BBC SPORT | Other Sports | Sailing | Richards heads round globe

Helensburgh's Emma Richards set sail on Sunday as the only female competitor in the Around Alone solo yacht race around the world.

Deputy Mayor of New York Daniel L Doctoroff fired the gun to start 13 skippers from 10 nations on their way in the gruelling 29,000-mile event.

The start of the eight-month race concluded the 11 September commemoration events in New York.

Richards is the only British competitor, her 60-foot Pindar being of the same Formula One design that brought Ellen MacArthur to fame last year in the Vendee Globe race.

Emma Richards is an experienced sailor
She is an experienced yachts-woman, having raced with Tracey Edwards on her Jules Verne attempt in 1997 aboard Royal Sun Alliance.

But their 90-foot catamaran was dismasted in the Southern Ocean.

She was also Lisa McDonald's all-female crew in the 2001-2002 Volvo Ocean Race, which was also around the globe.

This is her first solo circumnavigation.

The competitors will arrive in Brixham, UK, in three week's time at the end of leg one.

From there, it is on to the Southern Hemisphere - Cape Town, South Africa - before the gruelling Southern Ocean.

They skirt Antarctica and dreaded icebergs to New Zealand, before setting off to round the notoriously dangerous Cape Horn enroute to Brazil.

The final leg takes the competitors back to USA, finishing in Newport, Rhode Island next April.

Entrants in the race are from Belgium, Bermuda, Britain, Canada, Switzerland, France, Japan, Italy, Japan and USA.

Belgium's Bernard Stamm, the current holder of the fastest trans-Atlantic crossing in a monohull, is the race favourite.


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