Meet the Yellow Shirts of 2019!

Meet this year's ARC Yellowshirts! Between us we have sailed: 72 Atlantic Crossings / 13 circumnavigations / 1,040,000 nautical ocean miles…

WCC Management Team

ANDREW BISHOP
MANAGING DIRECTOR
ENGLISH & SPANISH
As Managing Director of World Cruising Club, Andrew is globally recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities in ocean cruising. After he sailed on the fourth edition of the ARC in 1989 with his father, he soon became involved with the management of the company, helping Jimmy Cornell to run the first round the world rally Europa ’92.
He has remained dedicated ever since, and has been calmly expanding the company’s global portfolio of rallies and events for more than twenty years. Andrew the founding force in creating and developing the format of the now-annual World ARC rally which has since seen nearly 400 yachts and 3,500 crew achieve a circumnavigation dream.
Andrew is a keen cruising sailor at heart, and during the rare times that he gets holiday he usually disappears off up to the West Coast of Scotland to sail his beloved Joshua Slocum replica wooden yacht. As well as his Atlantic crossing, he has sailed around Britain double-handed with World Cruising Club Director Jeremy Wyatt, and has sailed on many legs of multiple World ARC rallies.

SUZANA TETLOW
ARC+ EVENT MANAGER
PORTUGUESE, ENGLISH, GERMAN & SPANISH
Suzana has worked with World Cruising Club for more than a decade, and is currently the ARC+ Event Manager and full time Global Operations Manager of the annually-starting World ARC rally.
In her role working on the stopovers from 2009 – 2014, she travelled to almost every country visited by World ARC around the globe. She has a lifetime of experience in the event and travel industry and is fluent in Portuguese, English, German and Italian, with a solid understanding of more languages which she doesn’t admit to!

JEREMY WYATT
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR
ENGLISH & GERMAN
Having crewed for Jimmy Cornell on the first official world rally organised by World Cruising Club, Europa ’92, Jeremy then went on to join the company as an event manager, becoming a Director a few years later. He has been involved at management level for more than two decades.
Based in the World Cruising Club office in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, Jeremy manages all rally data, IT and global communications, as well as the various Ocean Cruising Seminars and Boat Shows around the world in his role as Communications Director. He oversees the Marketing and PR strategy and delivery, and also runs the World Cruising Club sister companies Noonsite.com and OceanCrewLink.com.
Jeremy sailed double handed around Britain with Andrew Bishop in 1991, and has since gained significant offshore sailing experience, having cruised extensively around Europe, the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, as well as being a regular racer in the Solent, out of his home port of Cowes.

NICK MARTIN
ARC EVENT MANAGER
ENGLISH & SPANISH
This will be Nick’s fifth time planning and delivering both the ARC+ and ARC+ rallies in Las Palmas, and his third as the Event Manager. He has worked in thirteen countries across the globe with World Cruising Club, having been a part of the ‘yellow shirt’ team on multiple occasions with the ARC, ARC Portugal, ARC Europe and on many of the stopovers on World ARC including the Caribbean, Panama Canal, Galapagos, Australia,
Indonesia and Brazil. He has sailed across the Atlantic twice, once in 1999 with the ARC and then again ten years later from South Africa to Brazil with World ARC in 2008-09.

SARAH COLLINS
MEDIA MANAGER
ENGLISH
Sarah manages the global media and communications across World Cruising Club’s portfolio of rallies, as well as controlling and delivering the company’s marketing strategy throughout the year. She has completed three trans-Atlantic sailing voyages (two of them the ‘wrong’ way!) and has raced in many high-profile regattas on both sides of the Atlantic.
She has been involved with sailing campaigns and events for her entire professional career, and now travels extensively with the World Cruising Club events working closely with the rally operations teams across all rallies and countries. As well as coordinating the Media and Marketing, Sarah also manages the image library database, Rally Handbooks and event Newsletters, as well as the graphic design for all events.

STEFANO PALUMBO
WORLD ARC EVENT MANAGER
ITALIAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH & SPANISH
Italian-born but fluent in four languages, Stefano works across the globe as the World ARC Event Manager, a role he has been involved with for the past four rallies. By February next year, he will have been to every stopover on the World ARC circumnavigation except for Grenada! With 30,000 miles and five Atlantic crossings completed, Stefano has been professionally involved in the marine industry for 25 years. He is a qualified Ocean YachtMaster and Senior RYA Instructor, and holds a Captain’s certification for yachts over 24 metres LOA. He has been a Coach and Trainer for the French Sailing Federation, and an author of sailing books about technical teaching.

