1 SAIC LA JOLLA STORY from Interpersona ... - Interpersona Oy

een to take 20-60 year old participants from different
countries, professions and circles. Each ordinary crewmember
pays 27 000 pound for the participation in the
nine month race. This amount also includes a profound
period of training. A limited number of yachtsmen are
also taken on the yachts for the different legs of the
race. The yachts have eighteen-member crews.
As paid skippers for the twelve yachts participating
in the Global Challenge Chay Blyth chooses people
with more yachting experience. This time he elected
twelve skippers out of totally 348 applicants. There
haven’t been any Finns in the previous races and therefore
Eero Lehtinen has the honour to be the first.
The 40-year old Master of Economic Sciences has an
impressing list of yachting qualifications: in the 6mRclass
he has, among other achievements, gold as well as
silver medals in World and European championships.
Eero has also participated in numerous famous ocean
races; Gotland Runt, Fastnet Race, Azores and Back,
Whitbread, Round Britain and Ireland Challenge etc.).
Eero lives in Cape Town with his wife Tonya, their three
children and two dogs.
- The slogan of this race is to arrive safe and
sound, Eero Lehtinen says.
- But of course every crew would prefer to be
at the leg harbour welcoming the competitors,
which means that not only the circumstances
but also the competition, naturally, is going to
be very hard.
The SAIC La Jolla that Eero commands is one of the
identical 72-foot steel yachts designed by Rob Humphries,
which take part in Global Challenge. SAIC La
Jolla is crewed by men and women between 22 and
57 years and among them there are i.e. an ambulance
driver, a lawyer, an electrical engineer, a retired, a student,
a managing director, an IT trainer, a satellite engineer
etc. Four of the crewmembers are women.
The length of the route is about 30 000 sea miles.
The racing days are going to be approximately 150.
The journey starts 3rd October and the route will be
Portsmouth–Buenos Aires-Wellington-Sydney-Cape
Town-Boston-La Rochelle-Portsmouth. The date of arrival
should be 17th July 2005.
The main sponsor for SAIC La Jolla is SAIC, an American
IT-business. Besides Interpersona also Suunto and
Fiskars participates in the project from Finland.
We are going to follow up the Global Challenge
2004-2005 race in the following NEWSLETTERs, where
we will tell about the sailing of SAIC La Jolla and about
what the consultant and coaching assistance we give
means in practice.
If you are interested in following the different legs
of the yacht race more intensely, it is worth visiting the
official website of the race www.globalchallenge2004.
com as well as the website of Eero Lehtinen’s own crew
www.teamsaic.com
Oy INTERPERSONA Ab • Uudenmaankatu 17 B • 00120 HELSINKI • puhelin 020 741 9570 • telefax 020 741 9571
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