We have made the difficult decision to postpone the restart of the Clipper 2019-20 Race.
When we issued the proposed schedule back in October 2020, we believed, to the best of our knowledge, that a ten month postponement of the restart, to August 2021 would be achievable. However, as we all know, the next wave of Covid-19 hit the world hard and its effect on global travel has made a restart this year untenable.
On account of the unpredictable restrictions caused by the pandemic, the current edition will now restart from Subic Bay in February 2022.
With the Clipper 2019-20 Race now proposed to finish in August 2022, the 2022-23 edition has had to move back a year and become the Clipper 2023-24 Race, starting in late summer 2023. This also means that the 2024-25 edition will now become the Clipper 2025-26 Race, starting in late summer 2025.
We had planned to hold off a review of the proposed schedule for a few months longer, so we had a clear world view of the opportunities available to us from August. However, the continued disparity in how the global community is responding to and managing the spread of Covid-19 has led us to make this early decision. We have spent considerable time working through the complex issues that now face an international event such as ours and we strongly believe that restarting in February 2022 will enable us to have the best possible chance of delivering the Clipper Race as it is intended.
It is important to us that we do our best to deliver the Clipper Race that our crew signed up for, with their safety, as well as the Clipper Race Team and Race Partners, as always, at the forefront. We are working hard to achieve this and are confident that global travel will be in a much better place from early next year.
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
Clipper Race Co-Founder and Chairman
by Clipper Round the World Race