ARC Seminar Lecturers

CHRIS TIBBS
MANAGEMENT OF EMERGENCIES (ARC+) / ROUTE & WEATHER / RETURNING TO EUROPE / SEXTANT MASTERCLASSES /DOWNWIND SAILING TIPS / DOUBLE-HANDED WORKSHOP
ENGLISH
A YachtMaster Ocean with a Master’s degree in Applied Meteorology, Chris has been a professional skipper for 20 years, and a core part of the World Cruising Club team for just as long. With an incredible 300,000+ miles of ocean sailing experience, including three round the world races (twice in the Whitbread Round the World Race and once as skipper of Concert in the BT Global Challenge), Chris has also completed 27 Trans-Atlantic passages including as Skipper in the 1st and 30th ARC.
He has worked as a meteorologist for almost all the world’s principal sailing races, including the Volvo Ocean, Vendée Globe and Mini Transat, as well as for the America’s Cup and the Olympics. He holds seven world speed records as on-board navigator & weather router. At a slightly slower pace, Chris and his wife Helen also sailed from the Caribbean to Australia in 2017-18 with the World ARC rally. He also runs Sailing Weather Ltd and is the author of the RYA Weather Handbook (available in the ARC Shop).

VICKY ELLIS
MANAGEMENT OF EMERGENCIES (ARC)
ENGLISH
Vicky completed her first ARC in 2005 winning the Racing Division overall and the coveted ‘Spirit of the ARC’ award as the mate on-board a Swan 51’. Six years later, in 2011, she returned to the ARC again as the skipper of an all-female crew on an Elan 37’. She has since sailed or raced across every ocean on the planet, and most recently skippered a team in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, taking on the Southern Ocean and winning a leg in the process. Vicky is a RYA YachtMaster Instructor with over 100,000nm offshore experience, a mum of a toddler and a professional business speaker on the subject of leading high performance teams in challenging conditions.

CLARE PENGELLY
PROVISIONING
ENGLISH
Clare has been involved with World Cruising Club for more than a decade, both as staff and as a participant in the events. A passionate sailor, Clare has crossed the Atlantic with the ARC multiple times, and sailed on several ocean stages of World ARC.
While she has been fortunate enough to sail on yachts carrying everything from microwave ovens to washing machines, most of her experience has been in sailing without either - both by accident and design! As a result, she has a near-obsession with discovering the perfect way to provision a boat, so don’t be surprised to find her on the docks in Saint Lucia asking you how long your cucumbers lasted, or if smoked or cured ham tasted better after two weeks at sea!
As well as running the ARC Information Centre and Shop, Clare is involved with Check In, the official rally photography, and presents the Provisioning Seminars. She will also be managing the ARC yellow shirt team in Saint Lucia this year. 

ANDREW PICKERSGILL
DOUBLE-HANDED WORKSHOP (ARC+)
ENGLISH
Sailing away from the UK as a participant on ARC Portugal 2016, Andrew and his wife SWade turned a hobby into a permanent lifestyle, and when they aren’t travelling the globe with World Cruising Club events, they still live happily on-board their Hanse 400 in the idyllic Balearic island of Menorca.
Holding a commercially endorsed YachtMaster Offshore and an Instructors licence, Andrew has worked as part of the Safety Inspection Team in Las Palmas for the past four years, and more recently as part of the event team running World ARC 2019-20. Andrew and Swade will once again stay on with the World Cruising Club ‘yellow shirt’ team after Las Palmas to work on the first half of the World ARC 2020-21 rally from the Caribbean to Australia.

MARK BURTON
ST VINCENT & CAPE VERDE DESTINATION GUIDE (ARC+)
RETURNING TO EUROPE (ARC+)
ENGLISH
Mark is a commercially endorsed YachtMaster instructor and OceanMaster, as well as a qualified electrical, electronic and mechanical marine engineer. He has been a racing coach and skipper on several renowned and highly successful ARC yachts including Spirit of Juno (Farr 65) and Scarlet Oyster.
Mark has sailed across the Atlantic more than a dozen times, and has competed in many of the world’s most prestigious offshore races including the Fastnet, Middle Sea Race, Caribbean 600, Kings Cup and Les Voiles St Tropez.
2019 will be Mark’s fourth year as part of the World Cruising Club Safety Inspection Team in Las Palmas, and he continues on with ARC+ to Cape Verde and then to St Vincent for the second year with Cecilie Hammersland. He has worked on two editions of World ARC, and has been the Event Manger for ARC Europe since 2017, as well as managing the six-week ARC Baltic rally earlier this year. 

