From Great Lakes to great oceans: Shannon shares her sailing story

Shannon Thibodeau from Guelph, Canada will be racing Leg 2: The South Atlantic Challenge when the 2025-26 edition of the race gets underway later this summer. 

Having recently returned to Clipper Race HQ to complete the final stage of Clipper Race Training, Level 4, we caught up with Shannon to find out more about her, and why she signed up for the challenge of a lifetime. 

Shannon, who manages a team of student services professionals at a university, has sailed all her life. “I like all kinds of sailing” she enthuses, adding: “my preference is always to be on the water. I grew up dinghy sailing and now I have a keelboat, and I get the privilege of sailing it on one of the Great Lakes (Ontario) in Canada. Anything that gets me outside and on the water is a good place to be.” 

Like all Race Crew, even though she brings a lifetime of sailing experience with her, Shannon must complete all four levels of compulsory Clipper Race training in order to race with her teammates from Punta del Este, Uruguay, to Cape Town, South Africa this autumn. Talking about the training experience, Shannon said: “Training has been really lovely. I haven't met one other crewmate, on all of my training levels, who hasn't been somebody that I've wanted to race with. 

“Most of them I'll be racing against, but some of them are on my team so I will get to race with. It's been exciting to learn and to be alongside other people at different stages of learning. 

“And it’s great to watch us all go from day one of a training level, being a bit deer in the headlights, right through to the final day of training and deep clean when we feel that real sense of camaraderie and team and know that everyone's developed tonnes of skills and had lots of fun along the way.” 

Looking ahead to her Level 4 training week, she added: “I imagine it'll be the same thing on Level 4 but extra since this is our actual Race Skipper and our actual First Mate on our actual boat with our actual crew mates. So, it's pretty exciting!” 

Leg 2: The South Atlantic Challenge is an exhilarating leg with tactical decisions a plenty. One for the thrill-seekers, it offers big waves, high wind speeds and a whole lot of leaderboard drama. But for Shannon, and like lots of Race Crew, the reason she chose to do Leg 2 was more down to logistical considerations. She explained: “I chose Leg 2 for a couple of reasons. One is logistics. I'm still working and so it works well with the time frame of my job and in a future life, where I hope to be cruising and sailing full time, I’m probably not going to cruise that part of the South Atlantic Ocean. But getting to do it with the Clipper Race and race across an ocean is pretty exciting.” 

In addition to lots of sailing experience and boundless enthusiasm to bring to her team, Shannon, who is a twin, also has a hidden talent. She explains: “I do have a hidden talent for pattern matching, but that doesn't really apply on a racing boat - I can design your rooms for you doesn't really work on a Clipper 70! 

“So, actually I don't know if I have anything particularly hidden, I feel like what you see is what you get!” 

Like the sound of a Clipper Race challenge? Open to people from all walks of life, there are still limited spaces available on selected legs for the upcoming edition. No previous sailing experience required, comprehensive training provided. To find out more about joining the 2025-26 edition, head to the application page of the Clipper Race website.