Ten sailing yachts currently plying the waters between here and Hawaii are expected to arrive in Santa Cruz as early as Wednesday morning.

Each boat, carrying 17 amateur sailors led by a professional captain, is trying to become the first to reach Liverpool, England, where the Clipper 07-08 Round the World Yacht Race began seven months ago.

"This is going to be the first round-the-world yacht race that's come to the West Coast of the U.S.," said Colin de Mowbray, operations director for the race's organizer, Clipper Ventures Plc. It's also the world's largest, he added, with some 400 people involved, most of whom have little or no sailing experience.

The coordinators had originally intended to have the racers stop in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the "enthusiastic" response from the sailing community in Santa Cruz convinced Clipper Ventures to plan a 10-day furlough here. When the teams reach the harbor, the 10 teams will have completed nearly two-thirds of the 35,000-mile race, which is expected to culminate in July.

Stops in Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia might sound like the destinations of a world-class vacation, but dealing with the challenges of the sea has tested the sailors' mettle, de Mowbray said.

"It's quite hard," he added. "There's a lot of windward work coming this time of year from Hawaii," meaning the yachts have had to deftly tack back and forth to harness the wind's power instead of moving in a relatively straight line from the islands.

To welcome the aspiring circumnavigators, members of the Santa Cruz Yacht Club will be on hand as the boats arrive to greet each crew individually with a ceremony at the entrance of the harbor.

The Canadian and Singaporean teams currently lead the pack. Neither team has ever won in the past, de Mowbray said.

This is the sixth installment of the biennial competition orchestrated by Clipper Ventures, and when the last yacht sails in to Liverpool, participating boats will have logged some 1.5 million miles at sea since the race's inception.