Final straight

For the 14 competitors waiting to start the Around Alone with Thursday's preview

Boat	Skipper	Age	Nat	Designer	Skipper perf	Boat perf	Preparation	Funding	Total
Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America	Brad van Liew	34	USA	Finot	9	9	9	5	32
Everest Horizontal	Tim Kent	50	USA	Antrim	6	7	7	2	22
Spirit of Canada	Derek Hatfield	50	CAN	Dresser	7	6	6	2	21
Spirit of Yukoh	Kojiro Shiraishi	35	JAP	Finot	4	6	7	4	21
BTC Velocity	Alan Paris	37	BER	Jutson	4	6	7	2	19
Bayer Ascensia	John Dennis	57	CAN	Ebbutt	4	4	5	3	16

Class Two is effectively two battles within one - between the Open 50s and the new generation of Open 40s.

Among the Open 50s the undoubted favourite is Brad van Liew in Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America. Van Liew is the only repeat offender in this race. Last time he sailed a rather ancient Open 50 Balance Bar, but despite this was constantly nipping at the heels of Mike Garside's Magellan Alpha and J-P Mouligne's Cray Valley. Unable to find funds for a 60, van Liew opted to buy Magellan Alpha the boat which beat him in 1998/9. This Groupe Finot design one of the most high performance Open 50s afloat and in van Liew's hands we can expect to see her nipping at the heels of the 60 footers this time round.

Everyone is rather amused that Garnier, who make cosmetics and designer fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger are sponsoring rufty tufty singlehanded round the world seadogs. At times through this week beefy Brad has been spied involved in fashion shoots with other red, white and blue-clad models.

Winner of the world's largest doghouse competition is Tim Kent's Open 50 Everest Horizontal. The boat is a Jim Antrim design originally built for Bob Gaye to race in the Vendee Globe. It has since been sold to her present owner. Waterballasted, the boat looks the part, but Kent has been underfunded despite a remarkable $50,000 donation from his ex-wife, and the boat lacks the grand prix development of van Liew's machine. Kent has done much singlehanded racing, but this has mainly been on the lakes.

The other Open 50 entrant is Bayer Ascensia, of Canadian John Dennis, at 57 the oldest competitor in the race. Dennis has been a professional sailor and was able to buy this boat when he received sponsorship from pharmecutical giant Bayer. Dennis is a diabetic is using the race to promote a new drug. The boat was originally designed for Andy Upjohn to sail in the 1996/7 race. It was built by Concordia, but has had a checked career to date and this is her first race.
A more competitive race will be the Open 40s.

BTC Velocity is being sailed by Alan Paris, once upon a time manager of the Ariel Sands, a hotel owned by Hollywood star Michael Douglas in Bermuda (Michael Douglas is half Bermudan apparently...) Paris has done much keelboat sailing on J/24s and then on his J/105, much of it singlehanded. His boat is a design by Scott Jutson, who designed David Adams' True Blue winner of class two in 1994/5, with water ballast and a single rudder.

The race again has a Japanese entry in the form of Kojiro Shiraishi (known among the French here as 'Code Zero'). Unlike previous Japanese entries his Spirit of Yukoh - after Yukoh Tada, the Japanese sax playing taxi driver who took part in the early BOC Challenges, for whom he shore crewed in 1990 - is a hot racing machine. It is a wingmasted Open 40 designed by Groupe Finot and professionally built in France last year. In 1993/4, Shiraishi, at the time aged 26, became the youngest person to make a non-stop solo circumnavigation and he has since sailed across the Pacific with Bruno Peyron on the maxi-cat Explorer. When the boat was built Shiraishi sailed her from France to Japan and has since brought it back to the east coast of the States.

Spirit of Canada was designed by marine surveyor Bob Dressor and built by her skipper former Canadian mountie Derek Hatfield. Hatfield is one of the most experienced North American singlehanded sailors having taken part in events such as the 1996 Europe One STAR (7th in class) as well as numerous fully crewed regattas and offshore races.