WILL SPENCER
RIGGING (ARC)
ENGLISH
Will returns as part of the ARC’s Safety Inspection Team for the third year, having sailed across the Atlantic with the rally in 2016. He is a certified RYA YachtMaster Ocean and RYA YachtMaster Instructor, and runs the yacht management company White Dot Sailing, based in the Hamble estuary in the UK, where he gets owners and their boats ready for their next adventure.
Will has sailed extensively in the UK & Channel Islands, Mediterranean and Caribbean. As a valued member of the World Cruising Club Safety Inspection team, this year he will also take over the ARC rigging lectures to give you some insight into what to expect and how best to prepare your rig for the Atlantic Crossing.

Event Delivery Team

ALEX MILIANI
SPANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH
The sea and sailing have been a part of Alex’s life since he was born, being brought up living aboard the family boat in Las Palmas Marina, where he still lives. With a Venezuelan mother and French father, at just 19 years of age Alex is already fluent in English, French and Spanish, with a good understanding of Italian and Portuguese too. Alex wrote to Andrew Bishop when he was just 12 years old to say he wanted to one day be a yellow shirt, and this year he officially joins the team for the first time.

ALVARO LEDESMA
SPANISH, ENGLISH
As a bi-lingual native of Las Palmas, Alvaro has worked continually with World Cruising Club for the past seven years as a key member of the ARC planning team on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as working on the delivery of multiple editions of ARC Portugal and ARC Europe. He works closely with the ARC Event Manager and World Cruising Club’s Managing Director throughout the year to coordinate the key relationships in Las Palmas, including the Port Authority, Tourist Board, Council, Frontier Police and Las Palmas Marina, as well as managing many of the detailed logistics of the event and the ARC programmes.

ANNA BROOKE
ENGLISH
Anna has been involved in professional sailing race management for nearly 35 years, and has been a part of the World Cruising Club Safety Team for twenty years. She has been on the RORC Special Regulations Committee for more than two decades and served as a previous Rear Commodore of RORC, as well as being a RORC Measurer, working with both the Admirals Cup and Commodores’ Cup management. She has had a lifetime on the water and is a Director of Landamore’s Boatyard, where Oyster Yachts were built from the late 1970’s until 2012, before Oyster took their yacht builds in-house. Nowadays Landamore’s builds classic electric launches and hybrid motor yachts, with the same quality craftsmanship, design and finish that they have always been renowned for.

ANNALISA ROUND
ENGLISH, SPANISH, FRENCH
Fluent in English, French and Spanish, and a keen all-round water sports enthusiast, Annalisa has just spent the European summer working on a charter boat in Spain having completed a yacht delivery from the Mediterranean to the Canaries with the ARC 2019 yacht Flying Dolphin. This will be Annalisa’s first time working with the World Cruising Club team, and after Las Palmas she will be heading to Saint Lucia to meet the fleets on arrival, before continuing as part of the ‘yellow shirt’ team for the World ARC 2020-21 rally, travelling to every stopover from the Caribbean through the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands and into the Pacific Ocean and French Polynesia.

ASTRID BREUER-GREIFF
GERMAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH
Astrid and her husband Wilhelm bought an aluminium hulled yacht in 1982 and completely fitted it out, before venturing out on an extensive offshore cruising schedule, culminating in a double-handed circumnavigation with the first World Cruising Club round-the-world rally Europa ’92. The couple then took on several parts of the world’s oceans again as syndicate-owners of a yacht that sailed twice around the world with the subsequent Europa rallies. Astrid has continued her adventures of long-distance sailing, and has two Atlantic crossings and around 40,000 nautical miles experience. Her ability to fluently speak three languages and her knowledge of ocean sailing landed her on the World Cruising Club team for the first time in 1994, and she has been involved ever since, working with Wilhelm as the official representatives of the company in Germany. In Las Palmas, she pulls on her professional skills as a translator, journalist and teacher to work with the Check In and Media teams.

BOJAN MICHIELS
DUTCH, ENGLISH, GERMAN, FRENCH & SLOVENIAN
Having crossed the Atlantic with the ARC four times, as well as sailing on ARC Europe and two legs of the World ARC rally, Bojan has amassed more than 55,000nm of blue water experience, with the majority as a delivery skipper. He is a YachtMaster Ocean Sail and Power with commercial endorsement, a qualification he has held continually for nearly 15 years. Growing up in the Netherlands, he has also been the official Dutch representative of World Cruising Club for more than a decade, and between working with the ARC and completing ocean deliveries, Bojan is also the owner of Bomarine Innovative Sailing Solutions and a Parasailor distributor. He has been a part of the ‘yellow shirt’ Safety Inspection Team for a decade.

