AC36: DutchSail (NED) turns to crowd-sourcing in an attempt to raise €2.4 million for their late-ent

SAN FRANCISCO (#1195) – One of the three late-entry AC teams, DutchSail led by AC and VOR veteran sailor Simeon Tienpont (NED), has turned to crowd-sourcing for their fledgling campaign. A tab has been added to their team website asking supporters to buy "certificates" of support at €100 per month, for the 24 months remaining in AC36. If you sign up, obviously that raises €2400 per certificate. If we understand the post that was translated from the Dutch language with help from a Google translation (below), they intend to sell a maximum of 1000 such certificates – meaning they will raise, from these certificates, a maximum of €2.4 million?

We understand that DutchSail intends to buy a design package from the AC36 defender, Emirates Team New Zealand, said to cost upwards to US$5 million. This crowd-funding initiative would, apparently, help fund approx half of that.

So, assuming the scheme works, it's at least a start. However, it's a long, and expensive journey to get a team hired, let alone a boat designed and built, in time for the first AC World Series event in Cagliari, ITA next Spring – to say nothing of getting to the Prada Cup (Challenger Selection Series) starting line at Auckland in January 2021.

Here's the GoogleTrans of the post on the DutchSail website....

UPDATE 2019-03-23, 20:19 PDT: This evening our good friend and esteemed NZ editor of Sail-World.com, Richard Gladwell, has posted a piece with more perspective on all this on Sail-World. Read it here.