At a ceremony in Portopiccolo, in the Gulf of Trieste, Italy, the Austrian Ocean Race Project christened its VO65 race boat ‘Sisi’.
It marks the first time an Austrian team has registered to take part in the race.
The team has now completed two of the most important first steps towards realising the dream – the purchase of the VO65 race boat and the recruitment of a core team.
The current eight-member core-crew of the team consists primarily of Austrian professional sailors who sail or have sailed in the Austrian Bundesliga, the Champions League, the Youth America’s Cup, the Olympic Games or in the world championships of various classes.
Alongside Julian Kircher, the project manager of the team, the sailing team is made up of Raphael Hussl, Linda Fahrni, Gerwin Jansen, Konstantin and Oliver Kobale, Anna Luschan and Maja Siegenthaler. Their average age is 26.5 years.
The sailing team has a busy training schedule over the next two years with plans to take part in numerous international offshore races in order to evolve into a well-tuned race crew on their VO65.
The 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.
So far these include:
- Alicante
- Aarhus
- The Hague
- Cabo Verde
- Genoa
- Itajaí
