SUSTAINABILITY
The future of sustainable racing is here
MarkSetBot is a Sailors for the Sea Clean Regatta Best Practice
We’re proud to announce that MarkSetBot has been included in the Sailors for the Sea Clean Regatta Toolkit. The Toolkit outlines 20 best practices – the most impactful sustainability recommendations. By using MarkSetBot, you’re one step closer to achieving Sailors for the Sea Clean Regatta status.
We are proud to have been named a finalist for the 2020 World Sailing 11th Hour Sustainability Award!
The World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award celebrates the effective execution or ongoing delivery of high-impact, highly-replicable sustainability initiatives, aligned to World Sailing’s Sustainability Agenda 2030.
MarkSetBot® is the world’s first robotic mark
MarkSetBot is an innovation that is revolutionizing the way races are run, improving sustainability by reducing significant sailing-related environmental stressors. MarkSetBot buoys are self-propelled and use GPS technology to zero in on a specific location and anchorlessly hold position until you instruct them to move. With a user-friendly mobile interface, easy inflatable assembly, and effortless repositioning, they make precise race management in any condition simple with no complex equipment and limited volunteers.
Our sport shouldn’t compromise our environment
Competitive sailing races depend on well set race courses. But races – from local, weeknight around-the-buoy races to the highest professional circuits – often require fleets of powerboats setting marks, burning fossil fuels, and consuming volunteer resources. In deep water venues, this pollution is often compounded with marks set using line and cinder blocks that are abandoned at the end of each day. Miles of line and piles of blocks at the bottom of the world’s most beautiful lakes and oceans have left local governments and organizations scrambling to reconcile lost animal life and damaged ecosystems due to sailing practices.
There’s a BOTTER Way
Our patented buoys are fully electric and will run for an entire race day on a single charge. MarkSetBot reduces the fossil fuel burning power boats needed to set a race course, eliminates seabed-destructive anchors and drastically decreases the number of people involved with regatta management. When racing is wrapped for the day, charging can even be accomplished via solar. In bolstering race committees’ ability to run clean races, MarkSetBot makes no sacrifices on the quality of races. In fact, our Bots set more precise courses and make course adjustments easy.
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
Earth2Ocean conducted an environmental assessment of MarkSetBot and concluded, “it is clear that MarkSetBot provides a non-invasive, low carbon solution to mark laying and should be considered as part of the environmental improvements to be taken on a racecourse.”
Earth2Ocean made three evidence-based conclusions on the key sustainability benefits of MarkSetBot:
Zero emissions from mark laying boats
Zero damage to the seabed
Improved quality of racing for participants
The assessment modeled scenarios for venues and events of varying scale – local sailing club, national championship, Olympic class regatta, SailGP Inspire racing, Olympics, and coaching – and studied the impact of MarkSetBot in:
- carbon savings
- seabed damage avoided
- hours of potential pollution risk avoided
- people benefiting from improved racing
- number of days of improved sailing
In all scenarios, carbon emissions, damage to the seabed and risk of pollution incidents were substantially improved.
Carbon savings ranged from 2 tonnes per year at a local sailing club to more than 36 tonnes over a three-day event. An estimated 624m2 of seabed would be protected and 209 hours of potential pollution avoided annually at a single local sailing club with the use of MarkSetBot.
In practice, we’ve seen a significant reduction in reliance on power boats and personnel, while seeing increases in racing quality and quantity.