Our vessel for this adventure is Elinca, a Challenge 67' yacht built in 1996 for the BT Global Challenge race. Elinca was an additional yacht built for the 1996/7 race, in which she was called Time and Tide. Elinca is now based in Stornoway, and sails on charters around the Hebrides and to St Kilda, Iceland and the Faroes, operated by Wild Blue Ltd.

The Challenge 67 yachts are built from steel and were designed for racing the wrong way around the world. Elinca is therefore very strong and ideal for our adventure. She sleeps 14 in cabins of 2 or 3 people. The large saloon and galley allows most of the crew to sit together at meal times.

So far we've had two test sails on Elinca. A few of us went up to Stornoway in March 2012. The photos from that trip are available here and include a tour of the inside of the boat.

In September 2012 we ran two four-day trips on Elinca out of Stornoway. John Theakston's photos from the first four-day trip are available here.