Whitbread World Sailboat Race Each year countries enter their sailing vessels in the nine-month Round the World Whitbread Sailboat Race. In recent years about 14 countries entered sailboats in the race. Each year's sailboat entries represent the latest technologies and human skills each country can muster. Bjom Ericksen has been selected as a project manager because of his past experience as a master helmsman and because of his recent fame as the "best designer of racing sailboats in the world" Bjorn is pleased and proud to have the opportunity to design, build, test, and train the crew for next year's Whitbread entry for his country_ Bjorn has picked Karin Knutsen (as chief design enkmeer) and Trygve Wallvik (as master helmsman) to be team leaders responsible for getting next year's entry ready for the traditional parade of all entries on the Thames River in the United Kingdom, which signals the start of the race. As Byom begins to think of a project plan, he sees two parallel paths running through the projectdesign and construction and crew training. Last year's boat will be used for training until the new entry can have the crew on board to learn maintenance tasks. Bjorn calls Karin and Trygve together to develop a project plan. All three agree the major goal is to have a winning boat and crew ready to compete in next year's competition at a cost of S3.2 million. A check of Bjom's calendar indicates he has 45 weeks before next year's vessel must leave port for the United Kingdom to stalt the race.