YVAN BOURGNON – SPEAKER 2019

YVAN BOURGNON, SAILOR, ADVENTURER, ENVIRONMENTALIST

A Franco-Swiss skipper, Yvan Bourgnon began sailing at the age of eight with his parents on a round-the-world trip where he discovered the ocean, which he would never leave.

Over the course of his career, Yvan has built up an impressive record of racing in multihulls and also in offshore races on the most successful boats. With his older brother, Laurent Bourgnon, he won the Transat Jacques-Vabre in 1997.

Holder of several world records, he pushed sailing to the extreme by embarking on a series of unprecedented solo adventures on his uninhabitable catamaran, without instruments and without assistance. These exploits have been unanimously acclaimed throughout the world.

Today, with the association The SeaCleaners, of which he is President and Founder, he is taking on a new environmental challenge and wishes to develop an effective and concrete solution to combat plastic pollution in the seas: this is the Manta project.

About his commitment to cleaning up the ocean with The SeaCleaners:

I was only 8 years old when I sailed the seas for the first time. For three years, with my parents, we sailed around the world. Years later, during my sporting challenges, I was shocked to see how all the oceans I crossed were polluted by plastic waste of all kinds. Now aware of this real global natural disaster, I decided to create the association The SeaCleaners, dedicated to the reduction of plastic pollution. Our objective is to fight at sea and on land. To facè this new challenge, I have surrounded myself with a team of experts and professionals. We have launched́ an innovative project: the Manta, which will be the 1st deep-sea vessel capable of collecting and treating floating macro-waste en masse before it breaks up. The ocean has become my passion. I made it my profession as a sailor. Today, all seas are in danger. We must commit ourselves to this new challenge, which is the fight against ocean pollution.

Website

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