AI and sailing take center stage as Team JAJO prepares for North Sea record attempt

Two days of collaboration between professional sailors, data specialists, engineers, students and technology enthusiasts have resulted in a promising foundation for new tools aimed at helping Team JAJO break the North Sea sailing record. The hackathon, organised by DutchSail in close collaboration with Team JAJO, brought together 25 selected participants to explore how artificial intelligence, data and advanced modelling can support one of sailing’s most ambitious North Sea challenges. The event focused on three key questions: when to leave, which route to sail and how to optimise the boat’s performance.

The initiative was driven by Floris van den Brekel, who saw an opportunity to explore how rapidly developing technologies could be applied to modern sailing. Van den Brekel: “We’re at this moment in history where more and more parameters get measured on these boats, but the readouts still kind of come down to a professional sailor interpreting them and then making a call. We felt this was exactly the point in time where we wanted to explore the new possibilities and see how we can harness these technologies to improve the performance of the boats and the routing.”

From data to decisions
The hackathon brought together around 25 expertise from a wide range of disciplines, including machine learning, maritime engineering and mathematics, alongside the practical experience of professional sailors.The participants worked on three principal challenges. The first was identifying the ideal weather window for Team JAJO’s record attempt. The second was determining the optimal route across the North Sea. The third focused on optimising the performance of the boat itself.

For Van den Brekel, one of the biggest surprises was the depth and breadth of knowledge in the room. “The amount of knowledge between all these people quickly exceeded what I had in mind for this challenge,” he says. “The toolsets that will come out of this are very exciting and will definitely have a place in the maritime world.”

The scale of the challenge also proved to be one of the main hurdles. With so many variables involved in sailing, there was a risk of attempting to solve the entire sport rather than the specific problems that Team JAJO will face in their attempt to break the North Sea Record.

“We very quickly made the problems very large,” Van den Brekel says. “We really tried to apply this kind of double-diamond strategy to get back to the core of what we’re trying to solve and what is reasonable within the scope of time we have.” The focus therefore remained firmly on the questions that could make a tangible difference to the record attempt.

A record that has stood since 2009

For Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek, the North Sea record is about more than technology. It is also a long-standing personal ambition. Van Beek has followed The Ocean Race since childhood and remembers a period when teams regularly attempted to set new records on the North Sea. In 2009, Team Delta Lloyd skippered by the legendary Bouwe Bekking set the current benchmark with a time of 5 hours, 36 minutes.

“Since then, nobody tried it anymore,” Van Beek says. “They all thought, well, five hours 36, this is it. But for Team JAJO, I think it’s a perfect challenge, a perfect opportunity to challenge ourselves and try to break this record.”

The hackathon is part of an extensive preparation process currently underway. Van Beek explains: “I’m looking forward to taking the boat to England and making the attempt. There are a lot of factors that need to come together, and this hackathon is for us an important part of that preparation. Most importantly, we now have the technology and expertise behind us, giving us valuable insights into the North Sea and its weather conditions. Although the attempt will most likely take place next year, we have already achieved an important milestone with this hackathon: bringing different technology partners together around a tangible challenge, while potentially developing tools that could be valuable for future sailing projects as well.”

A view screenshots of the tools developed

Connecting the Dutch sailing community

For DutchSail, bringing together sailors, data experts, research institutes and young talent is at the heart of the organisation’s mission. “We invited these people into our teambase because this comes exactly in line with what we aim for as DutchSail,” says Eva Hermans. “Together with Team JAJO we want to connect the sailors, data and our partners, like MARIN, Deltares and KNMI, because we believe that the Dutch sailing community can achieve great things internationally.”

The hackathon also offered a platform for students and young professionals to gain experience in a professional sailing environment and connect with experts from across the maritime and technology sectors.

A starting point, not an endpoint

The conclusion of the two-day event was not the end of the collaboration. Several participants have expressed an interest in continuing to develop the tools and contribute to the project beyond the hackathon.

“Those were two good days,” Van den Brekel says. “I’m happy with the outcome and with how all the participants experienced it. It’s a good setup for the tools we ultimately aim to build. Many participants have indicated that they would like to continue thinking along and building on the tools after the event.”

As Team JAJO prepares for its attempt, the ambition is therefore twofold: break a record that has stood since 2009 and demonstrate how data, artificial intelligence and human expertise can work together to push the boundaries of modern sailing. If successful, the North Sea record attempt could become more than a race against the clock. It could also serve as a real-world test of a new generation of data-driven tools for the maritime world.