Scott Shawyer is the former CEO of the industrial technology company JMP Solutions, a mechanical engineer, and now a professional sailor.
Scott is the skipper and president of Canada Ocean Racing, an international ocean racing team dedicated to providing sailors of all ages with new experiences while promoting inclusion in the sport through charitable and corporate brand partners.
Shawyer joined SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about his career and his upcoming unique race on May 29 called the New York Vendee. This is a single-handed (one person), 3,600 mile route that starts in New York City and finishes in Les Sables-d'Olonne, Vendée Region, France. Scott will also be the only North American racing.
Shawyer started to have a love of the water and sailing when he was just youngster.
"So I live in Ontario, Canada on Georgian Bay, which is a bay off Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes. My parents had a cottage up north. We would go up for a month every summer and I had a small dinghy and was allowed at the age of eight to take this dinghy out and go wherever I wanted. I would go out for the day and tour around all these islands and it was just the ultimate in freedom. You just can't describe it. Being on a boat and touring the water is a very happy place for me. You've heard of "getting into flow" and a lot of athletes when they are in flow it's where you want to be. That's where I am when I'm sailing."
But it was only two years ago that this very successful business man decided he wanted to be a professional sailor.
"I've always been into sports and athletics. I've done the triathlon for a long time. I've done downhill skiing for a long time. I have a degree in psychology. I'm an engineer. I've know of this offshore sailing for a long time, but it was in 2020 during COVID where it really hit me that this is what I should be doing. I was running my engineering company and I was looking for some investments to help me take it to the next level. I was one phone calls with private equity groups 12 to 14 hours a day for a week. We were in COVID lockdown here in Canada where you weren't supposed to leave your house. I live in a town where I have a mountain in the backyard and a lake in the front yard. I had been outside in weeks. I saw the start of this around the world race called Vendee Globe that happens every four years. The skippers were walking down the dock with masks on. They got to their boat. They cast off their masts and they went out to tackle the world. And here I was strapped to my desk. I looked at that and thought 'man, I doing something wrong here, I should be doing that.' That's when I signed a deal with New York-based private equity group. I ended up selling 70 percent of the company, left the company six months later and since then have been dedicating all my time to this venture."
Being an athlete through the years has enabled the 52- year old Shawyer to be able to handle a very challenging sport.
"It is very physical, especially single-handed sailing. The boat is 60-feet-long, the mast is 100-feet-high, the sails weigh a couple hundred pounds easily and when they get wet they can weigh more. You're carrying these around. Everything on the boat is manual, you are not allowed any power systems. So even to put the main sail up is very physical."
During the New York Vendee, his first Transatlantic solo race, Scott will be on board the Be Water Positive, a $2 million dollar vessel designed and built for speed.
Canada Ocean Racing is racing to promote their environmental cause – water positivity.
"You've probably heard of being carbon neutral, which is doing things to offset your carbon footprint or not having a carbon footprint. Being water positive is a similar concept around water and water preservation. Water is a precious resource to us all and one that quite frankly spoiled with how much fresh water we have in our backyard in The Great Lakes, but when you're out sailing across the ocean on millions and billions of gallons of water you realize very quickly that this water is useless to me. I can't drink any of this water. I can't mix this water with my freeze-dried food until it's treated. So much of the water we have is completely useless until made into a usable format. So, it's just raising awareness of the precious nature of the water and let's try to preserve it. There's also some that can be reducing their water use, there's also water reuse. It's about finding ways to reduce your usage and reuse water when you can and ultimately we can produce more clean water than we're destroying which would make us water positive for our communities. So that's what the pledge of being water positive means."
Shawyer's ultimate goal is to qualify to become the first Canadian to complete the 2028 Vendee Globe, which is a 23,000 mile, 3 month, single-handed, non-stop, non-assisted round-the-world sailing race that takes place only every four years that starts at the tip of France and ends at the tip of France. Currently only 50 percent of attempts to complete the race have been successful.
You can SEE the entire SportsJam interview with Scott Shawyer here.
