12 • Apr. 22 - May 5, 2016 • The Log


Team Alvimedica shares race experi- ences with Newport Beach sailors


Charlie Enright and Mark Towill represented America in the Volvo Ocean Race.


By Parimal M. Rohit


NEWPORT BEACH — America’s sailing representatives in the Volvo Ocean Race made a rare appearance in Newport Beach in February thanks to a speaker series hosted by ExplorOcean. Team Alvimedica skipper Charlie Enright and watch captain Mark Towill met with local boaters, community members, sailors and yacht club members in the Community Room at Newport Beach City Hall to share their experiences on the nine-month race. Participating in the Volvo Ocean


Race was a dream come true, said Towill. The race to sailors is no different than what the Super Bowl is to profes- sional football players. The 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean Race kicked off on Oct. 19, 2014 and ran through June 2015. Sailors covered nearly 40,000 nautical miles of ocean during the race. Getting into the race required massive amounts of hustle and effort, according to Towill. He frequently trav- eled to Spain and New York City to raise sponsorship funds. Participation in the Volvo Ocean Race could cost upwards of $15 million or more. Asking compa- nies to shell out millions of dollars to two sailors who never sailed the world certainly posed signifi cant challenges. “There’s no Harvard Business School case study on how to fi nd an eight-fi g- ure sponsorship for a sporting team,” said Towill of fi guring out how to fund the sailing team in an environment where it is easier to allocate sponsor dollars to sports with larger audiences. Towill, who calls Hawaii home, said their fundraising efforts were regularly met with rejection until they met with representatives from Alvimedica, a medical technology company seeking to enter the United States market. The


company agreed to sponsor Enright and Towill’s team. Towill said the sponsorship helped salvage their dreams and made up for “tons of rejections.” With the sponsorship secure


Enright, who hails from Rhode Island, and Towill headed to the United Kingdom to take delivery of their race boat and immediately began fi ne-tuning her with two Trans-Atlantic trips. The duo would navigate 12,000 miles between April and October to assemble the race team and train for the big event. All sailors convened at Alicante,


Spain for the start of the race. Team Alvimedica’s average crew age at the start of the race was 32 years old. A total of seven one-design boats par- ticipated in the Volvo Ocean Race. The fi rst leg was 27 days and ended in Cape Town, South Africa. Racers then navigated from Cape Town to Abu Dhabi, UAE in Leg 2 and from there to China in the third segment. The remainder of the race meandered through Oceania (Auckland, New Zealand), South America (Cape Horn and Brazil), and the United States (Newport, Rhode Island) before con- cluding in Sweden.


What was life like aboard the Team Alvimedica vessel? The one-design


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Charlie Enright (left) and Mark Towill guided Team Alvimedica around the world as part of the Volvo Ocean Race last year. The duo plans to participate in the next worldwide race.


vessel featured a hull length of 66 feet, a maximum draft of 15.8 feet and over- all beam of 18.4 feet. Eight men were on the boat for thousands of miles at a time – four were on top manning the ship while the other four were down below, in narrow quarters, trying to get rest.


Enright explained each crewmem-


Volvo Ocean Race’s First-Ever One-Design


All seven boats participating in the Volvo Ocean Race were one-design. At right is a partial list of boat specifi cations for Team Alvimedica and its competitors:


Hull Length:


ber would, on average, sleep four to fi ve hours per day. There were days where crewmembers would go an entire day without sleep while at sea. Nutrition was a problem, according


to Enright, who lost 20 pounds during the race. Daily hygiene was nearly impossible to maintain, what with only one toilet aboard for eight men to use


Length Waterline: 65 feet Length Overall:


Boat Weight: Rig Height:


Hull Beam Overall: 18.4 feet Max Draft:


66 feet 72 feet* 15.8 feet


27,557 pounds**


Keel Arrangement: Canting, +/- 40 degrees Daggerboards: Rudders:


*- Includes Bowsprit **- Empty Source: volvooceanrace.com


Twin forward, inboard triangulation Twin fi xed, composite stocks 99.4 feet


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Amory Ross photo


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