The Bristol Gulls are a team of 4 Bristol based ladies who will rowing 3000 across the Atlantic in December 2020 by partaking in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, raising awareness about the health and safety of our ocean by making our crossing in the most sustainable way possible.

Why?

As you know, climate emergency is the defining issue of our times. Early October, the UN released a report saying the world has just 12 years left to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. A month later, 11,000 scientist from around the world declare that without a doubt planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. However ever daunting this might seem, as a society we can all make a difference that will lead to a change. Solving the global climate change crisis is going to rely on, in one way or another, changing human behaviour. We are 7.5 billion people in this world. If everyone one of us, individually, changed our behaviour, however small that is, then we would definitely see a change.

Rowing across an ocean in the most sustainable way possible would be the perfect way to highlight some of these issues concerning the health of our oceans, the problems we have with plastic pollutions and the safety of our planet.

How?

We have various activities planned throughout 2020 to engage with the local community such as workshops, encouraging people to take pledge through an online platform, doing presentations at schools, organising a big campaign during Bristol Harbour Festival.

Our boat will be the 1st Ecoboat to take part in the race. Rannoch Adventure are building one of their standard boat: R45 using more sustainable composite materials with the aim to have less impact on the environment.

The composite boat is made of 3 main components - resin, fibre and core.
- The resin is a "green" epoxy because roughly 50% of the carbon used to produce it comes from plant origin.
- The glass fibre is manufactured from a renewable energy source
- The foam core is manufactured from 100% recycled plastic (post-consumer)
- The entire build process is also being adapted to have less impact on the environment.

For our kit, we are currently doing some research looking into brands using alternative materials such as Econyl, Ecodear and/or PrimaLoft, or ones that have high sustainable ethics.

Keeping time and money, we are exploring avenues on how to make our journey to the start line and back from the finish the most sustainable from driving to sailing.

And one of the most challenging is looking at the kind packaging we will be taking, contacting various companies, organisations, universities to find at alternative the the single use items we will need to take.