Global Ocean Race moves with the times

Caterham Challenge Official Measurement Test © Caterham Challenge

Organisers of the Global Ocean Race announced some significant changes to their event today. In response to a clear demand from potential entrants to shorten the event's overall timespan and further reduce the costs of competing in the GOR, an exciting and challenging new format has been created. In addition, to provide more time for prospective entries to line up on the race start line, the event has been postponed for one calendar year to September 2015.

"Whilst the Global Ocean Race is already the most cost-effective competitive round-the-world race, we have consistently been asked by sailors to make it even more so and to reduce the time the event takes," explains Josh Hall, GOR Race Director. "As a predominantly owner-driver event we appreciate these desires and want the race to evolve into a popular format. Therefore, we have decided to strip out all of the time and cost-intensive stopovers except for one – Auckland," confirms Hall.

"We know from previous GOR's that the boats are perfectly capable of longer legs from a reliability perspective," Hall continues. "So the next GOR will have just two legs reducing race duration to less than six months and saving each race project an average of 50,000 Euros. This new format certainly increases the challenge for the sailors which in turn, we believe, will increase its following," says Hall.

To ensure that existing and potential entries have sufficient time to prepare for this new format, it has been decided to postpone the race start to September 2015. The re-vamped GOR will be open to solo and double-handed entrants and the event already has a healthy list of international sailors keen to compete.

"The GOR 2015-16 will revert to our original two divisions of solo and double-handed teams," says Hall. "Recent years have been incredibly difficult for all sponsored events and with such a long cycle between races it is very important that we get the format and timing right for the next GOR. Moving the race start to 2015 means that more projects have more time to enter our event, our race partners have a longer involvement and, importantly, we avoid clashing with the Route du Rhum, Volvo Ocean Race and Barcelona World Race. The race will have an extended stopover in Auckland across the Christmas/New Year period permitting the fleet to regroup, prepare properly for Leg 2 and for the sailors to catch up with their families and business interests appropriately," Hall concludes.

• Race Start Southampton, UK, September 2015
• Stopover The Waterfront, Auckland estimated dates December 15th 2015 - Mid January 2016
• Race Finish Portsmouth Harbour, UK, ETA end of March 2016