Race for Water sets sail from Guadeloupe bound for Panama City!

Published on by in Association / NGOs

This Sunday 28 January brings to an end a four-month stopover in Guadeloupe punctuated by a series of exchanges and refit operations. Next destination, Panama City! This latest stage of the odyssey will enable the crew to trial the vessel’s new features before heading into the Pacific Ocean.

Originally setting sail from Lorient in France in April 2017, the Race for Water vessel is powered solely by a mixture of renewable energies. Her mission? To criss-cross the seas of the globe in order to raise awareness among the local populations about plastic pollution and carry out scientific campaigns, with the focus on proposing sustainable technological solutions geared at preventing plastic waste from ever reaching the oceans again.

On the programme for 2018, the Pacific Ocean! Lima, Valparaiso and Easter Island, Polynesia and Fiji will be this year’s key stopovers. For the Race For Water Odyssey teams, the reasoning behind this choice of venue is the massive scale of the plastic pollution in these coastal cities and remote islands. “ At each stopover, we’ll be hosting a number of local protagonists aboard the boat, including political decision-makers, manufacturers and NGO members in order to open up discussions about this terrible problem. Together we’ll consider lasting innovative technological solutions with environmental, social and economic benefits”, explains Marco Simeoni, President of the Race For Water Foundation.

With regards to the sailing element of the programme, everything has been geared towards increasing our self-sufficiency in terms of energy. “To navigate the Pacific Ocean, we must make the best possible use of all the energy resources we have at our disposal, like sun, wind and water”, says Marco Simeoni.

The low-down on the upcoming stopovers

 

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