To that end, Lawson serves as chair of US Sailing's DE&I committee, and he plans to leverage Defiant as a platform to share word of DE&I opportunities within the maritime trade, to expand awareness and knowledge of clean-energy systems, and, hopefully, to provide exposure to a sport that still unfortunately falls easily into a particular stereotype. While this dream is lofty, so, too, is Lawson's ambition to create the kind of role models within the sport that he struggled to find as a youngster. Today, Lawson, now 40, aims to do some serious offshore sailing aboard his newly acquired trimaran. The 100-footer might be slow compared to his new ride, but the schooner gave Lawson the chance to experience a sense of freedom that's often lacking ashore, and it didn't take long for the nine-year-old boy to start dreaming. But, thanks to the right encouragement at the right time from his mother, Lawson tried sailing, first on a 100-foot schooner before transitioning to high-performance boats. Lawson grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where the classical definition of a talented athlete typically involved traditional American sports. Lawson is uniquely equipped to take on both missions aboard his newly acquired ORMA 60 Defiant (nee Mighty Merloe and Groupama 2).
Rarer still is when the yacht's owner aims the project at expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) within sailing, while also taking aim at a lengthy list of offshore records. It's not every day that an American acquires a high-performance, offshore-worthy multihull. Captain Donald Lawson getting acquanted with his new office © Image courtesy of Dark Seas Project
0 kommentar(er)
