11th Hour Racing

MEET 11TH HOUR RACING We work to mobilize sports, maritime and coastal communities with an innovative approach to inspire solutions for the ocean. Since 2010, 11th Hour Racing has been promoting collaborative, systemic change through three primary areas of engagement: sponsorships, grantees and ambassadors. OUR HISTORY Picture a white sail against a blue ocean. For many years, that image was the epitome of clean transit, a balanced relationship between sailor, vessel and sea. Today, sailing doesn’t always live up to these environmental ideals. Our founders – philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, sailor and sailmaker Rob MacMillan and sailor Jeremy Pochman – routinely saw this first hand while sailing together in international regattas, where mountains of plastic waste from single-use water bottles piled on the docks and plastic pollution littered the racecourses. They also discussed that designing, building and disposing of sailboats can be a dirty process, polluting our air and water, with ripple effects across many global supply chains. But our founders also recognized that the world of sailing was a place they could make an impact, demonstrating replicable change for a cleaner future. Our founders established 11th Hour Racing to use the power of sport to restore a balanced relationship between people and planet, a goal we share with the Schmidt Family Foundation, where Wendy Schmidt is president and co-founder. Our name, 11th Hour Racing, comes from our sense of urgency: we are at the final hour in the struggle to save our ocean. From working to eliminate single-use plastic at regattas, our organization evolved to integrate sponsorships, grantmaking and an ambassador program to champion collaborative, systemic change across the sailing and sports communities to benefit our ocean.