Morning Light Project - 30 Out of 538 Chosen

I wrote about Roy Disney's Morning Light project back in June - an effort to field "the youngest crew ever to sail the Transpac..." with plans to chronicle the recruitment, training and performance of sailors as young as 18 throughout the 2007 race for the eventual release of a full-length feature documentary film. According to recent coverage I've read, Roy's goal was to identify sailors who otherwise would have no shot at the rich, mostly white-male world of sailboat racing...

Apparently 538 applicants were whittled to 30...in mid-August the finalists spent 10 days in Long Beach sailing and performing other team-building activities. In January, the crew will fly to Honolulu and start intensive training aboard a 52-foot boat under 1984 Olympic gold medalist Robbie Haines. By April, the team will be finalized at 11, with four alternates, for the grueling race next July.

Kudos to Roy Disney for creating this opportunity to expose young sailors to offshore racing. As well I think it's brilliant how he's established the end goal of a feature film...if successful, the movie could do more for raising the profile and building the credibility of offshore racing than anything that's come before. This is a superb example of what a media-savvy philanthropist can accomplish with well-considered investment.

I'll follow this story as it develops.