Bill says he was happiest during the race when he got to take the helm of the yacht, such as this moment as he guides the boat in the Southern Ocean.
Clipping around the world
Bill Riner attempts 11-month extreme sailing adventure
By Glen Liford
Imagine the marketing brochure for a “round-the-world cruise” with these highlights:
You’ll enjoy sweltering heat and frigid cold, limited food, while getting along with everyone on board. You’ll undergo homesickness, battle raging seas with rolling 35-foot waves, the potential for near constant seasickness, stomach bugs, and common colds. Lodging will be cramped quarters and a bunk to share with a crewmate. Staying clean? No problem! Here’s a cleaning wipe instead of a hot shower. Risks include waves smashing over the deck, with the potential to wash you overboard, equipment failures, and grave danger, including risk of death by drowning or devastating injury.
You will also become a member of an elite club of sailors who have circumnavigated the globe and will sail on seas and visit lands that most people will never encounter. You will travel next to broaching killer whales and diverse wildlife, and bond with like-minded, adventure-seeking sailors.
Bill Riner, husband of Tennessee Farmers Cooperative General Counsel Elizabeth Foss, answered the call when he signed up to join the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race in the fall of 2023, completing the competition in July 2024. Bill thought he knew what to expect when he joined the 11-month event, but now admits that he underestimated the physical and mental challenges ahead. “It was 10 times harder than I expected,” he says.
Bill grew up in Nashville and studied engineering at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s from the University of Tennessee Space Institute. During college, he became fascinated with airplanes and flying while working at the airport in Cookeville, where he earned his pilot’s license.
After graduation, he spent two and a half years in Huntsville, Alabama, working for a defense contractor. While living there, he took a sailing class on Lake Guntersville before moving on to his next assignment in Florida.
“I learned to sail right before I moved,” he said. “I bought a boat, then got interested in racing, and I was hooked.” The thrill of competition was part of the sport’s appeal for Bill. His analytical nature caused him to appreciate the skills required and the actions and results of each movement. He learned to read the conditions, solve problems, make decisions, and work with the rest of the crew to overcome obstacles and achieve the best outcomes.
Tennessee Farmers Cooperative General Counsel Elizabeth Foss snapped this shot of Bill’s boat as it was departing Portsmouth, England as the race began.
“I think it’s incredible that you can go places without an engine, using just wind,” he points out. “It’s technical, and there’s a lot of engineering involved. It turned out I liked sailing more than flying; it was cheaper and harder to get yourself killed.”
While in Florida, he joined a local yacht club and took part in a lot of racing and crewing — working in different roles as part of the sailing crew to keep the boat moving fast, trim the sails, and navigate. He took part in local races and even traveled to Chicago to participate in competitions on Lake Michigan, including a short two-and-a-half-day sprint from Chicago to Mackinac Island.
Bill moved back to Tennessee in 1997 and later bought a 32-foot sailboat of his own that he races on Old Hickory Lake and that he and Elizabeth use for relaxing time on the water.
Several years ago, the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race captured Bill’s attention on Facebook. The “Clipper,” as it’s referred to, is an 11-month, 40,000-nautical-mile yacht race that allows amateur sailors to circumnavigate the globe. The Clipper fleet consists of 11 matched 70-foot yachts, so the skill and ability of the crews make all the difference. Originally there were 12 Clipper yachts, but one was lost in a previous race. Reaching speeds up to 35 knots — which is a little better than 40 miles per hour — each boat carries a crew of 18 to 22 members, including a trained captain and first mate.
“I was surprised when I started reading about it,” he says. “I thought I knew about all the major events in around-the-world racing, but I had never heard of the Clipper race. “It’s really the only one you can do as an amateur.”
While Bill is an experienced offshore sailor and a licensed captain, participants like him are still considered amateurs because they don’t get paid to race, and all the crew must take four weeks of training, including a sea survival school to be eligible.
“If you pass the training, you can do the race,” explains Bill, adding that about 40 percent of the participants had no experience. “You may not be able to make the boat go really fast or have a deep understanding of navigation or weather, but you can be safe and do a good job.” The Clipper consists of eight legs with the first — beginning in Portsmouth, England —providing the crews with a 1,000-mile course to Spain to gain familiarity with the craft and one another. They spent two weeks in port to prepare for the next 6,500-mile race across the Atlantic Ocean to Punta del Este, Uruguay, on the coast of South America. The third leg was the first “really challenging” portion of the race, says Bill. The crews sailed south toward Cape Town, South Africa.
Scenes from the race.
“We went into what they call the “Roaring Forties” [strong westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere between the latitudes of 40̊ and 50̊ south] in the Southern Ocean,” he explains. “There’s no land down there — just a train of low-pressure systems producing strong winds. We tried to catch those and go faster. It was miserably cold and wet.”
