Editing Global Challenge (section)

==Background==
The seeds of the race were sown in Blyth's previous sailing exploits. In 1970/71, he became the first person to sail alone round the world westabout in the yacht ''[[British Steel (yacht)|British Steel]]''. The practicality of training people who had never sailed before was demonstrated during the 1973/74 [[Whitbread Around the World race]], when Blyth had raced ''[[Great Britain II]]'' with a crew from the [[Parachute Regiment (United Kingdom)|Parachute Regiment]]. Subsequently, he ran charters for paying crew.

Blyth's longtime associate, Andrew Roberts, forged the design philosophy for the identical yachts used on the Global Challenge races. His idea was to start from the largest top-action production winch available, which would dictate sail area, displacement and size. He also oversaw the build of the two fleets of steel [[Cutter (boat)|cutters]] used in the four races to date, to designs by David Thomas and Thanos Condylis (Challenge 67) and Rob Humphreys (Challenge 72).