Hello Boston! Make way for Team Frankie!
Boston, Massachusetts is the first city on the team's three-week-long Changemakers Tour through New England, before Francesca and crew start The Ocean Race Atlantic from New York City to Lorient, France on September 1. 11th Hour Racing, our title sponsor, and the team have spent months planning the schedule for the inspirational organizations and climate activists we will be visiting over these three weeks! The Changemakers are people, organizations, and community groups that are all making a positive impact in their community and demonstrating the true values of our Believe, Belong, Achieve program.
Kids from Courageous Sailing visited the boat and had a tour from Frankie herself ©11th Hour Racing / TandemRI
Our first stop was Courageous Sailing, a Boston-based nonprofit that has spent almost four decades serving the Boston community by promoting access to sailing and bringing people together across all ages to experience personal growth through the sport.
Frankie and our Boat Captain, Stu, spent the morning giving boat tours to seven inquisitive young members of the organization, swiftly followed by the adult members of the club, Education is a vital part of bridging the gap between access and action for Team Frankie, and it was wonderful to see the children learning for the first time how an IMOCA boat works, asking everything from how long Frankie will take to sail the world solo in the Vendée Globe to how she uses the restroom! I had the pleasure of tuning in to the tour and watching the children's eyes light up as they listened intently to Frankie's every word.
© 11th Hour Racing / TandemRI
In the afternoon Frankie joined some of the younger Courageous Sailing members on the water, sailing with over twenty kids all confidently operate their boats while playing red light green light. The members and staff of Courageous Sailing were incredible, and the team is so grateful to have them as our first Changemaker.
Watch us sail with Courageous Sailing here!
MIT’s Sailing Team came to visit Team Frankie at Charlestown Marina © 11th Hour Racing/Tandem RI
The team's second Changemaker in Boston was the Massachusetts Oyster Project, an organization dedicated to restoring the state's native oyster and shellfish populations. Oysters are a powerful nature-based solution in the fight against climate change: they strengthen coastal ecosystems, improve water quality, boost resilience, and support biodiversity. Over dinner (oysters included)!, 11th Hour Racing and Team Frankie learned more about the core pillars driving the organization's work toward a more eco-friendly Massachusetts.
Our last stop for the Changemakers Tour in Boston was the amazing Stone Living Lab, a partnership between Boston Harbor Now, UMass Boston, the City of Boston, and several state and federal partners working to test and scale nature-based solutions for coastal resilience in the Boston Harbor Islands. With 43 of the 47 miles of Boston’s coastline and harbor publicly accessible via the Boston Harborwalk, Stone Living Lab operated across the urban coastal ecosystem to test nature-based resilience strategies.
We spent the day learning the history of Boston Harbor and how it went from being the dirtiest urban harbor in North America to one of the cleanest, thanks to over 40 years of dedicated restoration work. It was a great lesson in understanding that good change can happen, and no matter how long it takes, it is always worth it.
© 11th Hour Racing / Tandem
One of their most impressive projects is the Living Seawalls, a nature-based solution tucked right underneath Boston's Seaport. Scientists installed snowflake-shaped panels along a once-flat concrete wall, giving marine life the nooks and crannies it needs to move in. A year later, the wall is covered in kelp, algae, barnacles, even mussels, forming distinct zones that mirror New England's natural rocky shorelines. It's one of only two sites like it in North America, and researchers are still tracking which panel designs work best and how the habitat holds up through winter. Seeing decades of coastal ecology research play out on a man-made wall was a reminder that protecting people and protecting nature don't have to be at odds.
After that history lesson, we hit the water to explore the Boston Harbor Islands and see a number of Stone Living Lab's sites and activites. We learned about the erosion impacting dozens of Boston's islands, and got to see the wave buoys that give local leaders, climate scientists, and residents access to real-time, localized data.
See more of the collaboration here
Boston was nothing short of amazing, and the Changemakers we met along the way are exactly why we keep doing the work to fight climate change and spotlight the organizations and people doing great work in their local communities.
Next stop is Newport, Rhode Island and if you want to keep up with all the team’s Changemakers, make sure to follow Team Francesca on all socials!
See you in Newport!
