A 24-year-old skipper from Haverfordwest has led her round-the-world crew back onto UK soil — steering their yacht into Oban at the end of a 3,300-nautical-mile Atlantic crossing.
Lowri “Lou” Boorman skippers Team Tongyeong in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race — a crew of everyday people who swapped their normal lives for one of the world’s biggest endurance challenges, with around 40 per cent of those taking part having never sailed before signing up.
The fleet’s arrival in Oban is its first UK landfall in more than ten months of racing, at the end of a stage that brought the crews across the North Atlantic from Washington DC.
And there was plenty to celebrate on the dockside — Boorman’s team crossed the line in second place, marking the moment with champagne beneath the west coast of Scotland’s hills.
“I am so, so proud to be skippering this team,” she said.
Boorman has competitive sailing in her blood. She started at just eight years old through her local RYA OnBoard scheme — and by 16 had claimed British, Irish and Welsh female champion titles on the international stage, as the Tenby Observer reported when her Clipper appointment was announced last year.
She is also the youngest person ever to skipper the Round Britain and Ireland Race — and described her appointment as one of just three new Clipper Race skippers as a “huge professional and personal goal”.
“There are no ‘pink jobs’ or ‘blue jobs’ on the boat,” she said at the time. “I am capable of doing every role and I am 5ft 2. If I can do everything, I know every single one of my crew can do all of those jobs as well.”
The sailing challenge sees eleven teams of non-professional sailors race identical 70-foot ocean yachts almost 40,000 nautical miles around the world — six ocean crossings over eleven months, having set out from Portsmouth last August.
Among those offering congratulations on the pontoon was Sir Robin Knox-Johnston — the Clipper Race’s chairman and co-founder, and the first person to sail solo and non-stop around the world.
For some of her crew, the arrival carried extra weight. Circumnavigator Gav Lee returned to UK waters for the first time since last August, after almost eleven months sailing around the world.
“Back on home soil, at last. I feel confident, fitter, and more alive,” he said. “A lot of people say it’s life changing, but for me it’s definitely more life affirming. What an adventure we have been on.”
More than 700 people are taking part across the race — facing everything from hurricane-force winds to the isolation of the North Pacific, and living aboard a stripped-back yacht with up to 23 others.
Oban marks the beginning of the end of the journey, with the fleet now back in home waters ahead of the race’s closing stages.
When her appointment was announced, Boorman said she couldn’t wait for “the magic of the sea, the stars, the storms” — adding: “I feel free and at my happiest at sea.” On Friday, that sea brought her and her crew home.
