Clipper Round the World Race
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The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race was conceived in 1995 by well-known yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and the first race set off a year later on 16 October 1996. The event gives paying amateur crew members the chance to sail around the world. The organizers own a fleet of identical yachts, and provide qualified skippers to lead each team. Crew can either sign up for the whole race, some of it, or just one leg. In contrast to the slightly older Global Challenge, the Clipper race uses lighter, faster boats and travels clockwise around the world, following the prevailing currents and winds.
The race ran every two years between 1996 and 2002, and then skipped a year, with a race beginning in 2005 and finishing in July 2006.
[edit] History
Clipper 96 used the Camper and Nicholson Bluewater 58 design. Eight boats participated, starting in Plymouth and then sailing to Madeira, Fort Lauderdale, Panama, Galapagos, Hawaii, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seychelles, Durban, Cape Town, Salvador (Brazil), the Azores and back to Plymouth.
In 1998 the race called briefly at Nassau in the Bahamas before going to Marina Hemingway, just to the west of Havana, a direct course between the USA and Cuba being impossible. The rest of the course stayed didn’t alter.
In 2000 the stop in the Azores was replaced by one in New York and to compensate for the extra distance the Seychelles, Durban, Cape Town leg was reduced to Mauritius, Cape Town. The fleet suffered a bad storm east of Tokyo bay in March 2001 in which several of the boats were damaged, and the race had to be restarted from Yokohama.
In 2002 the start point was moved to Liverpool, and an estimated 40,000 spectators came to see the boats off despite a 24-hour delay due to storms in the Irish Sea.
The 2005 race involved major changes both to the boats involved and to the course. The current yacht design is the Dubois 68, which is eight feet longer than its predecessor, but weighs two tons less, with a rated top speed of 30 knots. Innovations in the route include a leg across the Southern Ocean between Durban and Freemantle, and a leg across the North Pacific between Yokohama and Victoria, Canada.
