Team Alvimedica pair Mark Towill and Charlie Enright’s route to Volvo Ocean Race just like a Disney movie

Two childhood friends find that a sailor's joys, much like a child's, are simple, writes Osman Samiuddin.

Team Alvimedica came about when Charlie Enright, right, and his friend Mark Towill were approached by Volvo Ocean Race chief Knut Frostad, who put them with the Turkish sponsor. Amory Ross / Team AlvimedicaShow less

Every boat in the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) has a degree of unlikeliness of how it came to be, how its crew came together or how it is competing despite hurdles in its path.

The unusual, unique nature of the endeavour almost demands it. The race is, after all, unparalleled in sport for its longevity, its obeisance to nature and the toll it takes on its competitors.

Even by those standards, the coming together of the youngest team in the race is some story – an unscripted ode to the race’s boundary-less ethos.

Alvimedica is a Turkish medical technologies companies, a young but fast-growing one. Turkey is not a country known for its sailing culture.

Half the crew members on Team Alvimedica are American, including the captain, Charlie Enright.

Alongside his friend and teammate Mark Towill, Enright is the man who has driven this boat to actuality. He insists it is not so odd a pairing.

“You know, they were sponsors looking to be involved in the race and we were a team looking to do the same,” Enright said. “They sat down with a number of different teams and we actually were the best bid for a number of reasons, some of which were brand alignments, some of which were our core DNA.

“We have a lot more in common than you would think.”

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If it is not so odd, Enright and Towill’s story is at least endearing and revelatory of the pair’s get-go.

They first met in 2007, back on the set of – and this is unlikeliest detail of their story – a Disney film.

Morning Light was not an animation but a documentary, brainchild of Walt Disney’s nephew, the late Roy Disney, an avid sailor.

It followed the times of 15 sailors between the ages of 18 and 23 as they formed a team, trained for six months and then took part in the 2007 Transpac, a celebrated Pacific Ocean race from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Enright and Towill were two of the crew.

“We applied for it, tried out, got selected and it was great,” Enright said. “It gave us a taste of what professional sailing could be. It surrounded us with incredibly talented and inspirational coaches.

“The whole thing was integral to getting us where we are now.”

Enright would probably have got here, as the youngest skipper in the VOR, one way or another.

He comes from Newport, Rhode Island – the next destination after Itajai, Brazil, in the race –an old, established sailing centre.

His grandfather, Clint Pearson, was co-founder of Pearson Yachts, a pioneering boat builder, and he has hazy memories of being on boats even before his first vivid memory as a five year old.

He learnt about the world through sailing. In second grade, his geography project was based around the Whitbread Round the World race, as the VOR was then known.

It was immediately after Morning Light that the journey to the VOR was mapped.

“Just being exposed to the guys coming off a Volvo Race at that time and hearing their stories,” Enright said. “It’s an extremely unique event, and it was one we became passionate about really quickly.”

The pair went to Brown University, an Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, where they sailed for the school’s nationally ranked side.

More importantly, they picked up degrees in business and economics – running a VOR team is, as Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s captain Ian Walker has often said, like running a mid-sized company.

Instead of finding a team to join, the pair began to put their own team together.

Eventually, around the time of the 2011/12 race, they attracted the attention of Knut Frostad, the VOR chief executive.

Frostad wanted them in, but a sponsor and boat needed to be found. Enright scoured the US, unsuccessfully.

“For now, sailing is competing with a lot of big sports and until it makes financial sense, it will be a tough row to hoe,” he said.

At around the same time, the decision to introduce one-design boats cut costs of participation significantly, making the race attractive to a broader range of sponsors.

“When I first met Charlie and Mark during the last edition of the Volvo Ocean Race, I could see the young Americans possessed not only a great passion to do the race, but they were bright and understood the business model behind it,” Frostad said.

“I then helped match them with Alvimedica, the young medical devices company. Team Alvimedica has improved steadily since the start in Alicante and I am so proud to see their development. To see them first to Cape Horn on Leg 5 was truly a milestone for the team and also sends a signal to future young teams that they, too, can achieve this Everest of sailing.”

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For the first few legs of the race, youth seemed to be working against Alvimedica, as this race prizes and rewards experience.

Though their progress was disrupted in the second leg when they had to divert to rescue the stricken Team Vestas, they finished on the podium only once in the first four legs.

Ahead of the fifth leg they recruited the six-time race veteran New Zealand sailor Stu Bannatyne.

Perhaps it was coincidence – they do have experience on-board in the shape of navigator Will Oxley, after all – but Alvimedica led the most difficult leg of the race and was the first around Cape Horn.

They have since been overtaken by Azzam, but a second-placed finish at Itajai could help them move up to third on the overall leader board.

They are, belatedly, in the race.

Enright, whose competitiveness and drive is obvious, would not have it any other way.

He is also prepared.

“The race has been as advertised for the most part,” Enright said.

“Obviously, the serious incident with Vestas – nothing can prepare you for that.

“But no massive curve balls as of yet, though there will be a couple, I’m sure.”

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