Sustainable Sailing shortlisted for the Moonshot Platform Start-Up award

Sustainable Sailing has been shortlisted for the Moonshot Platform Start-Up award. They were top twenty in their category and one of the top 100 projects listed for all five different awards in extremely competitive field with 1530 applicants. Their project intended to extend their Chlorofoils bio-based composites technology to the manufacture of complete boats, specifically the Illusion Class.

The Moonshot platform is “a movement generating opportunities for emerging leaders to inspire ideas and social impact action”. With 1530 applications from 85 countries, the range of projects on display is vast, with projects in the Start-Up category ranging from education technologies to seaweed cultivation (https://www.moonshotplatform.org/shortlist/start-up). Each organisation had to submit a pitch video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmXOC2Ycyg) and Sustainable Sailing’s video is available via their Youtube Channel (https://youtu.be/c5Jefo-LFbg)

“This is excellent news and a real confidence boost that funders can see the potential for our Chlorofoil, bio-based composites technology” said Joe Penhaul Smith, co-founding Director. Their Chlorofoil technology aims to replaces energy intensive glass-fibre, and foams and resins derived from crude oil, with bio-based alternatives. With a rudder blade for the Europe dinghy already on the market and two other products being prototyped, this application aimed to expand out this technology to the Illusion keelboat.

The Illusions are hugely popular Isle of Wight keelboats, with a strong racing circuit and good accessibility making them a perfect next step to scale this technology. At 330kg per hull, largely built with glass-fibre and polyester resin, these boats are a large investment of carbon dioxide. Therefore, actions to reduce and remove the crude oil derived components and replace them with bio-based alternatives will have a big impact upon the build. Not only this, but the techniques and technology to build these boats is the same as larger yachts, so progress with these boats will translate rapidly to building lower carbon footprint boats with equal or better performance profiles.

The winners of the awards will be announced in New York on the 17th of November.

If this is a project you would like to know more about then please contact info@sustainablesailing.co.uk