11th Hour & Karün — The Ocean Race Europe
As you may already know, during the last Volvo Ocean Race in 2017–18, we joined forces with the 11th Hour Racing Team, and now our partnership will continue on to the next race; “The Ocean Race Europe” which begins on May 29th. Our mutual understanding of the importance of the wellbeing of the oceans, hence, the planet, along with the shared passion for nature and the willpower to make a difference are all foundations for this extraordinary collaboration.
What is The Ocean Race?
The Ocean Race is often described as the longest and toughest professional sporting event in the world, sailing’s toughest team challenge and one of the sport’s Big Three events, alongside the Olympic Games and America’s Cup.
To truly understand the race, though, it’s better to think of it in a way the athletes who take part will recognize immediately. Put simply, The Ocean Race is an obsession, and many of the world’s best sailors have dedicated years, even decades of their lives trying to win it.
The Ocean Race Europe is a new event, designed to showcase top-flight, fully-crewed, competitive ocean racing featuring the best international teams, with race coverage on Eurosport, as well as The Ocean Race digital platforms.
The inaugural edition of The Ocean Race Europe starts on May 29, 2021, from Lorient, France, and finishes in Genova, Italy on June 19th, with stops in Cascais, Portugal, and Alicante, Spain along the way.
Racing with purpose:
The work started by the award-winning sustainability programme of the 2017–18 Race continues as part of The Ocean Race Europe and beyond. The Racing with Purpose programme includes advocacy, science, learning, and sustainable event excellence.
The inaugural edition of The Ocean Race Europe in 2021 leads off a ten-year calendar of racing activity that includes confirmed editions of the iconic, fully-crewed, around the world event — The Ocean Race — every four years, beginning in 2022–23.
11th Hour Racing Team, who are they?
Founded by sailors Charlie Enright and Mark Towill, the team is built upon the love for oceans and the motivation to make them thrive again. They are using their passion for the sport as a platform to spread their message; a message based upon leadership, collaboration, legacy, and innovation.
11th Hour Racing Team’s mission is to build a high-performance ocean racing team with sustainability at the core of all team operations, inspiring positive action among sailing and coastal communities, and global sports fans, to create long-lasting change for ocean health.
Our shared history:
As mentioned above, this ongoing partnership is a “second edition” partnership, since a lot of good stuff came out of the first one, for example, our Sailing Edition sunglasses are a direct result of the collaboration during the Volvo Ocean Race in 2017–18.
This Sailing Edition technical sunglasses are the outcome of an innovative and progressive design process that involved renowned sailors like Mark Towill and Charlie Enright, from the 11th Hour Racing Team. The outcome is a high-performance, sustainable and technical pair of sailing sunglasses, specially adapted for the tough conditions on the ocean; hasty actions and lots of wind, the sun coming in from all directions and sprays from the saltwater.
Additionally, the collection is made out of recycled fishing nets and recycled carbon fibre, taken from masts of old boats, to add more resistance to the material. Hence, our one-of-a-kind sport sunglasses wouldn’t have been nearly as good if it wasn’t for the involvement of our good friends at the 11th Hour Racing Team in the process.
During the last race in 2017–18, we had an incredible experience working alongside the sailors and the whole 11th Hour Racing Team, as well as with the Volvo Ocean Race team itself. Part of our team went to Alicante, Spain for the start of the Race in October 2017 and later on, in June 2018 we were also present in the last 2 stopovers of the Race in Gothenburg, Sweden and The Hague, Netherlands.
The overall experience exceeded our expectations in every way — being our first big international project as a company, which had to be done in under 7 months (from the first design sketches to production and everything else in between) and working alongside different people from several different countries, it was a real challenge which, to be honest, we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to do it — but, we did it and the result was truly amazing. This is why we are so happy about this ongoing partnership with 11th Hour Racing Team, based on a relationship that has grown together and hopefully will continue to grow.
Here are some of the impressions our team members had from our previous experience as well as some photos of our trip:
“Personally, it is a joy to see that as a team we are able to build something that is of world-class and see how from passion and love we are able to reach things that had never been thought for Chile before and I think that it’s due to the tremendous collaboration we have with so many people who are working hard to make a change.” — Thomas Kimber, Karün founder and CEO.
“The fact of having participated in this great event and being part of such a large collaboration where people from all over the world are working towards the same goal is very inspiring. It exceeded all my expectations in every way, listening to the feedback from world-class sailors about the sunglasses, seeing so many people using our products, the reception after Thomas’ talk in the Ocean Summit and the reception we had from everyone at Volvo Ocean Race make all the effort worthwhile and it is an even bigger push to continue working hard for all that is to come.” — Sophie Kimber, Karün team
“I lived this experience with humility and a lot of gratitude. It is in these types of instances that you make tangible the idea of the reach of the Karün project, it gives you a perspective from many angles. To see the fruits of a complex job as it was to assemble the sailing edition among all, pay in any case the debts that you have with the team goals and your own. It was very crazy to see the reception of everyone in front of something that you dedicated so much time to.” — Bárbara Toledo, Karün Head of Design.
We truly believe that the real power to change comes from collaboration. That’s why we hope this will bring opportunities to spread our mutual sustainability message further and inspire climate action amongst people, businesses and world leaders.
“The ocean connects us all. We only thrive if the oceans thrive.” — 11th Hour Racing Team co-founder Charlie Enright
