MONTEGO BAY, St James — Three of the 14 boats involved in a two-year cruise around the globe in a campaign geared towards lifting awareness of the dangers associated with climate change, made their first stop here at the Montego Bay Yacht Club (MBYC), last Thursday.

The marathon voyage is the brainchild of internationally renowned seaman, Jimmy Cornell, who has over the years built a reputation for himself for arranging around-the-world rallies.

“The idea of the rally is to raise awareness of climate change. So we are going to be visiting a lot of remote islands which are very low in the water, and due to the sea rising, they are in jeopardy of disappearing. So a lot of the rally is about raising awareness of climate change,” Dunbar Lewis, a member of the rally, told the Jamaica Observer.

“From sailing around the world you can see the effects of global warming, especially on the islands. As the oceans rise, those islands are starting to disappear a few metres off the ground, some of them.

“Especially going up to the Arctic you can see all the caps melting, so there is less and less ice up there and the problems that that creates. So we are raising awareness of these issues that he (Cornell) sees while he is sailing around the world. And now he’s trying to contribute to any kind of climate change projects that we can while we are sailing around the world.”

According to Lewis, the journey around the world sailed off in January from the port of Key West, Florida, and is expected to finish where it started in 2017.

“The sail is expected to finish in 2017. It will probably take two years. So we are going to make our way to the sand blast island, then through the Panama Canal, Galapagos Islands, Mount Caicos Islands, Tahiti, then cross the Pacific, then Tongo, Australia, through Indonesia, Singapore, through the Indian Ocean,” Lewis noted.

“There is a bit of doubt as to whether we will go up through the dark Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal because of the problems there with piracy and political issues; or whether we will go down south around South Africa and basically back up to the Caribbean and back to Key West, Florida, which is where we will finish.”

In two months’ time, the rally will be joined by Cornell who will be sailing in his boat, the Blue Planet Odyssey, Lewis revealed.

“Jimmy (Cornell) has recently sailed to the Arctic in his new boat. He built a nice boat designed to go to high latitude sailing and he sailed that up to the Arctic last year as part as the North West Passage. He tried to go to the North West Passage which is up in Canada, which he didn’t manage to do because there was too much ice and he had to turn around. He didn’t manage to do that. So he’s also going to be joining the around-the-world rally. The Blue Planet Odyssey, his boat, is currently in Fort Lauderdale and he is going to catch up with the rest of the rally in March,” Lewis told the Sunday Observer.

He noted that while in Jamaica, crew members from the three vessels will be meeting with students of different schools to highlight climate change issues, ahead of sailing out of the Jamaican waters on Tuesday to join other vessels leaving Martinique.