CECILIE HAMMERSLAND
NORWEGIAN, ENGLISH, SWEDISH & DANISH
Cecilie was originally a rally participant on ARC in 2008 and on ARC Europe in 2009, when she took a year out with her cousins to sail a complete Atlantic circuit on their own boat as an all-female crew. She got to know the World Cruising Club team when she was independently sailing the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and subsequently started work as a ‘yellow shirt’ in 2011. This will be Cecilie’s ninth consecutive year working with the team in Las Palmas. She has worked on ARC, ARC+ and last year co-managed the inaugural ARC+ route to St Vincent and the Grenadines, where she returns this year. Cecilie has also worked on ARC Europe, two editions of World ARC, and all four editions of World Cruising Club’s six-week summer rally ARC Baltic, which takes the fleet through Germany to Denmark, Estonia, Russia, Sweden and Norway every other year.

CHRIS BROOKE
ENGLISH
Chris has been on and around the sea since he was a toddler, and sailing has been a part of his professional career for most of his working life. He has been carrying out sailing yacht safety inspections for major events for more than two decades. A Past Commodore of two UK Yacht Clubs, Chris has also been a RORC Race Officer since 1990, a role that has even included sitting on the Fastnet Lighthouse for the Fastnet race!

HELEN TIBBS
ENGLISH
Helen participated in the fourth edition of the ARC in 1989, before meeting her husband Chris, with whom she has since completed three further transatlantic crossings, twice sailing the passage back to the UK including a stopover in the Azores islands. In 2015 Helen and Chris set off on a own global adventure on their own boat Taistealai (a Wauquiez Centurion 40), first participating in the 30th edition of the ARC, before cruising the Caribbean for the season and then heading westwards across the Pacific Ocean to Australia with the World ARC rally in 2017. Helen has worked as a yellow shirt in Las Palmas for several years since she retired from her professional career in the NHS, and also works throughout the year with Chris at Sailing Weather Ltd.

LAURA BENAVENT
SPANISH, ENGLISH, GERMAN
Laura’s parents always wanted her to travel and experience a variety of cultures, and having grown up in Valencia in Spain, she moved to Berlin and studied at an English school, soon becoming fluent in three languages. After starting a career in law, she realised that the adventure life was a more natural fit, and started to sail coastal and then offshore, and has since had a taster of ocean cruising, recently completing a passage from Europe to the Azores. Laura joins the World Cruising Club team for the first time this year, and ever-keen to expand her ocean sailing experience, may even consider looking for an ARC boat to cross the Atlantic this year!

MANEL FERREIRA LIMA
PORTUGUESE, ENGLISH, SPANISH & FRENCH
Manel has had a lifetime of experience around sailing yachts of all sizes, having worked professionally in the marine industry for more than twenty years. He has competed in European sailing regattas and completed offshore passages between the European mainland, Madeira and the Açores islands. Fluent in four languages, Manel is in his fifth consecutive season working as a part of the World Cruising Club team across many of the rallies worldwide, including ARC+ and ARC Europe on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as many of the World ARC stopovers, which have taken him regularly around the globe to the Caribbean, South Africa, St Helena, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia and the Cocos Keeling islands.

MARTINE WAITT
ENGLISH, GERMAN
Martine is the friendly voice who nearly all of the ARC+ and ARC Skippers will have spoken to at least once! Based in the UK, she deals with the thousands of registrations and administration across all of the World Cruising Club portfolio of global events, and is normally the first point of call for any participant or skipper with a question. As a result, she is one of the most knowledgeable members of the team about all aspects of all the World Cruising rallies. A keen sailor and all round water sports enthusiast, she has raced and cruised throughout the UK and Europe as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

MATT SHARP
ENGLISH
Despite being only 23 years of age, Matt has already completed a full circumnavigation as part of the World ARC 2018-19 fleet, in which he transited the Panama Canal twice, skippered a Hallberg Rassy 46 across the Pacific and crewed on an Outremer 51 across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and back across the Atlantic. Matt joins the yellow shirt team in Las Palmas for the first time, and he will continue on to be part of the arrivals team for ARC+ and ARC in Saint Lucia, before working as a core member of the World ARC 2020-21 team through the Caribbean, Panama Canal, Galapagos Islands and into French Polynesia.

