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By Anna Wardley Albert Dock, Liverpool

Anna Wardley will be filing reports during the Clipper 2002 race - scheduled to start from Liverpool's Albert Dock on Sunday.

I'll be leaving my family, friends, job and dry knickers behind for eleven months when I set off on the Clipper 2002 round-the-world yacht race on Hong Kong clipper.

After over a year of training and preparation, it's hard to believe the start line is so close.

Moored alongside Liverpool's Albert Dock, the eight participating 60-foot yachts are hives of activity as we provision them for 70 days at sea.

Anna Wardley, on board Hong Kong
'Training has been tough'

Over 3,000 chocolate bars and 50 kilos of rice have been packed onto each boat.

We've spent the last days trying to work out where to stow the supplies and provisions that keep arriving on the pontoon for us.

As the co-medic on Hong Kong, I've also been preparing our medical kit that contains everything from body bags to rectal drips.

Along with the 12 other crew onboard, I will sail a total of 35,000 miles over the next eleven months.

When we return to Albert Dock next September, we will have crossed the Atlantic three times and also traversed the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

For now we're savouring the luxury of sleep while we can - when we're at sea, we'll be lucky to get three hours

Our skipper, Justin Taylor, 31, is the only professional sailor in the team and he's the guy with the unenviable task of getting us round the world in one piece.

Until a few weeks ago, the rest of us were doing everything from landscape gardening and nursing to banking and A levels.

But come Sunday, we will all be focused on the same goal - to get down to Cascais in Portugal as fast as possible before crossing the Atlantic to Cuba.

Our crew hails from as far and wide as New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Ireland and various parts of the UK, in addition to our Hong Kong-resident crew.

Raring to go

In the coming weeks and months, we will sacrifice toilet doors and regular sleep for damp clothes and powdered milk as we push the boat to go as fast as it can.

For now we're savouring the luxury of sleep while we can. When we're at sea, we'll be lucky to get three hours.

We faced storm-force winds and three tornadoes in the English Channel during our final training race.

Now we're raring to go and ready for anything the notorious Bay of Biscay can throw at us.


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