The fourth leg was another difficult portion as the crews left South Africa crossing 6,000-miles across treacherous, open seas in the Roaring Forties once again, headed for Fremantle on the Western Coast of Australia. For Bill, those waves were the highlight of the trip.
“Our top speed was 29.4 knots, coming off a 30-foot wave with a 60-knot gust pushing at the same time,” he says, noting that the record speed for a Clipper 70 is 36 knots. “As we went down, we would hit almost 30 knots, which is around 36 miles an hour. If you’re not a sailor, that doesn't sound like it's very fast, but it's crazy, almost out of control. These waves are rolling, not breaking. They come from behind [the boat], and it was like going up an elevator 30 feet, — or three floors — and you slow down because you're going uphill. Then at the top, it's like a sled speeding down and the boat surfs. We did that for days in the Southern Ocean. It was the best part of the whole trip and so much fun to be on the helm.”
From Fremantle, the team sailed 3,400 miles for the fifth leg of the race, around the southern coast of Australia, again dipping into the Roaring Forties. They passed the southern tip of Tasmania and then headed north for Newcastle and on to Airlie Beach in Queensland, Australia, where Bill’s team placed second for the leg.
“As we were preparing to leave Airlie Beach, a typhoon hit just south of us,” says Bill. “We had to batten down the boats, take the sails off, strip the [boats] down and tie them down tight. Fortunately, we didn’t suffer damage, but we had 45-knot wind and were delayed five days.” From Australia, the team headed north on the sixth leg to Halong Bay, Vietnam.
Bill, under the "T" on the back row, poses with the crew of his boat, CV-30 DC Events (Washington, D.C.) before embarking on the race.
“It was an amazing place,” says Bill. “They have these rock islands just offshore that look like you’re on another planet. It was my favorite stop on the trip, and I would love to go back.”
They then traveled to Zhuhai, China, then to Qingdoa, which was a special stop because the yachts the crews were racing were built there. “There was a huge crowd when we arrived,” he says. “We went to the Olympic Sailing Center, and they put a robe and crown on our skipper. It seemed that the whole town showed up.”
Unfortunately, that stop was where Bill departed the race. He missed the seventh leg across the Pacific Ocean to Seattle. “Originally, I was just going to do four legs out of the eight,” says Bill. “I signed up for those, and we started looking at the logistics about flying to the start of this race and flying back and Elizabeth said, ’Why don't you just do all of it?’ I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do all eight legs, and that turned out to be true.”
Bill had struggled to take in adequate calories and had lost 65 pounds due to the grueling experience. He also suffered several significant injuries, tearing both rotator cuffs and bruising the tops and bottoms of most of his vertebrates due to the rough seas. “I skipped the Pacific leg,” he says. “I came home, recuperated, and did a lot of physical therapy, working out, and eating.” He rejoined the race in Washington, D.C., for the final home stretch back to Portsmouth. But his challenges were not yet over. As the teams were 750 miles from the finish, they stopped in Oben, Scotland, where Bill fell on the dock and broke his wrist while helping prep the boat for the final segment. This led to another trip to the emergency room and painful manipulation to set the break. Even then, his wrist was several degrees out of alignment.
“I opted to fly home for surgery instead of undergoing more treatment in Glasgow,” says Bill. “It was a disappointing finish to an otherwise amazing experience.”
Despite the ending, Bill says he left with memories to last a lifetime. He sailed 28,500 nautical miles out of the race’s total of 40,000 with team members from more than 48 countries. The Clipper promotional materials say that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have circumnavigated the globe, he says.
“It was amazing what we got to see and do,” says Bill. “We swam in the ocean at the equator off South America. And I was in my bunk one night and heard whale sounds through the hull. We saw incredible wildlife, clouds of sea birds, and albatross with seven-foot wingspans. It was the trip of a lifetime!”
Bill sported Co-op attire aboard the yacht.
Over 450 sailors from 48 nations gathered for their Race Crew Allocation Ceremony at Portsmouth, England before starting the 2023-24 race. Following, they split into respective teams to plan race strategy, assign roles, and set expectations.
Bill was looking a bit ragged, that’s him on the top left in the grizzled white beard, when his crew placed second on the segment of race 6 from Newcastle to Whitsundays in Australia.
The frivolity of the awards ceremony in Zhuhai, China, was a welcome respite from the grueling race conditions. That’s Bill in front on the left. Bill would make only one more port before leaving the race due to injuries. He rejoined the event in Washington, D.C., but suffered another race-ending injury in Oben, Scotland, just 750 miles from the finish.
During the festivities before the start of the race, Bill, left, got to meet and visit with one of his idols, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who, in 1996, established the first Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and has worked to raise the race to higher levels every year since. In 1969, Johnston became the first person to perform a single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe.
Story by Glen Liford,
Contact gliford@ourcoop.com