, with the notable exception of Joan. But they were used to the idea of adventure and exploration, not least from spending time around me on dozens of balloon and boating challenges. Would the general public—especially those with deep pockets—be willing to make such a big commitment? Back when we started taking deposits in 2005, we debated how much of a deposit we should ask from our first customers. My only real yardstick was that, years earlier, the Russian space program quoted me an astronomical multimillion-dollar fee. In the end, we settled upon $200,000 per reservation. This was obviously far too high a price for most people to afford, but we viewed the first future astronauts as pioneers who would pave the way for cheaper, more frequent flights as the program developed.

  I was well aware that we were asking for a great deal of trust from our future astronauts. We couldn’t give them a specific timeline for when they would go to space. We couldn’t tell them exactly what the experience would be like. We couldn’t show them what they would wear, or even who they would go with, let alone how they would feel. But we could promise them the adventure of a lifetime. For this, we required a deposit up front. We set up a website and waited to see if anybody would sign up. The demand was staggering. The website crashed from sheer traffic volume and people turned up at Virgin Management’s doors, some even with the cash ready to go. Very soon, hundreds of people were able to join me in proudly calling themselves future astronauts.

  With progress on the mothership and spaceship gathering speed, I began training for my own spaceflight. Just before Christmas 2007, I traveled over to the National Aerospace Training and Research Center in Southampton, Pennsylvania. I had heard all about some people being sick as they were thrown around during centrifuge training, or even passing out from the g-forces. But, having had several adventures in the sky, I was looking forward to it. My son, Sam, joined the course, too, along with Will and some of Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts. They included Alan Watts, who earned a flight on SpaceShipTwo after cashing in his Virgin Atlantic frequent flyer miles—now that’s what I call an upgrade!

  The experience was an amazing adrenaline rush. It was also slightly tougher than I envisaged, and I was delighted my body held out. I was put through an STS-400 centrifuge ride, which created the kind of g-forces I could expect on the ride up to space. I was pinned back into my seat and could feel my cheeks vibrating as the pressure pushed them back against my ears. My vision came close to blurring at one stage, but I remembered the training from earlier in the day: you have to grip your bottom muscles tight and practice breathing techniques to avoid losing vision. I felt a little silly at first, but any such feelings disappeared when I realized how effective it was. Coupled with a flight simulator ride that recreated the different steps of the journey from takeoff to rocket ignition to orbital entry to re-entry, I came out feeling that I was already much better prepared for launching into space.

  —

  By the end of January 2008 we were ready to unveil the designs of both SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. All the Galactic team and more than a hundr
ed of our new future astronauts gathered in Mojave for the big reveal. I asked Mum to come out to the event, and told her I had a surprise in store for her. We had been calling WhiteKnightTwo the mothership since its inception. Now I wanted to make it official. We pulled back the hangar doors to roll out the airplane that would carry our spaceship up to 50,000 feet. I loved watching Mum’s eyes light up as she saw her name glistening proudly on the side of the vehicle—Virgin Mother Ship (VMS) Eve.

  It was wonderful having my dad by my side that day, too. Both Mum and Dad have offered me constant support and guidance my whole life, which I have often felt most keenly ahead of big adventures. Whether preparing to fly a balloon over the Pacific or guide a boat across the Atlantic, they have always been there to cheer me on. Importantly, they have been metaphorically by my side when things have gone wrong, from boats sinking off the Scilly Isles to balloons crashing into the ocean. I told them all of this owed as much to their encouragement and sense of adventure as anything.

  The testing continued. By March 2009, Scaled pilot Pete Siebold had taken WhiteKnightTwo up on her fastest and longest flight so far. They rose up to 20,000 feet and 140 knots during the two-and a-half-hour flight, completing seven successful tests in the process including in-flight engine restarts and evaluating handling qualities. Back on the ground, the new rocket motor system passed its first tests successfully. After more successful test flights in June, space was beginning to feel a whole lot closer.

  With each breakthrough, however, new costs arose, and we really needed an investment injection to maintain the momentum. I was worried, because without concrete results it would get tougher to convince Virgin’s board to keep pumping in money, more difficult to keep public perception positive and harder to maintain team morale. The business was at a tipping point, and I felt we needed a substantial partner with hundreds of millions to invest in order to take it to the next level.