A RISING star of ocean racing will skipper the Irish entry in a round-the-world yacht race as it crosses the Atlantic to Ireland this summer.
Professional sailor Hannah Jenner, who turns 30 on July 29, was in Cork yesterday for the announcement that she will take the helm of the Cork boat which is competing in the Clipper ’09-’10 race.
The fleet is due to arrive in Kinsale sometime between July 1 and 4.
In 2007, Hannah became the first woman to skipper a yacht for an entire Clipper Race. She has racked up more than 130,000 miles and raced across the Atlantic nine times.
In 2009 she completed a double-handed Fastnet Race and raced across the Atlantic on the Open 60 Aviva, She also ran the New York Marathon after taking up running just four months previously.
She takes the helm of the new Cork boat which replaces the original boat which hit a reef during the race’s Western Australia to Singapore leg earlier this year.
Since then, the Cork crew have been racing on board the other nine yachts in the Clipper fleet.
The replacement 67-foot Challenge yacht was built in 1991 specifically for non-professional sailors. It has circumnavigated the world twice and is currently fulfilling a safety role with the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race 2009.
Hannah jets out for San Francisco within weeks to meet up with her crew.
They will take delivery of the new vessel in Panama in early May in time for Race 9 to Jamaica.
"I know we’ve got a lot of work to do, but I am definitely up for the challenge and Cork has every chance of a great result," she says.
Hannah was born in Surrey and grew up in Shrewsbury in the heart of England.
Despite growing up hundreds of miles from the sea, she knew from age eight she wanted to be a professional sailor.
She has worked with Clipper since 2004 in a number of roles.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, March 16, 2010
