From the very start Amelie Rose was built to be as sustainable as possible – within the bounds of our budget and resources. Built from predominantly renewable resources (i.e. mainly wood) her systems were designed to create as small a carbon footprint as possible – either by saving power (e.g. her keel-cooled fridge), ensuring that energy is used as efficiently as possible (her secondary high output alternator) or by generating power at minimal carbon cost (her hydrogen fuel cell).

The business too has been designed to be environmentally conscious. From using online forms to ensuring that we use harbours with good public transport links where possible we have tried our best to limit the damage that we do. Over the past 2 years this has extended to serving much less meat on board as well as ensuring that we separate out recyclables from our waste.

We have also looked to do more to educate others about the issues that face our planet. In 2018 we took a year out of charter to run our Clean Seas Odyssey project (www.cleanseasodyssey.org). Visiting 33 ports, harbours and anchorages over three months we hosted 12 open days and welcomed hundreds of visitors aboard to peruse our exhibits and talk to us about the issue of plastic pollution entering our seas.

We are not happy however to rest on our laurels, but are looking to do even more. With this in mind we have now published our sustainability policy on the website and invite visitors to both the site and the boat to submit any ideas on how we could better. The policy is available in the “About Us” section of the site (https://www.topsail-adventures.co.uk/sustainability-is-important-to-everyone/) and we’d love it if you could have a look through and send us your thoughts (via email to ahoy@topsail-adventures.co.uk or via the Contact Tools on the website (https://www.topsail-adventures.co.uk/contact-us/).

We have some of our own ideas on what we could do better and invite you also to let us know what you think of them:

Further Reduce Engine Hours
We have always aimed to use the engine as little as possible – but when we’ve advertised a trip to (for instance) the Isles of Scilly we have felt it important to make good on our promise if the weather allows. When added to necessary use of the engine to safely enter/leave harbour this has adds up to an average of approximately 400 engine hours a year. With support from our crews however we believe that we could halve this in the future – though passage times may significantly lengthen and sometimes we may not make the stated destination at all.

Public Transport Travel Bonus
We have always recommended the use of public transport in our joining instructions, and ensured that enough information is included to enable this to happen – however we *could* put our money where our mouth is and offer a 5% discount to guest crews who opt to use public transport to reach us.

Go meat free
Over the last 2 years we have massively reduced our meat consumption aboard the Amelie Rose – but we could go completely meat free with the support of our guest crews.