Clipper Race starts from Hull

Hull and Humber clipper: came second in the last race.

The race is between ten 20-metre yachts crewed by amateur sailors from around the world.

There are entries from Europe, the Americas, Australia, South Africa and South-East Asia.

Each yacht will embark on an epic 10-month, 35,000 mile journey that will span the globe.

The race is broken down into a series of legs with some of the crew members swapping places.

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The Hull and Humber clipper has high hopes of winning the race, after coming second last time out.

The boat's skipper is 31-year-old Piers Dudin, a professional yachtsman who has experience in long-distance racing. He said that the crew's lack of experience is not a problem:

"A lot of our sailors are sort of novice or amateur sailors. But actually, that novice status only seems to last for the first week of their training and after that they are automatically getting familiar with the boat and with the routines, and very quickly you actually forget that initially they have done very little sailing."

The race started on Sunday when the boats sailed to La Rochelle in France before heading across the South Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The race continues to South Africa, Australia, China, USA and the Caribbean before heading back to Hull next summer.