CLINICAL director Ann Lee learning the ropes.

THE crew for the first leg setting off this weekend.

A HOSPICE boss is preparing to be at a very different helm next month – he’s skippering a yacht on the second leg of a 9,142 nautical mile trans-Atlantic challenge.

Jon Andrewes, chief executive at Bishop’s Hull-based St Margaret’s Hospice, will lead a crew of over 50 on the 72-foot Challenger craft when it sails from Tenerife to Barbados on November 15.

The Challenge of a Lifetime, which has already raised over £150,000 for St Margaret’s, sets off on its first leg from Falmouth this Saturday, heading non-stop to the Canary Islands.

Crew members have this week been getting used to the yacht off the south coast.

Team co-ordinator Sonia Bateman said: “After so many months of hard fundraising and preparing the Challenger Yacht, it is great to see so many of our crew members ready to set sail.”

Dr Andrewes, who is gearing up for his 25-day stint as skipper next month, said: “This is the ‘big one’ – we’ll be sailing in constant force seven winds coming from the stern which will be an ‘exhilarating ‘ and fast crossing and not for the faint-hearted.”

St Margaret’s clinical director Ann Lee is joining the challenge for the final leg of the year starting on December 10, when the yacht sails from Barbados to Antigua, arriving four days before Christmas.

She said: “This is the very first time that a hospice has undertaken an event of this nature and it has been so rewarding to see how much support has been forthcoming.

“Following so soon after the fantastic Rod Stewart concert success (at the County Ground, Taunton, this summer) St Margaret’s shows that for a little organisation it has a very big heart when it comes to raising money for our patients who need our care during their life limiting illnesses.”