Not just about the racing
The 2018 Youth Sailing World Championships in Texas established a number of significant new benchmarks for the sport as a whole…
You might not expect oil-rich Texas to blaze a trail in marine conservation but that’s what happened when Corpus Christi Yacht Club – which shares its home waters with some of the largest petrochemical plants on the planet – scored a world first by hosting a Youth Sailing World Championship that was genuinely sustainable, engaged hundreds of local people in marine conservation, left a lasting legacy in the community and established an important new benchmark for international sailing. Any top-level sporting event on the scale of the 2018 Youth Sailing World Championships (YSWC), with 500 attendees and 350 helpers, can generate a huge amount of waste. Many regattas do, unfortunately, but they don’t have to – and this one didn’t, thanks to inspired leadership and an army of volunteers. ‘Young sailors, I hope you start to wonder what is underneath your boat, as 97 per cent of the Earth’s water is ocean’ – with these words, legendary oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle opened the event in Corpus Christi, which featured sustainability and ocean conversation as key themes. It started three years ago when a previous US Sailing Team member, Elizabeth Kratzig, heard the club where she started her sailing career was to host the Youth Worlds. ‘As soon as CCYC won the bid I wanted to be actively involved,’ she says. ‘Not
72 SEAHORSE
only is Corpus Christi my home town and CCYC my home club, but in 1991 I was the US representative at the Youth Worlds in Largs, Scotland in the Laser Radial class. I wanted to give back something to CCYC and my community, but also to youth sailing. So I began thinking… what an amazing opportunity to reach the next leaders in our sport and teach them about ocean conservation.’ Pollution was on Kratzig’s mind. Many of her friends were training for the Rio Olympics in heavily polluted Guanabara Bay and her husband was battling serious pulmonary disease, believed to be caused by exposure to pollution. An inspirational sailing friend, Chafee Emory, got her thinking about what she could do personally. In August 2015 she sent the co-chair of the Youth Worlds a proposal to make the event “environmentally responsible”. Kratzig also had to convince CCYC. ‘Creating a green regatta was not on the radar of the committee. Their focus was meeting the fundamental needs of the regatta. But when I approached the chair, Sandi Carl and field of play manager, Mark Foster, they both said ‘Great! Take it on!’ Next, Kratzig sought advice from the conservation group Sailors for The Sea, whose Clean Regatta programme proved very useful for motivating yacht club staff. ’Reaching Platinum level was the driving force
Above:
hydration was a huge issue for the
organisers of the 2018
Youth Worlds in Corpus Christi, due to the brutal heat and humidity of midsummer on the south Texas coast. But instead of handing out 50,000 single use plastic bottles to keep sailors, coaches and helpers
hydrated, all attendees had to bring their own reusable water bottles; the popular ‘Hydration Stations’ were set up ashore while all safety and support boats also carried a supply of water to refill the sailors’ drinking bottles
behind their enthusiasm,’ she says. The club’s directors immediately got behind the sustainability plan despite concerns about extra costs. ‘We just pushed forward and decided to make it happen,’ Kratzig says, ‘and to look for sponsors to offset any added costs’. To its great credit, the club publicly committed to running a green event long before any financial support was offered to help it. Another club member, Dr David McKee of Texas A&M University, helped Kratzig assemble a “Green Team committee” of city officials, conservation groups and senior university staff. ‘Involving people from different areas of the community was critical,’ she says. There were sceptics to convince and logistical challenges. ‘Few other regattas, if any, are responsible for housing and feeding 500 people for seven days,’ Kratzig says. ‘The heat and humidity in Corpus Christi are extreme and the idea of not being able to throw a single-use plastic bottle to a competitor when they needed water was scary for some people, but it was encouraging to see people changing their mindsets.’ Kratzig found a useful ally in Dan Reading, sustainability manager at World Sailing. ‘We started talking to Elizabeth and the team well in advance and specified some metrics to be recorded as a benchmark for our future editions,’ he says.
JAMES TOMLINSON/WORLD SAILING
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