Sailing4Handicaps with the Lagoon 410
January 4, 2016
A few months ago, Lagoon announced its partnership with the Sailing4handicaps project, this young couple (one of them a Paralympic champion) who converted the cockpit of their Lagoon 410 S2 Imagine into a consulting-room for people requiring orthopaedic prostheses. These are built, in situ, thanks to a 3D printer. Unbelievable!
An ambitious project that Lagoon fully supports: Lagoon supplied equipment for Imagine, providing suitable facilities for receiving people with disabilities, a large number of parts for the vessel’s refit, and supports Elena and Wojtek in terms of their communication.
Photo credit: Christophe SORENTI
At the beginning of May, the couple casts off, all set for this great adventure and is currently in La Rochelle until August 2, to meet press and partners.
Here, Elena tells us about this initial voyage:
“The day has finally come: on 30th May 2015 the sailing4handicaps crew set out on their circumnavigation with the aim of helping amputees around the world to achieve a better quality of life.
Wojtek, Elena and “Imagine”, the orange Lagoon 410 S2 that the couple has prepared for this voyage over the last two and a half years, set sail from Neustadt in Holstein, Germany. Their first destination will be Morocco, where several patients are already waiting for them.
The couple are currently sailing along the Atlantic coast of France, planning a stopover in La Rochelle, a sort of “return home” for their boat, which was launched there after being shipped from the Lagoon shipyard, and for a meeting between sailing4handicaps and Lagoon, partners in the project and personal friends.
One month into the voyage: Wojtek, Elena and Imagine have already crossed 3 seas, sailed through some of the most difficult passages in the North of Europe and faced a variety of weather conditions, but the couple are amazed by all that they have already seen, experienced and, above all, by their catamaran.
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The North Sea was an important test both for the crew and for the Lagoon: Imagine is a “strong baby”, as the couple like to call her: stable, fast, reliable, easy to manoeuvre and an incredible eye-catcher in every harbour thanks to her elegance and special colour!
In a few months, Sailing4handicaps will reach Morocco and there the work will start: in the large cockpit, the crew, helped by an orthopaedic technician, will build prosthetics and donate them to amputees who normally have no access to them.
Once again, Imagine will become a “strong baby”, ready to give hope to those who had lost it.
Sailing4handicaps is proud to have a supporter such as Lagoon on its side.”
http://www.sailing4handicaps.de/?lang=en
