Difficult days for an English sailing legend. Sir Chay Blyth, President of the UK FirmChallenge Business, announced that the day-to-day business has been placed under bankruptcy administration. In September, Blyth had to cancel the Global Challenge Round the World, originally planned for 2008, after failing to find a main sponsor for the regatt.
The organization and implementation of this rally for sailing amateurs, which takes place every four years, on ships of the same construction against the wind around the world is one of the main activities of Challenge Business. Other events that the company organizes on a regular basis are the Round Britain and the Transat Challenge. In addition, you earn money with the organization of events for companies and other sailing events.
Yesterday, the organizers of the popular Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, ARC for short, hastened to announce that their company was not affected by the challenge business misery. This is FirmWorld Cruising Club Ltd., which had only been separated from Challenge Business at the beginning of this year in the form of a management buyout.
In addition to the ARC, where hundreds of cruising crews regularly set off from the Canary Islands to the Kaibik in November, World Cruising Club is also responsible for ARC-Europe, which leads from the Caribbean back to Europe every spring. In 2008 a world ARC is even supposed to start, a cruising rally that leads in stages around the globe. They also host the Yachting Monthly Rally Portugal and The Classic Malts Cruise in Scotland every July.
World Cruising Club is run by a three-person board of directors with Andrew Bishop, Jeremy Wyatt and Adam Gosling. Around 30 German crews are taking part in the ARC 2006, which is now the 21st transatlantic rally. The destination port in the Caribbean is Rodney Bay on St. Lucia. The yachts need between 12 and 24 days for the 2700 nautical miles, depending on the size of the boat and the strength of the northeast trade wind.
The YACHT will report on this in detail in the coming issues.