Cape Town is gearing up to welcome the ten yachts participating in the Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race.

At 17:00 GMT yesterday, the fleet of identical yachts, all of which are crewed by amateurs, left Rio de Janeiro to begin the second leg of their 35 000 mile voyage around the world. They are expected to arrive in Cape Town between 14 and 18 November, and after a period of recovery at the Royal Cape Yacht Club, will be available for public viewing at the V&A Waterfront from 20 November. Once the crew have soaked up the mother city’s hospitality, the yachts will begin the next leg of the race to Geraldton, Western Australia on 22 November. From there they will sail to Qingdao, China; California; Panama; Jamaica; New York; Cape Breton Island; and Cork, Ireland before returning to Kingston upon Hull on the Humber Estuary in England, where the race started on 22 September.

On their return to the Humber in July next year, the participants, who number 400, will have traversed all the world’s major oceans and visited ports on six continents.

The race is being tracked via the Clipper website, which is available in 179 countries, and televised to an estimated 212 million people around the globe, all of whom who will focus their attention on the mother city during the stopover. The publicity presents a unique opportunity to showcase Cape Town as a world class events and travel destination, which is all the more pertinent in the run up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The crews’ visits to key attractions such as Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch and Robben Island will all be televised as part of a reality television series that will be broadcast in June next year.

“Events such as the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race help to create awareness of Cape Town that helps with destination marketing, port marketing and ultimately visitor attraction and job creation” explains Mansoor Mohamed, Executive Director: Economic, Social Development and Tourism.

The stopover is expected to attract several hundred thousand visitors to the V&A Waterfront, most of them motivated more by the chance to meet the crew members, who number 17 per boat, and come from all over the world and all walks of life, than the boats themselves. Crew members are ordinary people who pay to participate, either for the whole race, or one or more legs. The yachts are all stripped down 68-footers owned by Clipper Ventures and are sponsored by cities, regions and countries around the world. The boats are 'Hull and Humber', 'Qingdao', 'Uniquely Singapore', 'Cape Breton Island', 'Spirit of Australia', 'California', 'Edinburgh Inspiring Capital', 'Jamaica Lightning Bolt', 'Team Finland' and 'Cork, Ireland'.

Capetonians will take special delight in welcoming three of their own – Eero Lehtinen, who skippers ‘Team Finland’, which finished first in the two races comprising leg one of the race (the Humber to La Rochelle, France, and La Rochelle to Rio de Janeiro) Pete Rollason, skipper of ‘California’ (which finished tenth) and Marlon Jones, crew member on board ‘Cork, Ireland’. All three intrepid sailors live in Cape Town. Lehtinen is a member of Zeekoevlei Yacht Club, Rollason has his own sailing school and Jones is from Izivunguvungu Sailing Academy. The Academy was established by one of the major investors in South Africa’s America’s Cup syndicate, Team Shosholoza, to give underprivileged youth the opportunity to make a difference to their lives through sailing. Jones, 20, has proved himself a major talent and represented South Africa in the 2009 Laser SB3 World Championships where he and his team finished second.

The race boasts a proud history. It was conceived in 1995 by well known yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first man to sail solo, non-stop around the world. It ran every two years between 1996 and 2002, and then skipped a year while a new fleet of ten 68-foot yachts was built, with the next race beginning in 2005 and finishing in July 2006. The Clipper 07–08 race started in September 2007 and finished in July 2008 in Liverpool, England.

For more information, visit www.clipperroundtheworld.com.