Following a long career in sustainability that took her across all the world’s continents, and noting the increasing impacts being felt in coastal areas back home in Greece as a result of the growth of the sailing sector, she started to talk with NGOs, charter companies, visitors, residents, and experts. The result of this was the creation of Sustainable Sailing Greece!
It aims to bring together everyone across the sailing community in Greece, in order to provide resources and information for sailors and companies to help them take positive action for protecting the beautiful and unique coastline and sea of Greece. It can also provide a forum to discuss and identify common challenges facing the marine and coastal areas the sector depends on, and find solutions to tackle some of these.
Work is starting step by step, with a Sustainable Sailing Guide launched on World Ocean Day 2023, and donated free to interested charter companies to put on board their fleet for their clients. This was done thanks to a start-up grant from the Ionian Environment Foundation, who have been supporters from the start. The Guide took over a year to develop, involved extensive consultation with dozens of sailors who charter boats in Greece, and references existing resources from international sailing organisations, as well as Greek NGOs like iSea and the Ionian Dolphin Project. It fills the identified gap of getting information to the thousands of clients chartering boats each year in Greece to raise awareness of environmental and social issues in coastal areas and how to ensure their visit leaves only positive traces behind.