CORK IS to rejoin the Clipper Round the World Yacht race for its final stages, several months after its entry hit a reef in the Java Sea.
The new Cork entry will rejoin the around-world-race from Panama onwards with a new skipper who will undertake preliminary training with the crew in San Francisco in the US next month.
Full details of the resumed entry are due to be outlined in Cork port today, where harbourmaster Capt Pat Farnan will also announce plans for permanent pontoons to host the Clipper fleet when it reaches the south coast in July. The fleet, which set out from Humber, England, last September, is due into Kinsale and Cork for an eight-day festival in early July.
The Clipper 35,000 mile-race is billed as the only event of its type where people from all walks of life can race around the world on 68ft ocean-racing yachts, paying their own way.
Cork city and county councils and Fáilte Ireland had sponsored the first Irish entry, with the vessel provided by the race organisers.
Eight Irish, five British, two Australians and one Chinese were on board the yacht when it hit a submerged reef in the Java Sea en route to Singapore in the early hours of January 14th, and the crew took to life rafts.
The crew members were picked up by two other participating yachts, Californiaand Team Finland, who were lying offshore. They were subsequently allocated berths on five other competing vessels, but will regroup for the resumed Irish bid from Panama on the ninth leg of the circumnavigation in May.
The fleet of nine yachts is currently en route from the Chinese Olympic sailing city of Qingdao, where the crews celebrated the Chinese new year, to San Francisco.