Few cities in the world are as closely linked to the sport of sailing as the east coast United States city of Newport, Rhode Island.

Founded in 1639, Newport is situated amongst the beautiful scenery on Narragansett Bay – New England’s largest estuary – and is also bordered by the Rhode Island Sound and the Sakonnet River.

The city is renowned for its quaint colonial and New England architecture, its thriving waterfront with restaurants, bistros, art galleries and boutiques and its warm hospitality.

Newport has also evolved into a world-class sailing venue that regularly attracts the world’s best sailors and plays host to the sport’s top tier competitions, such as the America’s Cup. Today it is also the home of the 11th Hour Racing Team.

The first Newport stopover in The Ocean Race was hosted by Sail Newport during the 2014–15 edition and the fleet returned again for the 2017–18 race, making the 2022–23 Newport stop the city’s third consecutive participation in the around-the-world race.

The Ocean Race event had a wide-ranging economic and tourism impact on the community. The 2015 stopover generated an estimated $47.7 million to the Ocean State’s economy. Both previous visits of The Ocean Race to Sail Newport drew large visitor numbers, with over 137,000 people in the race village at Fort Adams in 2015 and over 100,000 in 2018.

The 2015 stopover in Newport marked the birth of the sustainability programme for The Ocean Race, an initiative that subsequently expanded to all stopovers in the 2017–18 edition, in collaboration with 11th Hour Racing, the founding partner of the programme.

From the sailors’ perspective the Newport stopover is a chance for some rest and recuperation while the shore crews prepare their boats for the upcoming potentially gruelling transatlantic passage on Leg 5 from Newport to Aarhus in Denmark.