Five Reasons to Help Emily Richmond Sail Around the World

Last week we told you about the growing number of independent artists turning to Kickstarter to crowdsource funds for the recording of albums, the production of feature films and even the reunion of infamously discordant bands. It's not just traditional creative-types who've flooded the site looking to support their endeavors, though, and of all the offbeat projects up for backing (convert a short bus to hawk Thai food, fund a griddle guide) Emily Richmond's is definitely the most ambitious.

The 24-year old currently lives in Los Angeles, but if everything goes as planned, sometime this winter she'll be setting off on what's probably the first “community-driven” circumnavigation of the globe, a two-year trip she seems poised to make all by her badass self. First, though, she's gotta get a boat. Richmond hopes to raise $8,000 via Kickstarter to purchase and outfit a 35-foot fiberglass vessel by the end of August—and here are five reasons to help her do just that.

She knows what she's doing.
Richmond has been sailing for four years, making a mostly-solo trip from LA to Costa Rica and then spending a summer on a yacht crew in the Pacific Northwest right after graduating from film school at the University of Southern California. Even a brief glance at her project's website makes it clear she pretty much eats, sleeps and breathes sailing (right down to the Steve Zissou—uh, err, Cousteau-inspired color palette).

She's not going for a record.
"I'm not interested in speed, I guess," she says in her Kickstarter video. "I'm more interested in the places that I'm going and the people I'm going to meet." Apparently it's tough to get funding for big sailing trips unless there's some kind of record-breaking involved, but Emily hopes reaching her Kickstarter goal will prove there's a marked interest in her project and attract some bigger supporters, like the National Geographic Society's Young Explorers program.

Her real goals are worthy.
In addition to highlighting alternative energy sources (the wind alone will power much of her journey, and she hopes to outfit the boat with solar panels), Richmond plans to give back to the ports she visits along the way. In addition to her Kickstarter fundraising, she's taking donations of school supplies and used eyeglasses, promising to send tokens of appreciation from the communities she visits to anyone who gives. “One day out of the blue, you'll receive a postcard, a letter, or just an envelope with a photo inside,” she writes, “and it will remind you that we're all citizens in a global community, just neighbors in different states, and that we're all in this together.”

You've always wanted to find a coconut in your mailbox.
Richmond is offering a few really clever incentives for Kickstarter donors. How about an origami sailboat (made by Richmond herself) for giving $5, a coconut mailed straight to your door for $125, or a personalized video tour of the locale of your choice for $1,000 or more? Score! Check out her Kickstarter page for more. (And hey, you mercenary, prizes are cumulative—the more you give, the more you get.)

There could be a documentary.
Richmond plans to post video updates from the high seas, and hopes to get additional funding for some kind of larger documentary project about the people and places she encounters on the trip. Plucky film student turns bighearted Magellan—how could this not be fantastic? Only if the project never gets off the ground (or out of the dock, as it were). If you're so inclined, keep tabs on Richmond's progress and back her here.