British Steel Challenge and Chay Blyth

[ltcom]

This was one of the steps that took Pete Goss from Tug to instructor to skipper of the races to eventual 'stardom'
How long was training for the paying punters (they were paying punters weren't they?)
Were any accidents involved?
How many years did the challenge company run for?

 

[lw395]

From PG's website:
Pete spent three years as training skipper for the whole fleet of 120 amateurs, working alongside them day and night to ensure they understood every aspect of their particular boat and were fully prepared for the challenges they were about to face.

I did manage to blag a corporate day out on one of the original boats. Not only got the tee shirt, also a branded jacket, unfortunately long since binned.

 

[EBunting]

The British Steel Challenge and latterly the BT Global Challenge ran from 1992 to 2004, four four-yearly races until the company went bust.

There was quite substantial pre-race training from skippers over the years such as Pete Goss, John Chittenden, Mike Golding, Conrad Humphreys, Dee Caffari etc and between each race cycle the yachts were completely refitted, stem to stern and stripped out, plus there was a dedicated service team in each port in a way that pre-dates but is a similar model to the now Volvo Ocean Race Boatyard.

In that sense it was different to Clipper, but it was also much more expensive to run and the four-yearly model with high sponsorship costs couldn't ultimately be sustained.

As regards accidents, there were actually very few across a fleet of that eventually had over 200 per race and was going 12,000 miles upwind through the Southern Ocean. One person in the first race was lost at sea on the returning legs homebound - he was seen to dive overboard and was not recovered. A crewmember was badly injured in I think 2000/1 the Bass Strait when a huge wave slammed into the side of one of the steel 72s and stove in a ringframe (they were built like the proverbial brick s***houses) and smashed a guy to the end of his lifeline and in between the spokes of the wheel, shattering a leg. He had several major operations afterwards.

But as I recall those were the only incidents in the races. They were very tightly run indeed.