The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

MINISTER of Agriculture, Marine Resources and Family Island Affairs Clay Sweeting says that his ministry would support a push for sailing in schools as the government moves to make it the national sport.

At a press conference yesterday at the Island Traders Building, Mr Sweeting was asked by reporters if the government had moved to officially make sailing the national sport. He said yes and that a formal announcement will be made soon.

“It’s already been confirmed through Cabinet and we will continue and make a formal announcement in months to come,” Mr Sweeting said.

Asked if there is a push to make sailing more mainstream among the public, the minister said that while the ministry has stumbled in its support of sailing over the years, there is already a large youth participation in the sport.

“The ministry has done a great job in the past, and I think we have lost our way a little bit with regattas and we will continue to do that,” he said. “Across the nation though we have a lot of young individuals getting involved in sailing. I mean even in Eleuthera itself we probably have around 40 to 50 young persons involved in sailing.”

Clyde Rolle, vice-commodore and race coordinator of the National Family Island Regatta Committee, expanded on the minister’s comments by explaining that there were over 300 sailors involved in just two classes of next week’s regatta.

He said that there are currently hundreds of children involved in sailing throughout the nation and that the waiting list to join a sailing programme is years in advance.

“I can say that there are hundreds of young kids involved in sailing right now. As a matter of fact the E class boats that were introduced about 10, 15 years ago we have them being built five and six at a time right now. The junior programme that we have around the islands right now, they can only take so many juniors at a time in the programme and some of those programmes are booked out years in advance. They can’t take anymore into the programme, especially here in Nassau,” Mr Rolle said.

He said that sailing has the potential to rival track and field in terms of popularity in The Bahamas.

“So sailing is looking good and don’t look at sailing as something that people don’t know about. Because the kids become very excited when it comes to sailing and when it comes to junior sailing. And I must give Danny (Strachan, chairman of National Family Island Regatta Committee) some credit, he has been behind us in this for years and this is going to continue to go from strength to strength. It’s probably going to be one of the strongest sports along with track and field in the country.”

Mr Sweeting said he would be willing to work alongside other ministries to get sailing into schools to widen its influence.

“So I think anything that we do as a government if it’s sailing being announced as the national sport that it would be (driven) by the government to help facilitate whether it’s included in the schools as part of the curriculum or if it’s sponsoring events in the Family Islands so that they can get involved as well. But nationwide I think that you can see that people are getting involved in the sport and we will do as we can as a ministry work along with the Ministry of Sports to drive this.”