Wendy Schmidt

For some people, a passion for sailing starts early, often inspired by trips out on the water on a family yacht or through dinghy racing and other watersports. For others, the call of the sea comes later in life – and so it was for philanthropist Wendy Schmidt. As president of the Schmidt Family Foundation – which she co-founded in 2006 with her husband, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt – and as a passionate advocate for ocean science and restoration through 11th Hour Racing and Schmidt Ocean Institute, Schmidt discovered the joys of superyachts and the importance of the ocean after her own children had flown the nest.

“I grew up in New Jersey, nowhere near the ocean,” Schmidt recalls. “I got to visit it with my family, where we would jump in the waves, getting sunburned and sandy before driving home in the station wagon. But I didn’t really know the ocean. I didn’t know it had anything to do with me.” Looking back, she says, there was a moment aged nine where she had exposure to a sailboat on a family holiday, and there’s a photo of her stretched out on the transom. “I’m looking up at the sun, and I look really comfortable on that boat,” she smiles. “But I didn’t start sailing until mid-life, which tells me that you can learn to sail at any point in your life.”

Encouraged by a friend to buy a 45-footer to race, she quickly picked up the ropes. “I thought I would go out once in a while,” she says, “but I found myself going out every day for an entire summer. I just felt an intuitive connection to what was going on in a boat. That experience has continued, and it has led to a focus on ocean health because my eyes were opened to a world I had never really understood before.”

As well as investigating the use of sustainable materials and sustainable build practices when it came to building her own sailing superyacht, Schmidt also co-founded 11th Hour Racing – based on her foundation’s 11th Hour Project programme – to promote similar principles of sustainability throughout the maritime and sailing worlds. As a sponsor of The Ocean Race (the round-the-world ocean race at the pinnacle of professional ocean racing) and with a race boat designed, built and competing under the 11th Hour Racing Team banner (which won The Ocean Race 2022-23 in their IMOCA 60), Schmidt says she has already seen a difference in attitudes among teams and visitors to the race.

“We’ve pioneered a new way of sponsoring races – instead of selling you a wristwatch, I’d like to sell you some ideas,” Schmidt explains. “If you go to a Race Village now during The Ocean Race, you’ll have a very special experience because it won’t be like any other public venue that you go to. It was designed to have no waste, which also meant all the vendors organised everything to have no waste. I used to walk into the Race Village and see sailors, boats, technology. That’s not happening now – you walk into a Race Village and you’re talking about the ocean.”

Schmidt’s own experience of racing sailing yachts – she helms her own superyacht and other boats she races on, and recently became the first female and first American to win the Barcolana race – is paying dividends beyond just success on the water. “I’m very solutions oriented,” she says. “I think I have a natural kind of optimism and I believe people are more powerful when they work together. And this idea of a team on a race boat is a really good design for how we can think about approaching many problems in the world, including the health of the ocean.”

It’s something that also informs the work of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which works with scientists to study various facets of the world’s oceans, and whose inventory includes not only cutting-edge technologies but also a research vessel – the first was named Falkor, and that has recently been replaced by the 110-metre research vessel Falkor (too) – that is made available to scientists at no cost in exchange for making their research public in real time. Indeed, says Schmidt, they have hosted more than 1,000 scientists on board since the first Falkor was refitted in 2012 and went into service with the Institute. There is, she says, a 10-year plan to be in all seven ocean basins: “We’re coordinating with the other operators of vessels around the world so they know where we’re going to be, so that we can stage the work we all do together a little more collectively.”

Schmidt also believes that the superyacht industry has a key role to play in preserving and restoring our oceans. “Things can be better,” she asserts. “And I think we should all in our industry, in our recreation as sailors, try to make ourselves part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. First step is to recognise what’s wrong, and the second step is to talk about how to change that and to do that together. I think what’s really important,” she continues, “is for the industry to educate themselves, to educate owners, builders, everyone in the industry about what our impact on the ocean really is.”

Moreover, she says that all of us have a part, whether we are boaters or not. “If you think there isn’t a role for you, there is. If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’re not,” she asserts. “If you look at the scale of the universe we live in and the systems that we study and we work with in all of our philanthropy, there is a place for every kind of scale from the smallest microscopic subatomic particle all the way out to the largest structure in the universe.

“Think of the ocean as the big life support system for all of humanity,” she continues. “And when we get that in our head and we understand either as boat operators, builders, sailors, people who never got on a boat, people who’ve never even seen the ocean, all of us together are part of the solution because we really want the winner to be the ocean. When the ocean wins,” she concludes, “we all win.”

Wendy Schmidt was one of three recipients of a Bowsprit award at the 2023 edition of The Honours, organised by The Superyacht Life Foundation and the Monaco Yacht Show, which seeks to recognise the exceptional and inspiring people of the superyacht industry who are inspiring change in the industry and beyond.