Much though I love this event, I do however have some deep held reservations about long distance single handed racing. COLREGS Rule 5 states: "Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions" This is just not possible for a single hander, who has to sleep occasionally. In many ways, I'd rather see these sort of events as two-handed races.
In practical rather than legal terms I dont think its too much of an issue as shown by the lack of collisions. As the route planning charts show, the traditional sail routes round the world are quite different to the motor vessel routes, plus of course the yachts have collision avoidance / warning software and active radar transponders. The weakness is their speed. Dont know about you but my 3G radar is uselsess much more than 6 mile range even mounted up the mast. Thats OK for me doing 6kn but if I were saling at 25kn and with a motor vessel at 20kn thats not much more than 5 mins maximum warning.
I couldnt do this sort of a race. The sailing is one thing - its the endurance and determination that I lack. Sadly one of my mistakes in life is that I had the chance of crewing on the British Steel Challenge round the world race, and I decided not to go because of job reasons.
