I humbly apologize for not getting this update out there sooner. We are moving at the rate of somebody who needs a vacation. One of those times when you are constantly saying that there is not enough time in the day
14 April sailing and racing and sailing all day off Sailing Paradise
You want to go sailing? Well, we will have about six or seven Sloops out doing just that this Saturday off Sailing Paradise from about 12 noon onwards.
You don’t know how or who to ask about sailing one of the Sloops? Just ask anybody until somebody comes up with an answer. Or, find Baba Harvey, the owner of two Sloops and proprietor of Sailing Paradise. Baba’s number is 231 3417 in case you want him to stand still and wave to find him. Goldray Ewing is also around at 331 4337 and he can get you aboard a Sloop also.
The point is to have fun this Saturday off Bluehills, which is being featured in this Issue of Times of The Islands, and to have fun either sailing or looking out at the sailers and sailors. There will be innumerable impromptu races and a lot of on the beach bragging going on but fun is the order of the day, so why not?
I know there is a kind of shyness about going to Bluehills, first, then going up to somebody and asking to get on their traditional Sloop but that is exactly what we are attempting to overcome with this Fun Sail Saturday. Hopefully, the Provo Sailing Club will make it over during the day with their Hobies or their bodies to join it all.
The South Caicos Regatta Committee is supposed to be on hand to cook up some South Caicos style conch treats to sell as a fund raiser and promotion of our participation in the South Caicos Regatta 2007.
Secrets and South Caicos Regatta
One of the things that somehow has to be overcome here in the Turks and Caicos is the concept of island selective secrecy for public events. Last year, with the South Caicos Regatta, I was not understanding the extent to which community groups are secretive about their activity until the date of the event had almost arrived. We, the Federation, were in the dark about arrangements for Sloops and crews to get to South Caicoswhere they would stay, nor what the incentives were. We were trusting on blind faith that everything had been arranged, which is what we were constantly told, but no details. We arrived and it was pretty bad for us.
This year the South Caicos Regatta Committee is made up solely of South Caicos Islanders it seems and again we are not being told much. I was asked to submit a budget for the racing, which I did, but thought we would be included on the discussions of what is going on concerning us and the Sloops. So far we have not been invited to one meeting? After our complaints about last year, this seems ludicrous. Most of the sailors are not trusting the South Caicos Regatta Committee. The blame for what happened last year fell on my shoulders as I, and Goldray Ewing, were the ones encouraging making a show even if there was no prize money, since this was an important event historically, being the first official sailing regatta in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Our sailing members of the Federation are stating that if the Federation are not involved with the planning of accommodations, food and the actual racing organisation then nobody was going to go to South Caicos from Providenciales, regardless of the amounts of cash prizes.
We think that originally the Sloops were in South Caicos for the end of the season and the organisation of the regatta was easy. They just raced, collected some money for placing and went home without much assistance by South Caicos in providing places to stay or per diems. They had been living on their Sloops for months, so were not looking for anything ashore. But, some years back this all changed and the sailors became dissatisfied with the non-attention of South Caicos, since they were making special trips to South Caicos, taking time off other jobs and away from their families to make the long trek from Providenciales, North or Middle. They were not already there, and they also were not pushed to the side as merely entertainment by beauty pageants, and eventually dances and motorboat racing.
Motorboat racing and sailboat racing are like auto racing and bicycle racing, two entirely different attitudes and crowds.
I am hoping that this years South Caicos Regatta Committee understands that sailing could possibly be limited to Middle Caicos participation and probably me and Goldray from Providenciales unless they let all of the sailors in on what is happening and understand that the Federation has given seven races in the last year and two months, so we do have experience in that very specific sport organisation.
The Writers’ Group formation
The Federation started a writers’ group to encourage the public to selfishly assist in our research and unselfishly to promote writing generally. Three of us started about a year ago, then we expanded to five, then lately six, the maximum number for a writers’ group. The idea is to have small groups of potential and substantive writers assisting each other in positive only ways to accomplish the goal of putting words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and arriving at a finished product. Ideally, the groups would be about four or five people having weekly sessions and being required to bring writing and followed up writing for the group to analyze and critique in positive ways, always mindful of keeping the voice of the writer.
Well, we decided to do a couple of theme writings, which developed into one-act plays and a short story on personal interpretations of Sloop Dog. Sandra Garland did the short story, Ed Williams and I did one act plays. None of our Sloop Dogs were in the slightest ways similar, nor were they doing anything close to the same things. Then, we decided to take some of our older work and publish a collection of them in a book form. David Bowen put in some discourses, Gilbert Morris gave poetry, Sandra submitted poetry, song verse and her Sloop Dog short story, Euwonka Selver joined us with young and heated poetry and a prose poem, I put in some sailing stuff. The manuscript is in the editing stage, with all illustrations and formatting completed. We hope to get some funding to print it and have it out by Summer.
We decided that the writers’ group become The Writers’ Group and actually register as a non profit organisation, loosely connected to the Federation. Our registration just came through, so now the profits from any publication goes into a central fund, after our percentages are taken out and that funding will assist any new publishing ventures.
