The USR Black Label Race Team – Four signature vintage black hull and black sails yachts, with a total of twelve amateur sailors representing a cross section of USR’s culture of talented business executives, preservationist, environmentalist, yacht owners, merchants, and special VIP quests. Our race team is historical in design, spartan in concept, and void of modern day conveniences…pure vintage racing machines.
North American Race Team Schedule:
Eggemoggin Reach Regatta (ERR) August 6, 2016
Corinthian Classic Yacht Regatta (CCYR) August 13-14, 2016
Sail Nantucket Regatta (August 19-20, 2016)
Opera House Cup Regatta (OHC) – Certified by Sailors for the Sea (August 21, 2016)
Newport Classic Yacht Regatta (NCYR) September 3-4, 2016
Indian Harbor Classic Yacht Regatta (IHCYR) September 16-17, 2016
Sail for Hope Regatta (SFH) October 15, 2016
Vintage Race Team Boats
Sailing for Water
It is our Duty, it is our Responsibility, and it is our Mission
By collectively joining forces with world renowned initiatives, we wish to bring awareness, action and support for the protection of our oceans, waterways and wildlife, and ensuring clean water access to those in need.
By attending and participation in high profile events and sailing regattas throughout the world we wish to teach responsible sustainable stewardship, and to bring a call to action to the communities we serve, by conducting community workshops, harbor clean-up drives and free open theater family style environmentally and socially significant movies.
As ambassadors, so to speak, we are in essence “Sailing for Water,” a traveling environmentally centric movement. Touring convoy style, with our vintage race team boats on trailers to high profile events and regattas.
Refuse Plastic
Through collective iniatives we will be asking the communities we serve to Refuse – Reduce – Reuse – Recycle disposable plastic products whenever and wherever possible, and to embrace sustainability.
Refuse: Disposable plastic whenever and wherever possible. Choose items that are not packaged in plastic, and carry your own bags, containers and utensils. Say ‘no straw, please.
Reduce: Your plastic footprint. Cut down on your consumption of goods that contain excessive plastic packaging and parts. If it will leave behind plastic trash, don’t buy it.
Reuse: Durable, non-toxic straws, utensils, to-go containers, bottles, bags, and other everyday items. Choose glass, paper, stainless steel, wood, ceramic and bamboo over plastic.
Recycle: What you can’t refuse, reduce or reuse. Pay attention to the entire life cycle of items you bring into your life, from source to manufacturing to distribution to disposal.
Access to Clean Water
To further serve our ambassadorship for Water we will be asking the communities we serve to support ONE DROP™ This initiative has developed the unique A∙B∙C for Sustainability™ intervention approach, a winning combination of strategic and operational initiatives designed to address sustainable access to safe water.
Access: Provide people with the infrastructure for improved access to safe water for consumption and hygiene, as well as sanitation.
Behavior: Use locally inspired social art forms to raise awareness, mobilize communities and influence positive behavioral change over the long term.
Capital: Offer financial and entrepreneurial training as well as microloans to support market-based solutions, local agricultural production, economic growth and improved community well-being.
Lack of access to water is the harsh reality for millions worldwide, and an equally unfortunate 2.4 billion people live without access to adequate sanitation. Every day, millions of women and girls walk for miles on end just to fetch and carry water, creating a cycle of inequality. The daily pressure of these factors make it impossible to develop one’s full potential or even dream of a better life.
Featured Films
In order to bring a call to action to the communities we serve, we will be featuring award winning environmental documentaries to bring awareness, action and support for the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Blue4Water.Org and OneDrop.Org.
A Plastic Ocean:
A Plastic Ocean is a new feature-length adventure documentary that brings to light the consequences of our global disposable lifestyle. We thought we could use plastic once and throw it away with negligible impact to humans and animals. That turns out to be untrue.
In A Plastic Ocean an international team of adventurers, researchers, and world-saving heroes on an expedition around the globe that delves into the unknown lurking beneath our seemingly pristine and remote waters.
The results will astound viewers–just as it did our adventurers–who captured never-before-seen images of marine life, plastic pollution, and its ultimate consequences for human health.
