A rather impressive ship is now in the port of Poole.

Extreme E’s floating centrepiece, the St Helena arrived in preparation for the championship’s final event of its inaugural season – the Jurassic X-Prix – on 18-19 December.

Since departing the UK for the first ever Extreme E race just over nine months ago, the former Royal Mail ship has covered 19,000 nautical miles transporting Extreme E’s race freight and logistics around the globe in its first season.

The cars and series’ equipment departed Sardinia’s port of Cagliari, Italy, following last month’s dramatic Enel X Island X Prix – which saw Rosberg X Racing take three wins to build a commanding lead in this year’s championship. She then made her way westwards across the Mediterranean Sea towards the UK, guided by a pod of dolphins for a whole afternoon during the voyage.

Upon arrival into Poole, the St Helena greeted its first ever female engineer China Hypolite-McCarthy from the United Kingdom, and the crew will spend the next few days unloading all of the freight on board as preparations and anticipation builds for the Jurassic X Prix in a few weeks’ time.

The freight includes the all-electric ODYSSEY 21 race cars – three of which are entrants for teams founded by Sir Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button – the AFC Energy system including solar panels and hydrogen fuel cell to charge the cars emission free, two Zenobe second-life batteries to power the paddock, plus everything else required to create a race site in remote locations without event infrastructure. This will now be set up in the British Ministry of Defence Base at Bovington.

Whilst preparations for the 2021 finale in the UK gather momentum, Extreme E has also been busy north of the border in Scotland where it has been fully supporting the Count Us In Citizens’ Declaration at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Extreme E and Count Us In joined forces nearly a year ago to use the power of sport to inspire fans to take practical steps on climate change – a campaign which has so far seen an uptake of millions of people around the world who are making small but significant changes to their lifestyles in the quest to lower carbon emissions.

Alejandro Agag, CEO and founder of Extreme E, said: “It’s certainly been a busy month but a very rewarding one. It’s hard to believe that Extreme E is now preparing for its final X Prix of our inaugural season and that the St. Helena is back here in the UK where she departed nearly a year ago – and what a year it’s been.

“We are so excited to be ending our first season in Dorset in the UK. Despite the incredible places we have visited so far this year – Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Greenland and Sardinia – the landscape here is equally as amazing and there’s no doubt that it’s certainly going to be challenging for the cars and the drivers.”