My Story

After being born and diagnosed with deafness in my right ear, I never really gave the disability much thought apart from the obvious annoyances of having to walk on the right, sit on the right, do everything with anyone – on the right. It was only when I was unable to complete a solo flight scholarship due to my deafness with Air Cadets, that I realised I would not be allowed to join the RAF as a pilot. I then understood the limitations that the disability brought to my life. Following this, I took the mentality that I may be limited, but I can do mostly anything. Mostly anything turned into chasing another career path to become a Test Driver. After working in this field for a number of years, I’ve decided to take a career break to take on something truly special – A Round the World Yacht Race.

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is a 40,000 mile circumnavigation of the globe - The longest yacht race in the world. 12 identical 70ft racing yachts, with a crew of 22 on board will race 8 legs with 15 stopovers over 6 continents. We will experience bone numbing freezing conditions in the southern ocean. Hot sweaty, energy sapping temperatures in the tropics. Waves the size of houses in the Pacific, and frustrating zones of zero wind in the doldrums. It's a race to test the physical and mental side of a person working with strangers, when sleep deprived, in a pressure cooker that is a racing yacht. This is no holiday - More people have climbed Everest, than sailed around the world.....

Saturday 31 August 2013

So here we go

The race of my life starts tomorrow. After 2 years in the making, tomorrow morning I will be setting off from St Katharine Docks and will not return until 12th July 2014, where I will have sailed around the world and completed over 40,000miles of racing. It is a life changer. I would just like to say thank you for everyone or all their support recently, those who have come down to wave me off and those who have sent messages of encouragement. Please help me charity www.justgiving.com/ben-pate-RTW. And please follow me around the globe at www.clipperroundtheworld.com. Game on. 
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)