The Team

Ian first learned to sail while serving with the British Army over 20 years ago, where he served as an avionics engineer in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Since then Ian has gone to have many adventures including sailing over 40,000 miles and completing a circumnavigation with the famous Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. Taking on the enormous challenge of the Golden Globe Race will certainly rank as his greatest adventure so far.

Jade Edwards-Leaney is a rigger and boat builder based in Pwllheli in North Wales. Jade is an accomplished offshore sailor with many thousands of sea miles under his keel. Jade is overseeing the majority of the Puffin’s initial refit project and has stepped up to act as Team Manager. As the only other official role required by the GGR notice of race, Jade as Team Manager will be the primary point of contact for race control and the only source of indirect communication with Ian during the 9 months at sea.

Chris Lait first met Ian when they served together in British Army and it was Chris that was responsible for originally introducing Ian to sailing. Chris has had many sailing adventures while with the British Army and has since gone on to be the founder sailchecker.com. Chris will support Ian as communications & sponsorship manager before and during the race.

Pete Ratcliffe is a “semi-retired” professional charter and delivery skipper, that has spent the majority of his sailing career in Caribbean & Mediterranean before relocating back to Lymington on the South Coast of the UK. Pete has been supporting Ian from the beginning with boat prep, deliveries and of course sailing wisdom.

Paul Hankey is a digital specialist, who previously spent close to a decade as Digital Media Manager at the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, where his role included overseeing the project management of the award-winning website.

It might well be that people have spent too much time in lockdown, but we’ve had a lot of people get in touch and ask how they can get involved in our campaign. Although its super difficult at the moment, we’ve decided to give people some easy ways to become part of the ‘HJ Sailing Community’ and to support the team in any way they can, probably remotely at the moment, but hopefully in person before too long.