Sailing to positive impact

At the Yacht Racing Forum (YRF), last November alongside Metstrade Show, a forum of sail racing professionals debate how to make the most of regatta sailing as a spectator sport and how to attract followers of the sport and of individual sailors to become engaged and start sailing themselves. “There is a ranking of the top sailors that have the most followers on social media,” professional sailor Shirley Robertson knows. “It is important that we try to get these interested people to go sailing themselves. The sport needs young newcomers to flourish in the future.” Helen Fretter, author for Yachting World, says: “Our job is to convert those followers into remaining in the sport and stepping in a boat themselves.” Her colleague Mark Jardine from Yachts and Yachting adds: “For audience engagement, you need to make it personal. 

People are not interested in an analysis of windshifts and mark roundings, but they want to see how a sailor coped with that during the race.” Of course, the advanced video reports, live from the America’s Cup have made this event into a far better spectator sport than it would be with only a crowd from the shore. Sail GP organises races near to the quays in city centres, as CEO Russel Coutts pointed out in his keynote speech at the Forum. World Sailing CEO David Graham told the audience about the efforts to professionalise Paralympic sailing and attract spectator crowds and followers.

Green ragattas

Event organisers are also increasingly focusing on the environmental footprint of regattas themselves. For example, SailGP has integrated sustainability metrics directly into the competition through its Impact League, which tracks teams’ performance in areas such as carbon footprint reduction, gender equaliity and youth engagement. Bernard Shöpfer. The organiser of the YRF, summarises: “”The industry is increasingly treating sustainability as a broader ESG concept (abbreviation of equality, sustainabilty and governance) rather than purely environmental.”

Recyclable composites

Schopfer mentions: “One of the strongest themes discussed at the Yacht Racing Forum sessions was the move toward sustainable composite materials and recyclability in high-performance boats. Efforts by major classes  like IMOCA, the Ocean Race, the America’s Cup aim to reduce the lifecycle impact of foils, masts and hull structures. The industry is also increasingly discussing life-cycle analysis (LCA) for race boats, measuring environmental impact from construction to end-of-life.”

“Being propelled by wind force is sustainable in itself, but that is not enough”

LCAs

Also alongside the Metstrade show last November was the Marine Impact Lab. Here, both yacht builders and event organisers were presented with methods to validate their improvements towards sustainable practises. The MarineShift 360 LCA tool offers data analysis that quantifies the reduction of environmental impact. In workshops, ways to use this tool were explained. During the Lab sessions, World Sailing director of sustainability Alexandra Rickham told how this sports association is doing LCA’s to understand where events and also racing boats can improve on sustainability. This knowledge is then applied to incorporate environmental rules for classes (identical sailing boats for athletes to compete in) and events.

Better, cheaper, favoured

Moritz Möker, founder and Head of Growth at German company Holy Technologies, tells about his company’s experience with recycling carbon composite for wing parts in Formula 1 car racing. The technology is available. If even this high demanding niche in automotive agrees to use recycled composites, reliability is clearly demonstrated. Möker argues that recycled materials can be better than virgin materials. He explains the considerations that manufacturers make when they have the choice between virgin carbon composite or recycled: “Is the product going to be better with the recycled material? Is it going to be cheaper? Are regulating organisations going to favour recycled materials? You may find that in a lot of cases, the answer to all three of these questions is ‘yes’!”

Data

Doing a life cycle assessment for a boat that is built or an event that is organised, requires a lot of data. There are various sources of data that validate the environmental footprint of a boat or an event, Marine Futures founder and director Ollie Taylor explains: “The best way is to measure the amount of energy or fuel that goes into your process. When you are making a composite boat, you can measure the amount of gas that you need to heat up the oven to cure the laminate. These kind of results are custom raw data, exactly measured during your process. When you are using materials that are sourced from a supplier, you can ask them to provide you with the data of energy and materials used during production. Energy use during transport needs to be added to the calculation of the total environmental footprint. If you can not calculate all of these numbers and your supplier does not have this information, there is also a database called ECO-invent, validated by ISO standards, that has the average numbers of environmental impact for different kinds of materials. These averages result in a less accurate calculation of course. But they will be a good estimate for current production methods, to be able to compare the outcomes after you start doing an LCA and try to improve the sustainability of your manufacturing.”

AI for optimisation 

Schopfer adds: “The use of digital technologies is another lever that helps improving sustainability. Discussions at the Forum highlighted artificial intelligence and advanced modelling to optimise yacht design and aerodynamics as well as data analysis for performance efficiency and route optimisation during offshore races.” AI modelling can also help to predict visitor flows and the most effective ways for the visitor area lay-out during events.

Accelerate

The YRF organiser concludes: “On a personal note, I would like to highlight the fact that events like the Yacht Racing Forum (and the Marine Impact Lab)  play a key role by bringing together organisers, teams, suppliers and governing bodies to align these efforts and accelerate innovation across the sport.”