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- Winner of the first Virtual Yacht Race - tells her story. I feel thrilled to have won the first around the world virtual yacht race. What started out as a bit of fun became a very serious commitment during the second leg when winning that leg and the overall prize became possibilities. Roger Biggs with "Ixion" put up a tough fight right up until the end. Establishing communications with him by Email added a new dimension to the game and we both had to be careful not to give any secrets away. One of the pleasures of this race was being able to communicate with other competitors from all over the world. However, the many requests for tips made it difficult to not give away information that had taken hard work and time to accumulate. The sixth and final leg occurred while my husband Frank and I travelled in England and Europe. So in order to compete we took a notebook computer and mobile phone with us and managed to do the updates while passing through 8 countries. This did add an extra element of pressure, but made winning that much sweeter. My husband was responsible for the navigation and getting this correct was essential. Picking the appropriate crew was also one of the keys to success and of course having a female skipper. We have been sailing our own yachts for 12 years which includes ocean racing and cruising short handed around Australia and Indonesia. This has given us a love of sailing and sticking at this virtual yacht race required a similiar degree of dedication and concentration as needed when on watch during an ocean passage.
Ros Holder |
 bt.com |
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