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14:47 Tuesday 9 Aug 2016 Sue Pelling/AAMCWColourful future for The Magenta Project

Dee Caffari – photo Paul Wyeth/AAMCW

The Magenta Project, set up as a legacy of Team SCA – the all-female team who competed in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race –  is officially launched tomorrow.

The aim of this new project is to help advance women in the sport of professional sailing. Its mission is to increase the number of women competing at the highest level of the sport from three per cent to 10 per cent by 2020 by providing opportunities and support for up-and-coming  sailors.

To mark the launch of the project, members of Team SCA have put together a selection of activities here at Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week, which included coaching for the Musto Under 25 Team ‘Pimp my ride’ winners. Later today there’s a chance for local young sailors to experience high performance M32 sailing. The Magenta Project will also be running a Q&A at 1600 today, on the main stage in the Yacht Haven, compered by Nick Knowles.

Commenting on the Project, Dee Caffari, co-founder of the Magenta Project, said: “The momentum we created with Team SCA in the last Volvo Ocean Race is huge and we didn’t want to let that go, so we created the Magenta Project as an entity from that.

“We see it as somewhere for all our supporters to follow our activities going forward. Our mission now is to try and help create opportunities and pathways at the elite end of the sport, to keep girls in sailing at the elite level of the sport.

“We’ve had the Magenta 32 team in the matchracing tour, we’ve had some offshore sailing going on, and we’ve been helping different projects. We also got access to a GC32 so we had a week foiling thanks to Peters & May and Red Funnel that supported that. OC Sport gave us access to a boat and we had a great time. So it really is trying to promote all these entities, that are helping develop that and address that balance of diversity in the sailing industry.”