Youth sailors (13 – 25) from across Antigua and Barbuda will once again, be participating as racing crew members during the 53rd edition of Antigua Sailing Week (ASW) April 25 – May 2, 2020.
Over 40 hopefuls have signed up for the Youth to Keel (Y2K) program, which began in 2018 as a tangible and sustainable opportunity to involve under privileged youths in this sport.
“ASW has always encouraged and celebrated the participation of youth in the regatta. Yachting, as both a career and leisure opportunity, is often inaccessible to less privileged youth. Y2K provides a structured program that allows Antiguan youth with keelboat experience the chance to compete in Antigua Sailing Week,” states Alison Sly-Adams, President of ASW.
In 2019 two crews of six raced on board the NSA Cork 1720’s, with Jules Mitchell and Joshua Daniels at the helm. Jules Mitchell and his crew took first in place in their class.
Joshua Daniels (20), now a Sailing Instructor at the National Sailing Academy, has been with the Y2K since its inception: “I started sailing while attending the All Saints Secondary School. At first it was just for fun and gradually I became addicted to the sport. I have gained leadership skills that have helped me to captain one of two youth crews at last year’s Antigua Sailing Week. It has also made me more aware of my role as a role model. I encourage youngsters interested in sailing and racing to get involved”
For the 2020 Y2K program the ASW management team has invited two youth sailors, Joshua Daniels representing the NSA and Rhone Kirby from Antigua Yacht Club, to be part of the Sailing Advisory committee. This committee works with Race Manager Jaime Torres to agree the racing strategy for the event, affording this new crop of racers a chance to learn the ropes behind the scenes of race management.
Additionally, ASW sponsored Cowes Week Youth Day, in the UK, and offered the winning youth team skipper and guest a trip to ASW to race as part of the Y2K program. Ollie Hill and Emma Crane are very excited to be coming to ASW for the first time this year.
Monday, April 27 will be Y2K Race Day and all participants will be recognized at the post-race day prize giving and all will be wearing the exclusive Y2K branded race shirts.
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Notes From A Native Son Of The Rock! “The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.” – Capitaine Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, the Upright Man, Revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and assassinated President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987!
Give Praise and Thanks to Madame Alison Sly-Adams, President of ASW, Commodore John Duffy, The Mothers, Fathers and Grand Parents of the youngsters, Hugh Bailey, Entrepreneur, Skipper Supreme and “Grandfather” of Sailing in Antigua, Dr “Bernie” Evan-Wong, a true Caribbean Sailor and Intrepid Winner who has sailed in more regattas along the Caribbean and Lucayan archipelagos than any and Dr. Reginald Murphy, archaeologist par excellence, one of our true Champions and sailor of the Classics!
A Picture says A Thousand Words! May the mothers, fathers and grandparents encourage their girls to change their sport’s paradigm just as the Victorious “Island Girls” made that revolutionary act, rowing across the Atlantic, not only in thinking but also as an historic referent point of constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decenteredness, and lack of agency!
This mere voice in the wilderness has been exhorting the powers that be both in government and sports organizations that if Tourism, Hospitality and Yachting are going to be the social, financial and environmental drivers towards a Blue and Green Economy, there must be a paradigm change not only in cognitive and intellectual education but also physical and sporting! The Minister Of Foreign Affairs is well positioned to lead the charge before his cabinet colleagues, in his constituency, amongst his peers in the sporting authorities and the public at large!
“The cognitive and structural aspects of a paradigm are incomplete without the functional aspect. There is something more than knowing in the Afrocentric sense; there is also doing. Afrocentricity holds that all definitions are autobiographical.” Dr. Molefi Asante: Afrocentricity The Theory of Social Change!
It would be most helpful for the 95% People of African Descent to envision the Caribbean Sea not as a barrier or constraint but as a highway for development and engagement! There is an untapped opportunity to develop champions in all aspects of the Marine Environment to become an “economic power house” in the Antilles as we go quietly swimming from “entrepreneurial socialism” where the beach is just the beginning in the Caribbean to “empowerment capitalism” while sailing in the deep blue of the Atlantic!
ADOMS has the second largest Ship Registry in the Caribbean Sea and Lucayan Archipelago! We have no Mariners!
Antigua & Barbuda (including Redonda) has one of the Largest Economic Zones in the Atlantic Ocean amongst SIDS in the Eastern Caribbean! Our Fishery from 1834 has been Coastal! Nations From around the World trawl fearlessly in our jurisdiction without let or hindrance!
Move the Army which is not mandated our Constitution into a full fledged Coast Guard and for local youths unable to find employment and those who have dropped out of school create a Cadet Corp and a Maritime Institute! Costa Rica does not have an Army! It has a well developed Coast Guard to secure its Coast and Maritime Interests!
Tourism, Hospitality and Yachting offer more economic and entrepreneurial development for marine and aquatic business and related activities than can be found in other sporting endeavours!
Merge ABHTI and ABIIT under one Board and add a Marine Technology School!
It’s never too late to develop Centres of Excellence at UWI, Five Islands in Oceanography and Maritime Education rather than Law which they already have on three Campuses in St. Augustine, Mona and Cave Hill! It’s all about Strategy: Access; Alignment; and, Agility!
“The second law of dialectical materialism is the change of quantity into quality. At a certain stage a developing contradiction, so to speak, explodes, and both the elements of contradiction are thereby altered. In the history of society these explosions are known as revolution. All the economic, social and political tendencies of the age find a point of completion which becomes the starting-point of new tendencies.” – CLR James, Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity (1947)!
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