Sustainable Offshore Racing Forum: Towards an Ambitious and Quantified 2030 Roadmap

Following a working session on 19 March 2026, Anne Dos Santos, Secretary General and Vice-President for CSR at the French Sailing Federation, takes stock of the Offshore Racing Conference. Covering sustainable construction, the role of skippers and reducing the carbon footprint of events, she outlines the ambitions of the 2030 roadmap and highlights the crucial importance of regional synergies, particularly with Brittany.

A positive outcome for the 2030 Offshore Racing Conference

What is your assessment of this latest edition of the Offshore Racing Conference?

This was the third meeting on this project, following the one in December 2023 and a discussion session at the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre in November 2025. Between November 2025 and March 2026, we organised three series of themed workshops with stakeholders in the offshore racing community.

The meeting on 19 March was already a great success in terms of attendance, with around a hundred people gathered at the BPCE Tower, thanks to the hospitality of Banque Populaire. Whilst there is still work to be done, very concrete actions are emerging from the thematic workshops, discussed and agreed upon by the stakeholders. We are certainly moving towards a more ambitious roadmap with quantified objectives.

We also plan to hold an annual progress review at the start of the Route du Rhum in Saint-Malo. We held a review in March because the stakeholders had been very involved this winter, but our aim is to make an annual review a permanent feature at a major offshore racing event.

What are the next steps and upcoming actions for this 2030 roadmap?

The next steps involve continuing to engage stakeholders by continuing these thematic workshops, and perhaps expanding them. So far, we have focused on three themes:

1. Boat construction and lifespan: The challenge is to increase the durability of the vessels. This group mainly brought together classification societies, builders and architects. Shared tools and platforms have emerged; we are now seeking funding to lay the foundations for these tools.
2. Skippers as whistleblowers: They can act as advocates for ocean conservation. We are preparing a comprehensive communication campaign (perhaps for the Route du Rhum) and training them to provide the necessary context and accurate figures. The aim is to enable them to put the sector’s impact into perspective: sailing has a minor impact compared to fishing or shipping, but they must be able to alert the public to the state of the oceans and encourage them to adopt best practices.
3. Race organisers: The next step is to challenge them on how to organise and promote an event in a way that goes beyond simply attracting large crowds to the host villages. We need to shift from a focus on quantity to one on quality.

The number of people present at a race start is sometimes used as a measure of whether or not a race has been successful. Is this therefore an area you focus on?

Yes, because the carbon footprint of a typical year of ocean racing (*), when calculated per visitor, is almost equivalent to that of the Tour de France cycling race (which is still ten times lower than that of a FIFA World Cup). However, the 2023 study showed that visitor numbers account for nearly 70% of this carbon footprint.

If we are to comply with the Paris Agreement, this is our biggest lever: how visitors travel. We must collectively find other measures of success, such as television audiences or overall interest, without increasing the number of visitors on site.

CSR at the heart of training and practice

More broadly speaking, what are the French Sailing Federation’s ambitions in the area of corporate social responsibility for the coming years?

Ocean racing is our flagship, the ‘light at the top of the lighthouse’, because it is highly visible. But our sport, although powered by the wind, remains a mechanical sport that has an impact on climate change. We must do our bit and set an example by showing that an outdoor sport can adapt and reduce its emissions.

Sport is a vehicle for raising awareness. Beyond offshore racing, we work internally with our clubs and during the French championships to raise awareness among young competitors and all those involved in sailing.

What sort of initiatives are used to raise awareness among young people and amateurs?

For competitors, last year we launched an ‘Eco-Sailor’s Charter’ (a comic-book version for under-14s and a text version for those aged 15 and over). We have also created an environmental board game for school sailing trips and French sailing schools.

We have also incorporated a module on “environmental awareness and CSR” into our professional training programmes. The first training courses will take place in June.

Finally, we have long-standing partnerships with APER and Écologic for the recycling of sailing equipment. We organise collections of old hulls or boards at clubs to prevent them from being abandoned or dismantled inappropriately. APER collects the equipment directly from the clubs to take it to recycling facilities.

At the same time, we are developing ‘shared fleet’ regattas: competitors bring their own rucksacks and the boats are provided on site. The aim is to shift from a culture of ownership to one of usage and to avoid transporting boats over long distances. Our full CSR action plan is also available on our website.

Through the Bretagne Sailing Valley programme, the Region aims to drive this roadmap forward. What do you think?

We need regional synergies. Offshore racing mainly involves a few regions (Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Normandy). It is not the Federation’s role to carry these projects out on the ground alone; we need this regional roots so that political stakeholders can take over. For us, it is a key to success when a region takes ownership of the issue. At the start, in 2023, I had some doubts because there are many stakeholders with differing interests, but a real collective momentum has now taken hold. Brittany is a major catalyst for acceleration: this is where the training centres (Port-la-Forêt, Lorient, La Trinité-sur-Mer), the shipyards, the architects and the major race starts are located.

(*) : For an average year of ocean racing: 50 kg CO₂ equivalent per visitor, based on 1.4 million visitors, equating to 75,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year.