Previous
New generation setting sail
WELCOME BAHAMAS - NASSAU, CABLE BEACH & PARADISE ISLAND - 2006
New generation setting sail
Young athletes take up the national sport
Almost any weekend or weekday afternoon, weather permitting, the Montagu foreshore is a good place to watch Bahamians enjoying their national sport, sailing.
Stand at the water's edge a little east of Fort Montagu and you're likely to see distinctive Bahamian sloops practicing advanced racing manoeuvers, or a flotilla of small boats, sailed by juniors, zipping around the buoys.
Keep an eye on the young ones; they represent the next generation of competitive sailors in The Bahamas. Thanks to the Bahamas National Sailing School and a growing fleet of optimists (or optis, as the little sailboats are called), public school students 16 and under are being groomed to become the next generation of champions. They are learning to handle a boat at a much younger age than sailors in the older generation, who learned their skills aboard Bahamian sloops.
"One thing about racing those sloops is that a lot of the guys never learn to actually sail one. I didn't even get to touch the tiller until I was in my 20s," says Dwayne Higgins, an administrator at D W Davis Junior High School, who grew up around his father's B Class sloop Cobra.
"But you look at these kids in the optis - they are sailing them all by themselves and making all their own decisions on the race course," says Higgins, one of many volunteers who helped recruit students to take part in the new sailing school programme in 2005. While sailing has typically been a sport for the upper crust - either your father owned a sloop, or your family was a member of one of Nassau's tony yacht clubs - there's a drive on now to take the national sport to a wider community. The Bahamas National Sailing School was founded in 2004 by the country's amateur sailing authority, the Bahamas Sailing Association (BSA), and is endorsed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports. One of the school's main goals is to create opportunities for youngsters to take part in amateur competitive sailing.
While sloop regattas tend to focus on prize money and boisterous parties, the rewards of one-design sailing include sportsmanship and personal development, perhaps igniting dreams of representing The Bahamas internationally.
Jimmie Lowe, the BSA's director of sailing operations, says his involvement in the school is a way to give back to a sport that's enriched his life.
"Sailing has been good to me," says Lowe, a well-known personality on the sailing scene. "I've been all over the world sailing for The Bahamas. I've been to Russia for a pre-Olympic regatta in '79; I've been to Brazil, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the east and west coasts of the United States, Canada, Japan, all over Europe, Spain and Scandinavia."
Younger sailors sought
The youth training programme got a kick-start when Lowe and his snipe class crew, Peter Bruce Wassitsch, represented The Bahamas at the 2003 Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic. Joining them there was sunfish world champion Donnie Martinborough.
While yacht club members had for years lamented that few young Bahamians were active in the sport, what he saw at the Pan Am Games made it clear that something had to be done, says Lowe.
"Bruce and I looked around and saw all these young kids involved. Of all the sailors participating, we were probably the oldest there - we just had nobody to make up a full team (for The Bahamas), because we only carried a sunfish and a snipe."
The two sat down and hatched a plan to bring a new fleet of single-handed boats to The Bahamas that could be used to teach the next generation of competitors. The opti dinghy, a fun, easy-to-handle bathtub of a sailboat, is popular around the world. According to the International Optimist Dinghy Association, the little boat is sailed and raced in more than 110 countries by more than 150,000 sailors. Some 70% of the medal-winning skippers at the Athens Olympics were former opti sailors.
Through fund-raising and with help from the opti class association and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, which covered the import duties, the school started with a fleet of 19 boats, bought second-hand from US boat builder McLaughlin Boat Works.
The first summer programme in 2005 included 30 students from three government junior high schools in Nassau: H O Nash,
D W Davis and C H Reeves. Other participants included kids from the Royal Nassau Sailing Club and the Nassau Yacht Club, whose members donated their time and facilities to host the school. Organizers say participation has mushroomed, giving youngsters from all walks of life a chance to take the helm, and just in time.
"I'm getting up in my late 50s now and have been sailing competitively for 20 years," says Lowe. "But there's a big gap: We've lost a couple of generations of sailors. We felt that to build a foundation we really have to start
at the bottom, with the children. It'll take us six or eight years before we get to where we have fully active fleets again."
