Back in Summer 1994, Adrian Pilkington was a 30 year old multimedia development manager working in BT's Global Marketing Department. He considered himself very lucky as he had a great job at the leading edge of telecommunications technology and had just completed an MBA. What Adrian didn't know was that things were going to change, quite dramatically, in the next 12 months.

In July '94 he saw an article in one of BT's internal magazines, "BT Today", about the BT Global Challenge, a round the world yacht race sponsored by BT. The article was inviting applications from BT employees who wanted to take part in the race. No sailing experience was required, although each participant would need to raise £5,000 for the Save The Children Fund, the race's official charity.

Besides submitting an application form, prospective sailors had to write two essays explaining how they would go about raising the necessary £5,000, how they thought they would benefit from taking part in the BT Global Challenge, and how this experience might benefit their employer, BT.

The idea of taking part in what was billed as "The World's Toughest Yacht Race" appealed to Adrian. He completed the form, wrote his essays and sent off his application to the race organisers, The Challenge Business, who received over 3,000 applications from BT employees. From these initial submissions, a shortlist of 100 names was drawn up, and each candidate was personally interviewed by Chay Blyth, the world famous yachtsman and mastermind behind the race.

As Adrian recalled, "the interview was pretty short, about 15 minutes at the most. Chay seemed to make up his mind very quickly, although I couldn't be sure whether I had been successful or not ...he didn't give anything away."