When we were kids everyone knew that, if you wanted to win, you had to be on Charlie’s team,” says Jon Enright, younger brother to Alvimedica’s co-skipper Charlie Enright. The 30-year-old son of a dentist from Bristol, R.I., may have been king of the neighborhood pickup games, but today it’s not just Charlie’s team, it’s his buddy Mark Towill’s, too, and the seven others they’ve hand picked to take along on the adventure of their young, crazy lives.
At the heart of the Alvimedica campaign is its effervescent Turkish owner, Cem Boskurt, pronounced “Gem.” The proud CEO is the team’s biggest fan, and his medical device company is poised to enter the North American market. He’s keen to see his team do well because, as he says, their core values align. “Like my company,” he says, “they’re agile, courageous, collaborative, and caring.”
The media spin on this team started out as being all about “Charlie and Mark.” Charlie would run the sailing team, Mark the management of the program. Neither have sailed around the world or across the Southern Ocean, but as the co-skippers of the black and orange Turkish- and American-flagged VO65, they’ve got the spirit of the Newport (R.I.) stopover propelling them, as well as the desire to win.
The squad is a mix of relatively unknown sailors. They’re all young (average age is 30), hungry, and have just enough collective experience to make a run at the prize while having fun along the way. They briefly thought about entering an exclusively-young-gun team, but saw the advantage of having someone with a few laps under his belt already. So, with two-timer Will Oxley, of Australia, navigating they’ll have old-school brains below and new-school brawn on deck.
For the ultimate in media delivery they have award-winning photographer Amory Ross commanding the onboard reporter’s media desk.