PENNY CARTER
ENGLISH
Penny started sailing as a teenager and has been involved in the industry both personally and professionally ever since. She lived in Hong Kong for many years, where she was fortunate enough to be able to enjoy sailing throughout the year. She was Sailing Secretary for the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, worked with the Hong Kong Cruiser Owners and was a RORC measurer, all of which involved lots of on the water management as well as event organisation and delivery. Nowadays, as with many of the World Cruising Club team, Penny is based in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where she sails in the Solent and continues working with sailing race management. As an International Judge she is well versed on all ISAF and international racing rules and specifications, and puts the skills to use as the official Racing Division Inspector in the Las Palmas Safety Inspection Team.

PETA COZIER
ENGLISH
Peta works throughout the year to manage the ARC and ARC+ relationships on the ground in Saint Lucia, where she lives. When Rodney Bay marina comes alive in December for the arrivals of the ARC+ and then the ARC, Peta joins the yellow shirt team every year as a core member, whilst also helping to coordinate the complete rally programme locally, working with the ARC Event Manager and World Cruising Club Managing Director to lead the many local planning committee meetings that take place through the year in conjunction with the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority, IGY Rodney Bay Marina, the Saint Lucia Yacht Club and a series of other local stakeholders.

RÉGINE FAURÉ
FRENCH, ENGLISH, SPANISH, GERMAN & ITALIAN
French-born resident of Las Palmas, Régine has been a core part of the ARC team for nearly three decades, providing invaluable information and local knowledge to participants in a multitude of languages. She originally started working for World Cruising Club back in 1991 when Jimmy Cornell held the reigns, and has been on the yellow shirt team ever since. With an impressive five languages, it is no surprise that she works for the majority of the year as a professional translator, and in between, manages many local sponsor relationships in Las Palmas.

ROGER SEYMOUR
ENGLISH
Sailing has been a passion for Roger since his early teens when he was first invited to sail on a Nicolson 43 in the Solent. This rapidly developed into chartering groups of yachts in various parts of the UK and extended cruises across the Channel to France, and subsequently overseas to the Mediterranean and Caribbean, as well as skippering two trans-Atlantic journeys with ARC yachts. Roger has also competed in high profile races like the Fastnet. An RYA YachtMaster Instructor, he has run RYA recognised training courses all over the world to instructor training level. He is currently a senior instructor at Hamble School of Yachting in the UK, and in Las Palmas, is the World Cruising Club Chief of Safety for both the ARC+ and ARC rallies.

SOPHIE CROUCH
ENGLISH, SPANISH
Sophie is well used the boating life, having grown up on her parent’s yacht in Las Palmas Marina, and has been a regular part of the World Cruising Club team for nearly a decade, with an integral knowledge of Las Palmas and the marine industries. She has also worked with the ARC team many times on the other side of the Atlantic receiving the fleet in Saint Lucia. Always ambitious and ever keen on extending her sailing horizons, Sophie is also planning on skippering her own 31 foot boat in the ARC in the next couple of years with an all-female crew.

SWADE PICKERSGILL
ENGLISH
With an extensive former career in large scale event management and corporate hospitality, SWade along with her husband, Andrew, decided to change tack in 2016, and joined ARC Portugal that year as a participant with their Hanse 400, providing a gateway to their adventures around the Mediterranean. SWade has more than 25,000nm blue water sailing experience, and first joined the World Cruising Club team in 2016. Along with Andrew, they have been involved ever since, this year also working for seven months on the first half of the World ARC 2019-20 rally from the Caribbean to Australia. She returns to Las Palmas for the fourth consecutive year, before joining the World ARC 2020-21 team again for the first part of the rally.

TRISH JENKINS
ENGLISH
Trish has been involved with the ARC since the second edition of the rally in 1987, when she was working with Yachting World magazine. She subsequently started working directly for Jimmy Cornell, and carried on working over the years on the various World Cruising Club events around the globe. She sailed dinghies and boats of all shapes and sizes from a young age, and since then has since forged this passion into a professional career, currently operating a PR and Communications company specialising in yachting based in Cowes. As well as working with World Cruising Club as part of the Media Team in Las Palmas, Trish also works with the press and media teams on a vast range of sailing regattas and races around the world at other times of the year, including the Rolex Fastnet Race, Antigua Sailing Week, Antigua to Bermuda Race and the BVI Spring Regatta.

WILHELM GREIFF
GERMAN, ENGLISH
Wilhelm has been on the World Cruising Club team in Las Palmas since 1995, first presenting blue water seminars, and then becoming a regular part of the ARC Safety Inspection Team, a role which he has been involved with now for twenty years. Along with Astrid, he has also been the official representative of the company in Germany for the past two decades. Professionally an electrical engineer, he has a natural interest with power management on yachts, and still works as a consultant for the marine industry. He has a lifetime of experience with more than 60,000nm miles, six Atlantic crossings and a complete circumnavigation under his belt.