On the first, the British Steel Challenge of 1992-93, one of the skippers was a woman and there are several women on the shortlist for skippers' positions for the BT Global Challenge 2000 race. Plenty of the Crew Volunteers presently in training for the BT Global Challenge 2000 are women and women competed in the Atlantic Rowing Race of 1997 and have entered the Ward Evans Atlantic Rowing Challenge 2001. Challenge Business is based mainly in Britain but has an office in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and has an international aspect. Applications from potential Crew Volunteers come from all over the world. Competing in the BT Global Challenge 2000 will be people from USA, South America, Scandinavia, mainland Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, to name but a few.
All applications are welcome.
Challenge Business' forthcoming New World Challenge is a round the world race based in America which takes in ports in the Asia Pacific region, thus opening the Global Challenge concept to a whole new group of participants. Challenge Business has yachts for training in various parts of the world and Crew Volunteers for the BT Global Challenge 2000 have been training in east coast USA and in Australia. Challenge Business cannot undertake definitely to provide training overseas, however, and Crew Volunteers might be asked to travel to take part in training. They were designed by David Thomas and built at DML in Plymouth. Together they have amasses some 1,500,000 nautical miles of high seas sailing, through the most demanding oceans on the planet.