The Mirpuri Foundation Racing Team officially unveiled its Racing For The Planet campaign at a packed event in Cascais, Lisbon.
The team is amongst the first of the VO65 class to launch their boat – and have recruited Bruno Dubois, who masterminded Dongfeng Race Team’s win last edition, in an advisory capacity.
The team has placed climate change at the heart of its campaign, building on the foundation’s partnership with Turn the Tide on Plastic in 2017-18.
The Mirpuri Foundation’s entry for the next edition of the Ocean Race, is numbered VO65-1, being the first built of eight vessels in all, and has a great pedigree, the same yacht winning the 2017–2018 edition of the Ocean Race, since which it has been completely refitted, becoming an even better boat.
After the ceremony, Paulo Mirpuri, Mirpuri Foundation´s President and Owner of the Racing for the Planet boat, said:
“Conservation is one of the founding principles of the Mirpuri Foundation, and after we saw what a super platform the Ocean Race gave us to carry our message, on the perils facing our oceans and sea life, to the four corners of the globe, we decided to go again.”
“But, this time, with our own boat and our own team and with a new, even bigger, message. We hope that too that the launch will act as a reminder of what we are trying to achieve with this whole project.”
“As our ocean race adventure begins to unfold ahead of us, we hope then that millions of people will see what we are doing and rally to our cause.”
The 2021-22 edition of The Ocean Race will start from Alicante, Spain, in the autumn of 2021 and finish in Europe in early summer of 2022.
There will be up to nine stopover ports, with the following already confirmed: Alicante, Aarhus, The Hague, Cape Verde, Genoa and Itajaí.
