Background
The seeds of the race were sown in Sir Chay Blyth’s previous sailing exploits. In 1970/71 he became the first person to sail alone round the world westabout in the yacht British Steel which is now owned by Mr. Anthony Quelch and is docked in Dartmouth, a little way from where she was built. The practicality of training people who had never sailed before was demonstrated during the 1973/74 Whitbread Race, when Blyth had raced Great Britain II with a crew from the Parachute Regiment. Subsequently he ran charters for paying crew.
The design philosophy for the identical yachts used on the Global Challenge races was forged by Sir Chay Blyth’s longtime associate Andrew Roberts. It was his idea to start from the largest top-action production winch available, which would in turn dictate sail area, displacement and size. He also oversaw the build of the two fleets of steel cutters used in the four races to date to designs by David Thomas and Thanos Condylis (Challenge 67) and Rob Humphreys (Challenge 72).
Read more about this topic: Global Challenge
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