What a Disney film can become: Five years ago, the then 18-year-old American Mark Towell and Charlie Enright, who was four years older, met while filming the sailing story "Morning Light". The documentary film followed a team of young Americans as they crossed the Pacific. "We met when we were applying for the film," recalls Charlie Enright, now 29, "and we both saw the project as the beginning of our dream: to take part in the Volvo Ocean Race."
The young sailors were assisted in the filming by renowned American sailing professionals Stan Honey, Mike Sanderson and Jerry Kirby. "Working with us, they laid the foundations for our path into top-class ocean sailing," says Enright. Driven by their dream of racing around the world, Towell and Enright founded their small company All-American Ocean Racing in the sailing stronghold of Newport on Rhode Island. It is part of the happy ending to their story that the upcoming Volvo Ocean Race 2014/2015 will make a stop there in May 2015.
Enright explains how they made it from their film roles to Ocean Race participants: "It wasn't easy, despite the successful start to the film. In the end, it's always about working for your own opportunities. We had to take a lot of detours to make the breakthrough. And we had a lot of help from many, many people along the way. The American dream took on more and more shape and received an additional motivational boost when CEO Knut Frostad invited Towell and Enright to the start of the Volvo Ocean Race in 2011.
The breakthrough came with success on the sponsorship front - they found a dynamic and ambitious partner in Alvimedica. Alvimedica is one of the fastest growing Turkish companies, deals in medical products and wants to use its involvement in the Volvo Ocean Race to conquer new markets, particularly in the USA.
The crew for the new ocean race project has not yet been assembled. "We'll start by looking in the USA," says Mark Towell, "but then we'll extend the search to young sailors all over the world, including Turkey and Italy."
The name of the CEO of Team Alvimedica is a real eye-opener: none other than Bill Erkelens is watching over the weal and woe of the newcomers. This means that one of the most experienced project managers in the world is behind the young team. Erkelens had managed Larry Ellison's sailing teams for many years before an open dispute with the controversial and later also dismissed skipper Chris Dickson cost him his job, which Erkelens himself gave up with the words "There's no room for both of them in this team".
After Team SCA, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, Dongfeng Race Team and Team Brunel, in which Berlin star boat sailor Robert Stanjek is applying for a crew place, Team Alvimedica is number five on the official entry list for the twelfth edition of the Volvo Ocean Race. The organisers are hoping for two or three more teams. The nine-stage race around the globe begins on 4 October in Alicante, Spain, and ends after a total of 38,739 nautical miles on 27 June in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
