They call them "leggers" and many have little or no sailing experience. Some may never want to see a boat again by the time they have finished. Not so Mayo man Vincent Jordan, who will be aboard when the world's toughest yacht race sets off from Southampton next Monday.
Mr Jordan, a 31-year-old father of two young children, has been training for the best part of a year for the BT Global Challenge. The race is a global circumnavigation like no other, in that it involves 12 identical 72-foot yachts, each carrying a professional skipper and 17 crew volunteers who have signed up to sail the "wrong way" around the world.
Sensible circumnavigators take advantage of prevailing winds and currents, but the BT yachts will take a westerly course, against the prevailing forces of nature. Although most volunteers will be there for the duration, "leggers" like Mr Jordan will compete on individual stages only - for him the opening passage from Southampton to Boston. As part of his challenge he has to raise £3,000 for the Save the Children Fund.
Mr Jordan is a Compaq ambassador who beat off competition from other volunteers in Ireland and Britain to take the berth on the yacht his employer is sponsoring.
Compaq, which took over where Digital left off in Galway some years back, is the official information technology supplier for the race, and has supplied personal computer systems for the 12 participating yachts - and notebook computers for the skippers. He opted for the first of seven stages because "the start will be spectacular".
Now living in Newcastle, Co Galway, Mr Jordan is the product manager in Compaq's European Software Centre. He formerly lectured in computer science at Trinity College Dublin. His wife, Martina, has been "very supportive", he says, and that is no mean feat. Their children Ciaran and Roisin are under three and when Roisin took her first steps her daddy was away training.