Introduction
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My Own World: Steve White on single-handed sailing in an Open 60
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Crunch Time: Sponsorship is crucial for Vendee Globe Campaign
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Steve White and the Spirit of Weymouth
Steve White, who lives at Charlton Down in Dorset, is one of the sailors who will compete in the 2008 Vendée
Globe - a single-handed, non stop race round the world.
Spirit of Weymouth, Steve White's Open 60, was originally
built in 1998. He acquired the boat in 2006, and he is campaigning against new, high-budget Open 60s launched recently at a cost of millions
of pounds each.
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Spirit of Weymouth skipper Steve White
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His has been a relatively rapid rise to the height of world-class competitive skipper - because he started sailing only in 1996.
He is extremely ambitious, as he explains; "In February 1998, I did my first Fastnet race. Standing on the dock in Falmouth after the trip, I
swore there and then that I was going to sail for a living and I was going to do the Vendée Globe. I packed my job in and started to work in
small dockyards in Weymouth. I sailed all the time; racing three nights a week, passage racing, deliveries, the lot.
"Eventually I got a job with Pete Goss and that led me onto a job with Challenge Business and after four years and over 100,000 miles in all
sorts of weather. I became a skipper."
In 2005 Steve left the Challenge business to pursue his ambitions in solo racing and entered the 2005 OSTAR in an Open 50, winning the
monohull class. Steve used his success as a springboard into the Open 60 Class, purchasing Josh Hall's old Open 60, and since then he and his
wife Kim have been looking for the sort of big-time sponsor so vital for real success at this level of sailing.
All but one of the 16 or so boats in the Open 60 category operate with a million dollar budget, with virtually unlimited resources, thanks to
high profile sponsors such as HugoBoss or rich European banks. In the 2007 Fastnet race, Spirit of Weymouth, was the only Open 60 to be
sailing without a big-money sponsor.
Steve makes no bones about the problems associated with securing investment into the project, especially with four children to support. "At
the moment we are running a small business. Kim, my wife gives me a tremendous amount of support. She is a pretty keen sailor herself, and it
is important to have that sort of understanding when you spend so much time away from home. Some people ask me, how I manage with a family of
four but without them, the whole campaign would be hollow; there would be nobody to share it with.
"At the moment we are surviving by means of corporate hospitality, something I think we are very good at. It is our own campaign which puts a
different light on why we invite paying guests on board."
All Steve's current campaigning is leading up the 2008 Vendée Globe event. He says: "For me, the quest to do the Vendée Globe has driven
absolutely everything. It has caused me to re-mortgage my house several times and to give up a couple of good jobs. To get to the start line,
Les Sables D'Olonne, is my goal, and that is a race against time."
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