HTen years ago he left the UK for forward-thinking Scandinavia on a mission to reduce the sailing world’s carbon footprint; 18 months later, dwindling financial reserves prompted him to move his entire life into In the back of his van, Sam Sills found himself shivering by a lake in the Swiss countryside.
With an altitude of nearly 2,000 m, Silvaplana is a popular destination for skiers throughout the winter. Even at the height of summer, temperatures barely affect the mercury, with night temperatures ranging from chilly to freezing. For participants in the 2021 iQFoil World Championship, not even the picturesque backdrop created the desire to stay longer than the competition required. Paris Olympics.
Those lucky enough to be part of the national team – like Hills once upon a time – find solace in the warmth of a nearby hotel to rest and recover between matches, with a place to eat, sleep, shower and use the toilet: This type of basic necessities required to participate in elite sport or live a normal life. Hills doesn’t have that luxury. Having failed to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in the last RS:X windsurfing competition, the Cornish native was determined to try again using the new iQFoil equipment that had always suited him better. The only trouble was that he “didn’t have many options and no cash.”
Resourceful, he seized on the only, unappetizing course of action to realize his dream: he converted his van into his own home. For 18 months he lived mainly in a car park in Dorset, driving to competitions across Europe with the vague hope that one day he would reach the pinnacle of windsurfing.
Well, come August 2021, that cold Swiss lake. While his rivals reveled in the splendor of hotel rooms, wardrobes and plumbing fixtures, Hills competed with the world from the back of a van equipped with a makeshift bed and wooden shelves stocked with kettles, pans and portable stoves. Compete against the best opponents.
“Don’t do it,” the 31-year-old said years later. “I really wouldn’t recommend it. It was cold and terrible, but I knew it was an opportunity and I had no other way. So I just Did that. I wasn’t in a good mood after the event.
“I didn’t want to give up. If I didn’t get results there, then I wouldn’t continue. This is the end. But I did it, and that got me here.
Hills, along with 156 other competitors, overcame the odds and finished seventh. A few months later he became Britain’s leading surfer at the European Championships in Marseille. The British Sailing Association has provided him with sufficient support and funds. The Van era is over and the outsider is back on the team.
A decade before preparing for Paris – or, more accurately, Marseille, the venue for the sailing event – Hills was already part of the national team. Hills, a double world junior champion at the under-15 and under-17 levels, spent a year as a full-time player out of college, but things didn’t go as planned.
Although he hesitates to criticize an organization that has served him so well in recent years, he admits that he ultimately “hated what I did” and says the issue is personal for some senior managers who have since left.
So he took the first step in a series of enterprising moves. “I left and decided to run my own campaign in a maverick, rebellious style without any support.
“Basically, I did it with friends. I went to Norway and Sweden with a group of Norwegian and Swedish athletes who weren’t particularly high level but were great friends. We had a great camaraderie and the training was very Hard work. We had no funding or support, but it didn’t matter because we were all doing the same thing together.
With little money, Hills combined his sporting ambitions with his qualifications in shipbuilding, working for a Norwegian company tasked with taking diesel-engined boats and replacing them with zero-emission versions. At the time, he was one of four employees in a company that has since grown to approximately 25 employees, implementing sustainable power solutions in everything from small ferries to transport ships and lifeboats.
“It does make sense in a marine environment,” Sears said from his training base in southern France, where he has been stationed for much of this year. “You have far fewer components, you don’t create any emissions, and the battery has 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 the fjord, it switches to electric propulsion so as not to pollute the environment. Then, when it leaves the fjord and enters the ocean, It will switch to the diesel engine to get home.
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“The other is a free-fall lifeboat, which is unlikely not to be functional but will actually never be used. They are always in a salty environment, so they corrode, which means the oil industry has to replace them every few months. Have an engineer fly out and inspect the engine. You can imagine the cost, disruption, and contamination of the process if it’s electric and you can test it from your couch.
“It was really special to be there in the beginning because there wasn’t a lot of this happening and we were right at the forefront. I was involved in some groundbreaking projects. Now it’s exploding.
His next assignment in Sweden is to help develop an eco-friendly paddle board prototype using a 3D printer using resin, a by-product of the wood industry. More recently, he has designed hydrofoils and high-performance windsurfing equipment for major brands, providing the added benefit of knowing his tools for competitive sports.
He attributes his passion for ocean sustainability to his upbringing in South West England. “Looking at the bigger picture, the logical thing to do is to make the world as efficient and sustainable as possible,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to continue using resources that are about to be depleted. I grew up in Cornwall, surrounded by It was nature, spending a lot of time on the lakes there and growing up appreciating nature, I’m sure that had an impact on me.
The professional side of his life has been on hold since early last year as he focuses all his attention on the upcoming Olympics. A brilliant start to the 2023 competition has raised hopes, but things have not been all smooth sailing.
While he was training for the Olympic trials in the Canary Islands, he found out his uncle was dying of cancer. “I had to make a choice,” he said. “Should I go back and say goodbye to my uncle, or should I stay and work hard to complete this life goal? I managed to talk to him and he told me not to go home and to hell with them and not to regret it. I was filled with emotions. It sounded cold, But I have to block it out and do this emotionally for my family.
After qualifying, he was hit by a car two weeks before the Marseille Olympic test event but still finished seventh despite stopping training and wearing a splint on his wrist. He then finished fifth at last year’s world championships.
This year’s lackluster results have not dampened his ambitions to compete in his first Olympics and he insists the target remains gold. But he is pragmatic and sees the bigger picture.
“Our goal is to win,” he said. “But I’m excited to go there because it was so hard to get there. I’m already grateful to have gotten to this point. It was so hard. I’m not sure I’d do it again, let’s put it that way. It’s really hard It was difficult, but it was worth it and I did it. It was an amazing life journey that taught me a lot.
