Falmouth and Looe boats join Golden Globe solo world race

Sixteen small boats will slip their lines in a French harbour this Sunday (6 September) and effectively disappear for the best part of a year, navigating by sextant and starlight alone. Six of them owe their shape to workshops in Cornwall and Devon.

A race that turns the clock back to 1968

The skippers set out from the French Atlantic resort of Les Sables d’Olonne this Sunday in the McIntyre Golden Globe Race, an event built in the spirit of the original 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe. That race made Devon sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnston the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world. After leaving Falmouth, his small, self-built 32ft wooden boat Suhaili spent 312 days at sea and was the only vessel to cross the Falmouth finishing line.

The modern race keeps faith with that era. It is sailed without GPS or any modern electronic navigation, open only to 32ft to 36ft yachts designed before 1988. Competitors must find their way using sextants, the stars, compasses and paper charts, and for the roughly eight months they expect to be at sea they are barred from computers, auto-helm and any shore-based weather routing advice.

Four boats from Falmouth, and two born in Looe

Four of the 28,000-nautical-mile fleet are Rustler yachts, hailing from the Falmouth boatbuilder of the same name. It is a design with royal approval too: it is the yacht of choice for The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, who is president of the Royal Yachting Association.

Two more were designed in Looe, by the late naval architect Alan Pape. There should have been a third. Seventy-year-old Scottish sailor Andrew Ritchie had been due to campaign the third Pape-designed boat but pulled out for personal reasons before the start.

Pat Lawless and his unfinished business

📷Photo reproduced by kind permission of the skippers, race organiser Don McIntyre/GGR2026, the PPL Photo Agency, and the YJA's John Collings.

Ireland’s Pat Lawless is campaigning his Saltram Saga 36, Silvermines Hydro, one of the two Pape-designed yachts making the start line. She was built by former Plymouth boatbuilders K R Skentelbery & Sons at Laira Bridge, and is similar to Suhaili but four feet longer. Alan, who died in 2004, developed the Saga from the hull of the Colin Archer Norwegian Redningskoite sailing lifeboat, and for years the Sagas have been rated among the most seaworthy yachts afloat, as well as fast.

Pat has unfinished business with this race. A former full-time fisherman, he was forced to retire west of Cape Town in 2022 after a key part in his self-steering system failed. The 43-year-old is sailing to raise funds for Parkinson’s Ireland, after his wife Rita was diagnosed with the disease, and is aiming to become the first Irishman to complete the race.

Norway’s Mara Løvenskiold Kveseth, on Showgirl

📷Photo reproduced by kind permission of the skippers, race organiser Don McIntyre/GGR2026, the PPL Photo Agency, and the YJA's John Collings.

The other Pape-designed boat still in the fleet is Showgirl, sailed by Norway’s Mara Løvenskiold Kveseth, a professional licensed yacht captain and former international athlete.

“I’m someone who has never been very good at staying inside boxes,” Mara says. “For the past years, my life has revolved around the sea. Living on a sailboat, moving with the weather, learning patience the hard way, and slowly realising that the ocean has a way of stripping things back to what actually matters.”

Long odds, and a cause bigger than the finish line

📷Photo reproduced by kind permission of the skippers, race organiser Don McIntyre/GGR2026, the PPL Photo Agency, and the YJA's John Collings.

The odds facing all sixteen skippers are stark. Across the three previous editions of the Golden Globe Race, 43 sailors have started and only nine have finished.

“The final week before a Golden Globe start is unlike anything else,” says Don McIntyre, the race’s founder and chairman. “Years of preparation come down to just a handful of days. There’s excitement, but also quiet reflection. Families know they’ll soon lose sight of their loved ones, and the skippers know they’re about to step into a dream they’ve worked years to realise.”

The 2026 race supports the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) as its charity of choice. SITraN brings together scientists, clinicians and researchers working to develop new treatments and improve care for people affected by neurological conditions, including motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, dementia, stroke and multiple sclerosis, giving Pat’s own fundraising for Parkinson’s Ireland a wider echo across the whole fleet.

“On Sunday,” Don says, “modern life falls away, and it becomes just the sailor, the wind, the sea and the stars.”

📷Photo reproduced by kind permission of the skippers, race organiser Don McIntyre/GGR2026, the PPL Photo Agency, and the YJA's John Collings.