Half a decade since he quit the UK for forward-thinking Scandinavia on a mission to reduce the nautical world’s carbon footprint, and 18 months after dwindling money reserves prompted him to move the entire contents of his life into the back of his van, Sam Sills found himself shivering by a lake in rural Switzerland.
At an altitude close to 2,000m above sea level, Silvaplana is a popular tourist destination for skiers throughout much of the winter. Even during the peak summer months, temperatures barely trouble the mercury with nights ranging on a scale from chilly to glacial. For participants at the 2021 iQFoil World Championships – the headline event for a new windsurfing discipline that had been confirmed for inclusion at the Paris 2024 Olympics – not even the picturesque backdrop could generate much desire to hang around any longer than competition demanded.
Those fortunate enough to be part of national teams – as Sills had been once upon a time – found solace in the warmth of nearby hotels to rest and recuperate between races, somewhere to eat, sleep, shower, go to the toilet: the type of basic necessities required to compete in elite sport or go about a conventionally functional life. Sills had no such luxuries. Having failed to qualify for the Tokyo Games in the previous RS:X windsurfing class, the Cornwall native had been determined to try again using the new iQFoil equipment that had always better suited him. The only trouble was he “didn’t have many options and was out of cash”.
Ever resourceful, he seized the only, unappetising, course of action available to keep his dream alive: he converted his van into his home. For 18 months he based himself mainly in a Dorset car park, driving to competitions across Europe in the vague hope that, one day, he might make it to the top of windsurfing.
So, to August 2021 and that cold Swiss lake. While his rivals revelled in the opulence of their hotel rooms, wardrobes and plumbed appliances, Sills took on the best in the world from the back of a panel van replete with makeshift bed and wooden shelves housing a kettle, saucepans and portable stove.
“Don’t do it. It’s horrific,” says the 31-year-old a few years on. “I really wouldn’t recommend it. It was freezing cold and awful, but I knew there was an opportunity and I didn’t have any other way. So I just did it. I was not well after the event.
“I didn’t want to quit. If I didn’t manage to get a result there then I wouldn’t have continued. It was the end point. But I did and that put me here.”
Against the odds, and 156 other competitors, Sills finished seventh. A couple of months later he was the leading British surfer at the European championships in Marseille. British Sailing had seen enough to offer him support and funding. The van era was over and the outsider was back on the team.
A decade before preparing for Paris – or, more accurately, Marseille, where the sailing events will be held – as a medal contender, Sills had been part of the national setup. A double world junior champion at under-15 and under-17 levels, Sills spent one year as a full-time athlete after graduating from university, but things did not go to plan.
Although hesitant to criticise a setup that has offered him so much in recent years, he admits he ended up “hating what I was doing” and suggests the problem was personal with some of the senior management figures who have since left.
So he made the first in a series of enterprising moves. “I left and decided to go off maverick-, renegade-style and do my own campaign without any support.
“I did it with mates, basically. I went to Norway and Sweden with a bunch of Norwegian and Swedish athletes who weren’t particularly high level but were amazing friends. We had great camaraderie and trained really hard. We had no money or support but it didn’t really matter because we were all doing the same thing together.”
Shorn of funding, Sills combined his sporting aspirations with putting his qualifications in naval architecture to use, working for a Norwegian company whose remit was to take diesel engine boats and replace them with zero-emission versions. At the time, he was one of four employees for a company that has subsequently grown to about 25, implementing its sustainable electric-power solutions in everything from small ferries to shipping boats and lifeboats.
“It really does make sense in a marine setting,” says Sills from his training base in the south of France, where he has been stationed for much of this year. “You have far fewer components, you don’t create any emissions and the batteries have much higher torque so you can have a more efficient system.
“One example is a tourist catamaran that takes people around the fjords of Norway. Once it reaches a fjord it switches to electric propulsion to not pollute the environment. Then when it’s out of the fjord and into the ocean it switches to the diesel engine to get home.
“Another is freefall lifeboats, which can’t not work but in reality never get used. They are always in a salty environment so they corrode, which means the oil industry has to fly engineers out every couple of months just to check the engines. You can imagine the cost, disruption and pollution from that process. If it’s electric you can just test it from your sofa if you want.
“It was really special to be there at the beginning because there wasn’t much of that at the time and we were right at the forefront of it. I was part of some pioneering projects. Now it’s just exploding.”
His next task, in Sweden, involved helping to develop eco-friendly paddleboard prototypes with a 3D printer that uses a byproduct resin from the wood industry. More recently, he has designed hydrofoils and performance windsurfing equipment for major brands, providing the added benefit of aiding knowledge of his competitive sporting tools.
He puts his passion for maritime sustainability down to his upbringing in England’s south-west. “Think about the bigger picture and the logical thing to do is make the world as efficient and sustainable as possible,” he says. “It doesn’t make any other sense to keep using resources that are going to run out. I grew up in Cornwall surrounded by nature and spent a lot of my time on the lakes there and grew up with an appreciation of that, which I’m sure had an influence.”
Since early last year, that occupational side of his life has been on hold as he devotes his full attention to the upcoming Olympics. A brilliant start to competition in 2023 raised expectations, but things have rarely been trouble-free.
While training in the Canary Islands in the buildup to the Olympic trials, he found out his uncle’s death was imminent due to cancer. “I had to make a choice,” he says. “Do I go back and say goodbye to my uncle or do I stay and try to complete this life goal? I managed to speak to him and he told me not to come home, to give them hell and have no regrets. I was filled with emotion. It sounds cold, but I had to block it out and use the emotion to do it for my family.”
After qualification was secure he was hit by a car two weeks before the Olympic test event in Marseille, but still finished seventh despite halting training and wearing a splint on his wrist. He followed that by placing fifth at last year’s world championships.
A downturn in results this year has not dimmed the level of ambition for his Olympic debut and he insists the goal remains a gold medal. But he is pragmatic enough to see the bigger picture.
“The goal is to win,” he says. “But I’m happy just to be going because it was such a struggle to get there. I’m already grateful to have made it this far. It’s been so tough. I’m not sure I’d do it again, put it that way. It was really difficult but it was worth it and I managed to do it. It’s been an amazing life journey that has taught me a lot.”
