Not all plain sailing for VI Youngsters
Whilst the Olympic hopefuls Anderson and Brockbank put a couple of earlier disappointments behind them to conclude their Santander ISAF World Championships campaign with a 6th, 7th and 10th place run in, to finish 58th, other Virgin Islands Sailors were also leaving their marks on the Sailing fraternity.
Daniel Petrovic competed in the Niel Pryde UK Laser Nationals in Largs, Scotland earlier this month. The Regatta was a weeklong event with 86 competitors and Daniel ended up placing 13th out of 43 in the Radial Silver Fleet.
The decision to race in this regatta was last minute as he discovered it was to take place during a planned visit to the UK, just days ahead of time. Daniel sailed the regatta without the help of a coach and without much practice in UK conditions and is overall pleased with his results.
In late August Jason Putley competed in his first ever international laser event in Kingston, Canada. Jason was coached by Chris Watters, a former Virgin Islands Sailing Coach, during the week-long event.
Jason competed in two regattas back to back. The first was the International Regatta; Jason placed 25th out of 114. He also competed in a higher-level regatta that followed and received a 37 out of 56. Jason's main focus of the event was to learn and improve his sailing throughout the regatta, not the number in which he placed. Jason's next regatta will be the 2014 Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida.
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8 Responses to “Not all plain sailing for VI Youngsters”
There are many talented black children (now adults) who graduated from the KATS program and was never recognized for their talent and contribution. These children also represented their country in the previous youth and adult regattas but as you alluded to "white bourgeois sport", there is no equal rights or equal ability where they are concern.
I don't know how you can possibly conclude that I asked for government money from my posting. I invested my own money. The idea was to establish a commercial framework funded by visiting tourists seeking sailing instruction and qualifications. The proposed fee schedule was heavily discounted for local kids to make sailing accessible to them, and to encourage them to get into the industry. The plan was to reach out at the local schools to get kids on the water, not just to open a business for visitors. Zero funding solicited or desired from the BVI government at any time.
You mention the BVI sailing authority and say "should" be supporting....etc. That sounds great but is the government really supporting this? There are lots of "shoulds" in the BVIs but many are not transferred into action. Exactly how much outreach is this sailing authority doing, and where? The existing program is where? Is it Territory wide? Where is the encouragement in your proposal that Online Now talks about?
Say what you will about the volunteer program there is, and no doubt it is good, but count the number of participants and divide that by the number of children in the BVIs. I imagine the result is a small percentage. Ironic, given that we live in the so-called sail boat charter capital of the world.