During its four-year production period, A Plastic Ocean was filmed in 20 locations around the world in beautiful and chilling detail to document the global effects of plastic pollution–and introduce workable technology and policy solutions that can, if implemented in time, change things for the better.
Craig Leeson – Director
Tanya Streeter – Freediver / Environmental Activist
Adam Leipzig – Producer
Jo Ruxton – Producer / Marine Biologist
Sonjia Norman – Executive Producer
Daniel Auerbach – Executive Producer
David Jones – Executive Advisor
Dr. Geoff Brighty – Head of Plastic Oceans Science and Policy
Addesium Foundation
Hemera FoundationHEMERA
Mission Blue:
Legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle is on a personal mission to save the ocean. For generations, we have believed that the ocean is too big to fail. We have overfished it to the point of collapse; used it as a massive dumping ground; and drilled for oil thousands of feet down, regardless of the environmental risks. It’s a model we can no longer sustain. Having logged over 7000 hours and more than 70 expeditions underwater, Sylvia Earle is uniquely positioned to help us understand why.
Mission Blue – shot during a 3 – year period in numerous locations around the world – the film traces Sylvia’s remarkable personal journey, from her earliest memories exploring the ocean as a young girl to her days leading a daring undersea mission in the Virgin Islands and beyond.
The life and work of oceanographer, marine biologist, and environmentalist Sylvia Earle.
Initial release: January 30, 2014
Directors: Robert Nixon, Fisher Stevens
Producers: Robert Nixon, Fisher Stevens, Jack Youngelson, Peter R. Livingston Jr.
Screenplay: Jack Youngelson, Mark Monroe
Awards: News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Editing: Documentary and Long Form
Racing Extinction:
Oscar®-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a team of artists and activists to show the world never-before-seen images that expose issues around endangered species and mass extinction. Whether infiltrating notorious black markets or exploring our affect on the environment, RACING EXTINCTION will change the way we see the world.
Director Louie Psihoyos
Co-Director Mark Monroe
Producers Olivia Ahnemann, Fisher Stevens
Executive Producers Dieter Paulmann
Co-Executive Producers: Paul G. Allen, Jody Allen, Solina Chau, Trammell S. Crow, Dan Nelson, William von Mueffling, Kenneth Lerer, John Paul DeJoria
Co-Producer Gina Papabeis
Editors Geoffrey Richman, A.C.E., Lyman Smith, Jason Zeldes
Cinematographers John Behrens, Shawn Heinrichs, Sean Kirby, Petr Stepanek
Sound Mickey Houlihan
Music J. Ralph
Sargasso Sea
Floating freely and reproducing vegetatively on the high seas, a genus of free-floating seaweed called Sargassum, ‘holopelagi.’ flourishes. A wide variety of prokaryotic life, home and shelter to vast aquatic species, a virtual garden of Eden, first referenced through a poem by the late 4th-century author Rufus Festus Avienus, and later by 15th-century Portuguese explorations, through this remarkable seaweed the Sargasso Sea became to be known.
Sargasso Sea Teaser by LookBermuda | LookFilms – The Sargasso Sea is threatened by pollution and over fishing, problems the Atlantic Conservation Partnership wants to help solve through research and education. LookFilms’ Sargasso Sea is currently under development.
Sargasso Sea Teaser from LookBermuda | LookFilms on Vimeo.
Merchants of Doubt
Inspired by the acclaimed book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, MERCHANTS OF DOUBT takes audiences on a satirically comedic, yet illuminating ride into the heart of conjuring American spin. Filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the curtain on a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver- tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals to climate change.
Directed by: Robert Kenner
Produced by: Robert Kenner, Melissa Robledo
Written by: Robert Kenner, Kim Roberts
Based on: Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Music by: Mark Adler
Cinematography: Don Lenzer, Barry Berona, Jay Redmond
Edited by: Kim Roberts
Distributed by: Mongrel Media, Sony Pictures Classics
Release dates: August 30, 2014 (Telluride)
Running time: 96 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Box office: $192,400 (USA)