The sailors team Miguel Rothes and Manuel Pessanha, silver medalists in the 2015 Portuguese 420 Under 17 Championship, were appointed to represent Portugal at the World Championship to be held from 17 to 25 July at Karatsu, Japan. The team need financial support to buy a new mainsail, because the current is no longer in the best conditions. After so many hours training, we want to bring a good result for our country, that has so much tradition in the "Art of Sailing".
We are Miguel Rothes (16 years old) and Manuel Pessanha (16 years old), athletes of the 420 sailing class in the Atlantic Sailing Club - Portugal, and after our weekly effort and dedication since September 2014, we have reach the feat, just in our 1st year sailing in this class, to be Silver medalists in the 2015 Portuguese 420 Under 17 Championship and we have been selected for represent Portugal, in the more important competition of this class, the World Championship.
To achieve this dream and represent Portugal, all expenses (travel, accommodation, food, boat hire, coach, etc.) are supported by the sailors, which in our case of young students of 16 years old, by our parents. Neither the Portuguese Sailing Federation, nor any other government entity fund.
The participation costs in the World Championship to be held in Japan, taking into account the distance are high, and the budget is about € 7000 and will be fully suported by our parents.
We need a new mainsail, which costs 800€ in order to achieve a great result and we don't want to ask our parents this additional effort.
The sail is like the "engine" of the boat and our mainsail is already very worn after so many hours of training and racing.
The idea of using crowdfunding came up in a conversation among friends as a way of getting, in a transparent manner, the funding that could allow us to buy this new sail.
We welcome and thank all the help.