By focusing on one-design and Olympic class boats, such as optis and lasers, the sailing community hopes to prepare local sailors to represent The Bahamas in regattas around the world. But winning isn't the only objective - as exciting as it is to be first across a finish line or have one's sights set on Olympic gold. Beyond learning boat-handling skills, racing helps young men and women develop discipline, self-esteem and hones their ability to make quick decisions as conditions change. Sharing their love of the sport is a bigger prize than any trophy for the dozens of parents, volunteers and organizers who have made the junior sailing programme an early success. The joy of watching an opti regatta is seeing how thrilled the boys and girls are navigating their way around a race course.
Loving every moment
When high school student Rohn Smith Jr first signed up he couldn't wait to step into an opti for the first time. First though, he had to pass a swim test in the Nassau Yacht Club's swimming pool.
"He jumped in the pool and sank straight to the bottom. We had to dive him up," laughs Lowe, recalling that the setback didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the youngster from C H Reeves Junior High.
"We... taught him how to swim," says Lowe, "then we put him in the next session and taught him how to sail."
A few weeks later, young Rohn proved that nothing could take the wind out his sails. He showed up for the first optimist championship, even though he had broken his arm the day before. "He just put a plastic bag over his cast and competed," says Lowe.
"That's one of those things that makes this programme worthwhile," he says. "You can see the desire and the want that these kids have to do it. You just have to satisfy that."
There's plenty of inspiration in The Bahamas for today's youthful competitors. The country has a proud history of international sailing success. The country's first Olympic gold medal was earned in sailing in 1964, when Sir Durward Knowles and crew Cecil Cooke won the star class competition at Tokyo. Sir Durward?s Olympic career spanned an incredible 40 years, from 1948 to 1988. At age 88, he is still active as president of the Bahamas Sailing Association.
A change of name
With Sir Durward's experience, the help of a dedicated executive committee and dozens of volunteers, the non-profit sailing authority refocused its efforts on junior sailing, and changed its name from the Bahamas Yachting Association to the more inclusive Bahamas Sailing Association.
While the country's two most prominent sailing clubs are based in Nassau, excitement sparked by BSA and the sailing school has travelled to islands throughout the archipelago.
Since 2005, the fleet of Optis has grown to at least 70, with eight boats brought to Hope Town in Abaco, and another eight introduced to Long Island in the southern Bahamas. Sailing communities in Freeport and Exuma have also joined the programme. Ultimately, the National Sailing School envisions a training programme that will rotate an instructor around the Out Islands.
"We want to get it into George Town, Staniel Cay, Black Point, Eleuthera, the Abacos," says Lowe. "I can see it being almost a full-time job for one of our instructors to just travel from island to island, going to different settlements. The more people you teach, the more people are going to want to sail. If you teach them at a tender age, they just grow up with it as second nature."
On course for the future
The renewed spirit of competition is growing. Aside from the Optis, boats of all sorts are being rigged and raced in regattas throughout The Bahamas.
When the BSA chose to host the 2005 Bahamas Sunfish National Championship in the Exuma Islands, for instance, it drew a record number of sailors to compete in the beautiful waters off Staniel Cay. For an area steeped in the tradition of Bahamian sloop racing, the sunfish regatta gave many sailors their first experience in one-design sailing. The event attracted top performers from Nassau, Staniel Cay and nearby Black Point. Among them was hometown favourite, Nioshi Rolle, a 16-year-old junior sailing champion from Staniel Cay who also helms the C class sloop Termite when she's home from high school in Nassau.
"Staniel Cay has always had a good racing tradition, from Rolly Gray and Tida Wave and the Family Island regattas," says David Hocher, owner of the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, host club for the Sunfish event. "Rolly Gray really put Staniel Cay on the map in terms of the community sailing tradition. Some of the younger guys have organized the New Year's Regatta. Then there's also a cruising regatta," says Hocher. The move to change the venue for the Sunfish Nationals was prompted by BSA executive John Lawrence who, like Hocher, grew up in Staniel Cay.
While the sunfish fleet is more established, the BSA plans to organize and introduce training for other one-design sailboats, such as lasers and international 470s. These are the kinds of boats opti sailors graduate to when they are older and more proficient.
While the sailing school now relies on the generosity of the yacht clubs to house the boats and host the programme, a proposal is in the works to build a dedicated sailing centre where the fleets can grow, allowing even more youngsters to take up the national sport.
"We would love to introduce sailing as a part of our curriculum here, as part of our physical education programme, the same way as volleyball and basketball are options today," says Higgins. "It would be a totally new experience for these kids."
CONTACT INFORMATION
E-Mail: Click here
Internet: https://
Disclaimer:
Information in editorial and listings is subject to change at any time.