EcoAthletes’ founder and CEO Lew Blaustein often says that “the world doesn’t have the time for athletes to stay on the sideline when it comes to climate change.” So, it is no surprise that the organization heartily welcomes world class sailor CJ Perez as its newest EcoAthletes Champion.

You see, when Perez, 18, gets passionate about something — no matter if it’s sailing, ocean health, or the climate crisis — she jumps into action and makes a difference.

“Not from a sailing family, I didn’t start the sport until I was 13 years old when most kids started at six or seven,” the Hawai’i Kai native recalled. “We live near the water, and I saw kids on sailboats crossing the ocean fast and thought, ‘I want to do that’. So, I begged my parents to sign me up for lessons. Ever since I started, my coaches said I learned faster than anyone they’d ever seen — I’d be passing people who’d been sailing for years.”

Yes, Perez has the gift of being able to understand and process the complexities. But getting to SailGP’s development program only five years after first setting foot in a sailboat takes a lot more than that.

“Once I got into it, I was into it!” Perez asserted. “I’ve always had the energy and drive to get better and be great. I’d ask questions, take out books from the library on the physics of sailing, watch YouTube videos to learn the tightest angles at which boats could sail. And then I’d read and watch more videos.”

Perez started racing one month after her first lesson. Eight months after that, she was racing in her first national championships in Sarasota, Florida, in the Under 21s. At 14 years of age.

Her parents had no clue.

“Another mom told my mom that I was really good at sailing,” recalled Perez. “So, she ended up coming to Sarasota! I came in third place and because of that, got to take part in the halftime show at the 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda.”

That was her first opportunity to see the dual-hulled, high-tech America’s Cup foiling catamarans — they seem to float a foot or so above the water’s surface when the wind is up. She was hooked.

“I said to myself, ‘Ooh, I wanna do THAT,” Perez said with a wink. “And so, for the past four years I’ve been sailing both catamarans and mono hulls. I won the Under 21 World Championships in 2019 in New Zealand Open Skiff. Once COVID hit, the formal racing stopped but I got to sail every day, working on a Waszp, a one-person foiling boat. This was huge because I got experience handling a foiling boat in informal races and someone from SailGP saw me.”

SailGP is the world’s top-flight global foiling series, now in its third year. Last year, she was accepted into its Women’s Pathway program, which gives women sailors the opportunity to compete with the top Sail GP teams from around the world.

“Jimmy Spithill, the skipper of the US SailGP team and an America’s Cup skipper, called to tell me I’d made it, which was INCREDIBLE,” Perez marveled. “I was 17 at the time, the youngest person ever picked. And I was the first woman ever to take part in a SailGP race last October in Spain. We were a four-person crew, and my job was to do some heavy grinding. It was all worth it because we won!”

Winning — and even finishing — races is more challenging for Perez and her teammates because of ocean waste.

“Ocean waste is dangerous to the boat and the foils,” she notes. “We’ve hit glass, plastic and other waste. This impacts races, and more importantly, it destroys animals and other ocean life.”

This is why making a positive difference on ocean health and climate are firmly embedded in the DNA of Sail GP — and of CJ Perez.

“Our culture in Hawai’i is dedicated to protecting the ocean,” she said. “It is deeply engrained in us that it is our playground, our source of food and of life itself. This was deeply rooted in me from a very young age. And once I started sailing, the need to both care for the ocean and to do whatever we can to maintain a healthy, livable climate, became exponentially clearer.”

Perez tried to find tangible ways to help.

She took Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Science as a high school senior, gaining valuable insights about our climate impacts.

She adopted a plant-based diet.

And Perez has created the Clean Sailors Youth Sailing Team, with Lukas Hesse of Germany and Jann Schwepbach of Switzerland. They are competing in the 69F Youth Foiling Gold Cup to spread the word about ocean health.

“Lukas, Jann and I want to be role models for other sailors and for athletes in other sports,” she offered. “We just completed our first event in Miami, where we finished 5th. Our plan is to win and to advocate for the oceans and for the climate at events in Slovenia, Newport and Lake Garda, Italy.”

Perez looks forward to expanding her environmental advocacy’s reach and power as an EcoAthletes Champion.

“I am excited that EcoAthletes will help me amplify my environmental and climate messaging,” related Perez, who is taking a gap year before entering the University of California-Berkeley. “I am ready to learn from other Champions from a variety of sports, and to sharing ideas with them!”

EcoAthletes CEO and founder Lew Blaustein is excited to welcome Perez to the Champions roster.

“The qualities that have made CJ a world class sailor at 18 — commitment, curiosity, tenacity, and passion — will also make her a powerful EcoAthletes Champion,” Blaustein shared. “She will make a difference on the water and on the #ClimateComeback.”

You can follow CJ on Instagram