The voice of professional sailing

Sailing is major news for two weeks a year and invisible for the other fifty. That is the problem DutchSail lives with. The foundation makes campaigns possible at the highest level — The Ocean Race, the Vendée Globe, the Youth and Women's America's Cup, the NYYC Women's International Championship — but a foundation has no newsroom. And a campaign nobody follows is worth little to a partner.

Since 2020 we have been that newsroom. All communications and media for DutchSail run through us.

One voice, many campaigns

A platform communicates differently from a team. A team has one story; at DutchSail several campaigns always run side by side, each with its own sailors, partners and rhythm. They have to reinforce one another rather than crowd one another out, and anyone arriving on a post about an ocean race should understand what the foundation as a whole stands for.

We manage the website, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. One calendar, one tone, one place where it is decided what goes out when. On top of that the newsletters, which keep the network of partners, clubs and supporters connected through the months when there is nothing to win. That is the hardest part of the work and the part that pays off most: staying visible when there is no race on.

Content: produced or collected

We choose per campaign. Sometimes we handle the full production, from concept to publication. Sometimes it is smarter to work with what the sailors and teams supply themselves: footage from on board, a voice note after a hard night, a phone clip from the dock.

The second is cheaper, not easier. It requires agreeing in advance what is needed, having someone available the moment it lands, and getting it out in the right form within a couple of hours. That discipline is the service. Without it, raw material from the field sits around until the news has moved on.

Press: bringing the story

Sailing is not football. A newsroom does not call of its own accord, so you have to bring the story: on time, finished, with images, to the right person. We approach the media proactively when something genuinely matters, and handle what comes in — interviews, images, accreditation, background.

Barcelona: Youth and Women's America's Cup

In 2024 JAJO Team DutchSail competed in both the UniCredit Youth America's Cup and the first ever Puig Women's America's Cup in Barcelona. In the youth team Bart Lambriex, Bjarne Bouwer, Paul Hameeteman, Eliott Savelon and Aleksandr Moliakov; in the women's team Annette Duetz, Odile van Aanholt, Willemijn Offerman, Arianne van de Loosdrecht and Ismene Usman. The women finished sixth out of twelve.

We were there, from the build-up to the aftermath. Beforehand the team announcement, the presentation, the press approach, the accreditation. During: daily output from site, race days that still needed a story late in the evening, interviews between racing, and arranging images in a harbour where ten other teams were trying to do the same. Afterwards, finishing the story rather than letting it fade the moment the boats come out of the water.

Being on site is no luxury there. A sailor who has just come off the water has ten minutes and no appetite for a conference call. Whoever is standing there gets the story.

What it delivered

Around the Youth and Women's America's Cup the total came to € 985,534 in PR value. The figure says something; where it landed says more: NOS, RTL, Trouw, AD, de Volkskrant and the regional dailies — in Dutch terms, everything that matters.

That is the reach sailing normally only gets in an Olympic summer. Two crews in a boat class the Netherlands has no history in, at an event barely followed here — and still on the front pages. Not because it happened to fall right, but because the storyline had been built months in advance, and because someone was standing on the dock when it counted.

Six years of the same people on the communications side of an organisation that keeps changing campaigns. That produces something you cannot hire by the project: we know who is who in Dutch sailing, what is going on at the federations and the partners, and which journalist picks up which story. Which means a good piece costs a few hours instead of a few days.