The event is organised by the Joint Services Adventurous Sail Training Centre (JSASTC), whose mission is:

to develop the personal qualities essential to members of the British Armed Forces through adventurous sail training in the Service environment.

The circumnavigation is planned to include participation in the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Race in December 2009 and Antigua Race week in May 2010.  All legs will be conducted as Adventure Training expeditions and will be either cruises in company or races in the spirit of Corinthian competition, with the emphasis on safety, seamanship and teamwork. Each crew consists of a skipper, a mate, and 12 others divided into two or three watches. Skipper, mate and watch leaders will all hold relevant qualifications and have done the required amount of sea time in their roles.

The boats are Challenge 67s, designed by David Thomas and Thanos Condylis, of which Devonport Management Ltd. built 10 as the one-design class for the 1992 British Steel Challenge. Two skippers placed in this race have been in the news recently – Mike Golding (second) and Pete Goss (third).

By 1996, the race was known as the BT Global Challenge. There were now 14 boats and Mike Golding won.

I’ll be in Gosport (the home of JSASTC) myself in April and in early June, so I hope to be able to take a look at the boats before they leave UK shores. They will probably have changed quite a bit since they were first designed and built – for a start, we’ve learned a lot about preventing the rigging failures caused by the incessant slapping and banging on long ocean passages. Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV’s stainless steel mast tangs suffered from metal fatigue en route to Australia, and several of the original Challenge 67s suffered rigging screw failures in both 19923 and 1996/7.

This year’s trainees will have a pleasant surprise in store -  the battery, which is their main living space, has been renovated and made even more welcoming than it was in previous years.

On May 4th Belém will set sail for a totally new destination: Morocco. She will call first at Tangiers, then on to Rabat, where she will inaugurate the new quay of Rabat-Salé, part of the massive Bouregreg development that now joins the Moroccan capital to the sea town of Salé.

The development of the Bouregreg valley is expected to transform the face of Rabat by 2010. Construction began a year and a half ago and is making good progress. We are told that Rabat’s inhabitants impatiently await the project’s completion, which aims to place the capital among the world’s great international cities. According to local authorities, the goal is to make the city welcoming and attractive to tourists. Everyday life will improve through the creation of a tramway and a port, development of the mouth of the river, the construction of a tunnel, the creation of parks, pollution cleanup in the river and along the Atlantic coast, and environmental protection.

2009 will also be the occasion for the Belém and the Foundation to take a short trip down memory lane: 30 years ago exactly, the Caisses d’Epargne Group acquired the Belém from the Port of Venice authorities and she sailed back to France after an absence of over 65 years. We are promised several commemorations over the next few months, so why not bookmark New Freebooters or subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking on the orange button in the top right corner of this page.

Belém will welcome her new Captain, Commander Yann Cariou, who is expected to jon the ship towards the middle of May. If you speak a little French, how about signing up for a ‘stage’ aboard Belém this summer?

If you’re not up to that, take a look anyway and find out whether she’ll be in a port near you.