backgrounds, while others are far less decorated. Lipski says the overriding factor they’re looking for is a willingness to learn and put in the hard work to improve. ‘We’re very proud of our team
members, and I’m not only talking about current ones, but about everyone who joined the team at any stage of the project. We can see that most of them use this opportunity to boost their careers. To give even more value to our sailors, we organise multiple pieces of training and courses like Sea Survival, Medical, SRC, PADI Diving, RYA Yachtmaster and many more, so besides being great sailors, they get many useful skills that are wanted at the market’. Lipski says the second goal is
take part in what he describes as “iconic” events. ‘Events such as the major RORC competitions, the Rolex Fastnet Race and the Rolex Middle Sea Race. To line up against famous boats like Comanche and Rambler is really exciting. We had a great race against Pyewacket in the Caribbean 600, and events like these give us an amazing opportunity to build a training program for young sailors, and to compete alongside full-time professionals.’ ‘The third goal,’ says Patoka,
‘is the promotional aspect of the campaign. For example, if you’re winning the Rolex Middle Sea Race and the main newspaper in Malta is running a big photo of the boat with a huge I Love Poland logo on the spinnaker, that’s much better publicity than anything you could hope to achieve by organising your own promotional event.’ That said, winning line honours
does alsomake it easier tomake an impact when you hold an event, such as the teamdid inMalta. ‘We organised the event with the Polish embassy inMalta, and we invited the ambassador and other residents inMalta with Polish citizenship to visit the boat. So sometimes you canmake a big impact with a huge amount of effort and a small budget. Whether we’re inMalta or New York or anywhere with a strong Polish community, we always like to connect with people around the world.’ The team organised a similar
Above: the succession of line honours victories for the boat in Poland’s national colours has started to generate a great deal of patriotic pride. Right: the programme has given a large number of talented young Polish sailors a flying start in their sailing careers
event in Helsinki before the start of the Baltic Sea Race, again meeting people with connections to Poland. ‘The Polish embassy was also providing support for a group of refugees from Ukraine and they asked us if we could help. So we had something like 50 Ukrainians join us, and I think it was an amazing experience for them,’ says Lipski. ‘Particularly for the 10-year-olds. I think being on the boat was a nice distraction from thinking about all they had been through in the early months of the war [with Russia]’. Aside from building international
relations, I Love Poland is also helping put a spotlight on the strong yacht and shipbuilding industry back home. ‘We have plenty of boats and boatbuilders in Poland, although nothing quite like a VO70,’ says Lipski. ‘But whenever we have something we need to fix or upgrade on the boat, we try to get it done by a local company. My dream is to be able to continue this project long enough that one day we can launch a Polish-built high- performance boat, maybe a Class40 or even an Imoca. Right now, we are sharing our knowledge and experience from the VO70 with local manufacturers and trying to help grow the skills and interest in these projects locally. If we can help take the Polish yacht building industry in a more hi-tech direction, that would be a great thing.’ Whatever aspect of the project,
Lipski and Patoka are doing their best to deliver maximum bang for buck. ‘We are trying to be as effective as possible. We are trying to create the biggest experience we can with the resources that we have, not to spend lots of money where we don’t need to. We are young, we have learned a lot along the way, but there is always more we can do to learn and to improve.’ Lipski is proud of the race record of I Love Poland compared with the
fully professional, highly funded campaigns which they often find themselves competing against. ‘If you compare our results with our level of funding, I think we are probably winning that race,’ Lipski laughs. ‘We are aiming to achieve the most with the least amount. We have just to be very smart with our budget and planning. And the second thing is because we are trying to involve young people and we want to give them experience, we are able to do it a bit more cheaply than just hiring very experienced sailors, like you see on other high-profile sailing projects. We’re doing it for Poland, but we also want to show anyone from any country what it’s possible to achieve in this sport if you’re organised and committed to the project.’ It can be difficult for projects
like this have to justify themselves with hard metrics but there are valid tangible benefits, Lipski argues. ‘People in Poland are happy to see the boat decorated in our national colours, the white and the red, flying the flag for our country. We get so much positive feedback from people saying things like “you’re so young but we can see so much passion and you're very dedicated.” I think it makes them proud to see Poland being represented by our boat and our team. That kind of support means a lot to us. ‘I believe we have reached the
point where I Love Poland has become a brand, a kind of quality stamp. This would not be possible if any of the above elements did not work. We had to evolve, gain experience from the best, build a competent and loyal team, popularise sailing and manage it well to be who we are today. We are perceived during the regatta and in many places around the world not only as a crew and a yacht, but as the I Love Poland brand.’
www.program-ilp.pl
❑ SEAHORSE 59
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