Press Release 11/05/10

Press Release 11/05/10

People’s Boat campaign gathers momentum...

‘How do you find over £600,000 to fund a round the world yacht race campaign when you are not a multi-millionaire?’

That was the problem facing Alex Alley when he came up with the concept of the People’s Boat and his entry in the Global Ocean Race 2011/12. Instead of having a single sponsor funding the entire campaign, which in the current economic climate is all but impossible, Alex decided on splitting the load and now has a campaign that is open to everybody, from the armchair sailor to philanthropist to the man in the street, each paying less than a night out down the pub. This not only involves them in the campaign and gets their picture on the actual race yacht, but also helps the team raise over £150,000 for charity. Never before has there been an opportunity for everybody to literally be on the boat, right from the outset, in a two handed round the world yacht race.

1 boat, 2 crew, 8 months and 33,000 miles. People’s Boat – Let’s sail the world together.

The People’s Boat is also one of the few campaigns to announce the full team for the race. Alex Alley and co skipper David Thomson (brother of Alex Thomson – Hugo Boss) have both raced at international level and between them have 2 circumnavigations, 2 world sailing speed records and over 250,000 miles of ocean racing. They are not in this race for the experience – they intend to win it.

The website is now live and people are already putting their pictures and company logo’s onto the yacht – www.peoplesboat.com. The site contains links from all the squares to each person’s own website, be it a business page or a personal one like face book.

Preparations are well under way with weekend race training coming up with Brian Thompson. Alex commented ‘We have also been looking at several different designs of Class 40 and have settled on an Akilaria. Both David and I have experience of Akilarias and believe them to be a design that is very easily driven hard for long periods of time – something that is very important for such a long race’.

Alex and David are also offering the opportunity to send regular updates to the press to keep readers up to date with the preparations for the race as well as during it. Alex also writes a regular blog which can be accessed at www.peoplesboat.blogspot.com. Here you can find out the latest sponsor news and also see some impressive video footage from his last race.