An Australian Start for Round World Blue Planet Odyssey

by Sail-World Cruising on 12 Jan 2013 Jimmy Cornell, guru to many cruising sailors who use his guides as bibles in their long range cruising, will be spending a lot of time in the next couple of months launching his Round World Blue Planet Odyssey, a round world rally aiming at raising awareness about climate change, which could see the drowning of such famed communities as the Maldives and the San Blas by the end of the century.

The cruising rally will have starts in every continent, including Australia, and its route will call at some of the most threatened islands in every ocean: Tuvalu, Tokelau, Tuamotus, San Blas, Maldives, Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall, and Andaman Islands. The rally will also highlight the effects of climate change on the Arctic icecap, the Great Barrier Reef, and nature reserves such as the Galapagos Islands.

At every stop at those endangered places, the sailors will take part in community projects such as building wind and solar powered desalination plants. Participants with specialist skills will take part in local projects and carry out essential repair and maintenance work.

The event will reach out to children worldwide by way of a comprehensive educational program. Books and educational material will be delivered to places en route where local schools will be offered the opportunity to be twinned with schools in the country of origin of the participants.

As the route will pass through some of the least travelled parts of the oceans, arrangements are being made for oceanographic institutes and research centers to use this unique opportunity to receive environmental data gathered by participants. Throughout their voyage, the sailors will take seawater samples and make measurements to test for acidification, pollution, the depletion of the plankton population, and changes in temperature and salinity to compare to previous data.

The Australian Start will be in Sydney in July 2015 sailing up the east coast through the waters inside the Great Barrier Reef, then on through the Torres Strait to Darwin, Indonesia and Singapore (January 2016), joining up with other boats along the way.

Having reached the Mediterranean, European participants will head for home, while boats bound for the US East Coast will continue westwards via the Azores and Bermuda. Boats bound for South America will return home via the Cape Verde Islands. As the most favorable route home for yachts from the US West Coast is via the Caribbean and Panama Canal, they can spend longer in the Mediterranean and cross the Atlantic from the Canary Islands in November. Boats returning to Australia will sail the same route to Panama and reach home via Micronesia or Hawaii.

The proposed route is planned to transit the North Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and Mediterranean but if the situation in that area is considered not to be safe, the route will be amended to reach the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

For more information or to register, go to http://www.blueplanetodyssey.com