After an exhausting 11 months racing a fleet of 11 yachts, the Australian Wendy Tuck has become the first female skipper to win the Clipper Round the World race.

Tuck arrived to throngs of spectators lining Liverpool’s Royal Albert Dock on Saturday, having completed 40,000 nautical miles across six oceans at the helm of Sanya Serenity Coast.

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She is the first woman to win any round-the-world race and was followed by fellow history-maker Nikki Henderson, who at 25 has become the youngest skipper in the Clipper race.



Robin Knox-Johnston, the co-founder of the 21-year-old biennial event and the first person to sail solo and non-stop around the world, said it was a momentous achievement.

“It’s bigger than people think. The fact that we have first and second with both lady skippers is quite remarkable,” he said. “They got no favours because they were ladies. They had battles with extremely capable male sailors and they beat them – I think it says to any lady, any girl, you can do it if you want to.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wendy Tuck’s yacht, the Sanya Serenity Coast (right) races toward the finish at Liverpool’s Albert Dock. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Tuck said she was experiencing “a bit of shock, disbelief, joy, sadness – you name the emotion, I’m probably feeling it right now”.

Reaching the end of the final 900-nautical-mile dash to Liverpool from Londonderry, she told the Daily Telegraph: “I hate banging on about women. I just do what I do. But I am very proud. If one little girl sees this can be done and has a go, that will be what matters.”



Henderson, the daughter of the Conservative MP Anne Milton, said she felt very privileged to have had the opportunity to lead a crew around the world. On her appointment she said she hoped to “encourage more young people to do things out of the normal, defined career path that society sets out for us”.

Tuck said she was astonished at Henderson’s performance. “I always say at 24, I couldn’t look after myself – let alone skipper a 70ft yacht full of crew and go round the world,” she said.



The Clipper race began in August and was split into eight gruelling legs, organised with a fleet of identical yachts. Crews of 712 amateur sailors – led by professional skippers – visited Seattle, Cape Town, and Qingdao en route.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wendy Tuck celebrates with her crew. Photograph: Clipper Round the World yacht race

Knox Johnston praised the participants for enduring a particularly difficult storm in the Pacific Ocean, although this edition of the race was not without incident.In November, one yacht ran aground off the coast of South Africa and was forced to withdraw from the race due to damage.

In the same month, 60-year-old retired solicitor Simon Spiers from Bristol was killed on the leg from South Africa to Australia. Spiers was blown overboard and buried at sea.



Knox Johnston said the overall success “cannot be overestimated. If you realise that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have sailed around the world, you realise just what these people have done.”