2030 racecourse will be announced by Sept 2028.

<<UPDATE July 2026: Erden ruptured his Achilles in an unfortunate accident on June 25th. He was in emergency surgery 34 hours later. Full recovery will take time. As such, he has made the decision to move his entry to the 2030 edition of the Golden Globe Race. This fundraiser will remain active to help alleviate costs until now including vessel refit, maintenance and storage.>>

Around-n-Over will support the Golden Globe Race campaign of Erden Eruc. This is a solo nonstop retro sailing race with historic significance which will start and end at Les Sables d'Olonne on the Atlantic coast of France after sailing south on the Atlantic Ocean and rounding Antarctica eastbound.

As an unsupported race, entrants typically complete it in about 230 to 250 days. Being a retro race, only 32-36 ft full keel standard production yachts designed before 1988, are allowed. The use of celestial navigation methods emphasize traditional seamanship, there is no GPS or chart plotter allowed. Modern conveniences like satellite phones, desalinators or exotic materials like dyneema or carbon fiber are forbidden. "Sailing like it's 1968" is the race slogan with a nod to the Golden Age of Sailing.

The 2026 race will start on 6 September. We will follow the skippers on the official GGR website.

Erden already purchased the competitive vessel CLARA which earned line honors in the 2022 GGR. Training on CLARA revealed what needed replacing or improving before the race start. Most of this work was completed at the time of the injury.

USE OF FUNDS

We are actively seeking corporate sponsorships to underwrite this project. The ultimate goal will be to cover the GGR campaign costs using sponsorships. The stated target of 150,000USD for this fundraiser is half the estimated GGR campaign budget.

The campaign will complement any sponsorships and the proceeds after expenses will benefit Around-n-Over educational programs. Ideally enough sponsors will join our cause such that all contributions to this fundraiser can be released to benefit these worthy causes.

The expenses leading up to the start include vessel purchase, tedious refit, sail inventory renewal, boatyard storage, marina access, travel and lodging for training passages. Sufficient funding would allow participation of a shore team with a team manager. There are costs to race registration, to safety requirements such as life raft service and to victuals for training and for the eight months of racing. The time on land include race village activities before and after the race including the award ceremonies in late June 2027 at Les Sables d'Olonne.

WHY THIS PROJECT?

We established Around-n-Over to educate and inspire especially children based on stories gathered during human powered journeys. Over the last two decades since establishing Around-n-Over in 2003, Erden Eruc remained true to his promise, raised and applied over 100,000USD toward educational projects while completing a circumnavigation by human power which registered 15 Guinness World Records in the process.

By now Guinness has registered 18 total records in his name and inducted him into the Guinness Hall of Fame in 2024. The last record that Guinness registered was "the first person to row across the Pacific Ocean from North America to Asia."

During that crossing, Erden strove to serve an educational mission by reaching classrooms, to pursue an environmental cause to advocate against plastic pollution of The Ocean in partnership with Ocean Recovery Alliance, and to execute a scientific mission to collect sound data helping survey Beaked Whales. The data were used in a scientific article published in Journal of Aquatic Mammals: "Acoustic Detections of Cetaceans from a Towed Recording System on a Trans-Pacific Rowing Expedition."

Erden intends to leverage the promotional value of his GGR participation to continue to raise awareness about plastic pollution and to share his story with classrooms. As such, this unique race with a sustainability message giving a new life to old vessels for a noble cause, will provide a powerful educational platform.