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''King's Legend'' is a Swan 65 sailing yacht. She has competed in the Whitbread Around the World Race in '77-'78,〔 〕 in which she came second. At the present moment she is owned by Dutchman Gijs van Liebergen, and is used for chartered cruises on the Caribbean, the Mediterranean Sea and northern Europe. == Construction == King's Legend was constructed at the Finnish wharf Nautor's Swan in Pietarsaari. She was commissioned by British adventurer Nick Ratcliff, who paid for the construction of the ship with his family's wealth. The yacht was designed by designer duo Sparkman & Stephens, who designed the majority of Nautor's Swan's ships. Anticipating King's Legend's participation in the Whitbread Around the World Race two years later, the design deviated from the two-masted model that was standard at the time, using a single, somewhat taller mast instead. King's Legend was probably built in a year and a half, and upon completion, she was one of the fastest sailing yachts in the world. King's Legend's first home port was in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. This is where the ship's crew prepared for the Whitbread Race. Their training sessions went well, with the exception of a broken mast due to the forestay not being thick enough. The ship was manned by a multinational crew of sailor friends, who were paid in room and board, but not in salary. One of the crew members was Skip Novak, a well-known sailor who later competed four times in the Volvo Ocean Race, the successor of the Whitbread Race. According to Novak, he was "in the right place at the right time" to join King's Legend's crew as its navigator, owing the position to meeting Ratcliff by chance at the bar of the Fountain Hotel in Cowes and "a handshake over a pint of ale."〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「King's Legend」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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