So, we are inviting all of you to put pen to paper and produce something that we can publish.
CARIFTA Mary Jane exposure for Bahamians
If you went to or are going to the CARIFTA Games you will see the Gold Williams design and constructed Mary Jane, commissioned by The Prestige Group, which if you do not know is partnered by the Misick family, including the Premier. The vessel represents some of the best construction the Turks and Caicos has, being almost entirely framed and planked in imported Spanish Cedar with stem and stern posts of native Locust from North Caicos.
You might notice what the sign says that is covering the cockpit, in case of rain, that we are challenging the Caribbean Basin traditional sailors to race here in June at our Mariners’ Week and TCI Challenge Cup Regatta, which follows one week after the South Caicos Regatta.
If you do not know it, the Bahamashas accepted our challenge and is organizing their sloops, of which number we do not know, to come here and race us. There will be at least 12 Bahamas Sloops off Grace Bay in June against probably 12 Caicos Sloops.
Invitations to traditional sailing countries
We accompanied the Mary Jane with illustrated booklets that tell a little of the history of the Turks and Caicos Sloops as well as the concept for Mariners’ Week and the TCI Challenge. The booklets are being given to the coaches and heads of the CARIFTA teams that are participating that have working sailing competitions.
We are encouraging those countries to exchange maritime heritage information and to use the Turks and Caicos as a centre for a collection of that information and a centre for an annual pan Caribbean regatta during Mariners’ Week.
We also sent out official internet invitations to come with or without boats to this year’s Mariners’ Week, 6-12th June to Anguilla, Antigua, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, BVI, USVI, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Nevis. We will be sending the same to the Corn Islands, San Andreas and Providencia, Cartegena (Columbia), Isla Margarita (Venezuela), and the Netherlands Antilles today.
Proposals to the Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands
We have been submitting non-stop proposals to Government for assistance in our administration, various educational programmes and racing sponsorships. Hopefully, this year somebody will attend to much of this.
The Federation is here and it needs assistance in volunteers, commissioned workers and salaried personnel. This is an institution already but is just surviving by a lot of few people volunteers and very lowly paid workers. Our office is not what it should be and is basically unmanned or unwomanned, the sales stock, which could be very interesting goes un-reordered. If I can spend two hours in the office I sell something but I have to constantly move around doing things and cannot be there. We desperately need somebody to take that over for us on a commission basis.
We are growing and becoming much more complicated and need this to rest on quite a few committees and sub committees. The finance, racing and the marketing committee are formed and starting to function and we will need them with what is upcoming in our plans for incremental expansion. But, this organisation needs to work without a dependency on a couple of people and it has not reached that stage yet after two years and three months.
Bermuda Schooner
Looking at the Bermuda contingent at CARIFTA I thought of the fact that the archipelago of Bermuda, another British Overseas Territory, invested $5.2 millions on their 82-foot three masted schooner, Spirit of Bermuda, that was specifically designed as a 1780s’ replica to provide sail training for their youth. They used state of the art materials and construction methods and had one of the best shipyards in the world do the construction.
Chuck Hesse is always after me to pitch the construction of a Bermuda Sloop replica, there are none in existence at this point in time, over at his 1790 Bermudan Cockburn Town representation on Grand Turk. We figured a 70-footer would cost about $1.5 millions using the same state of the art material the Mujans used on their 82-footer. But, we would build it on Grand Turk as a working exhibit…
How Culture Works discussion of points for TCI Challenge
The sailors showed up last Wednesday night for our How Culture Works show to view the video of the launching of three Bahamas Sloops and four Bahamians telling them what they were going to do to these silly Caicos Sloops…
There were a few words sent back to the Bahamians about their leaded external keels and sharp underbodies and weight in general as well as the reality, the sailors’ said, that Turks and Caicos Islanders are just better sailors and boatbuilders and designers of boats…
The conversation went on after the show was over, moving out onto the parking lot, around two or three cars, back against a wall of WIV alongside the Bahamian WIV cameraman as he was leaving, out into the darkness of the night… I had to leave. It was getting late.
Shipping Registry on the way
One method of looking at the question of independence down the line is to get self-sufficiency as a strong goal and in this regard the attractiveness of an active and competitive Shipping Registry can do wonders to career opportunities and a steady national income.
The idea is to make the Turks and Caicos an attractive home port of the worlds’ megayachts, which in turn brings the security of the British Flag to them and annual re-registration fees to us. That is very simplistic but Cayman and Panama enjoy the fruits of that vine as far as a wide range of vessel offerings go, and only has to charge 20% duty on imports as part of the result. The Cayman Islands also has ship registry offices in Greece, Southhampton and Amsterdam, making it available by taking the ease of joining them to commercial shipping centres.
Runoko Rashidi lecture on pre-Columbian African migration to Western Hemisphere
Renown author and historian, Dr. Runoko Rashidi will be coming to Providenciales in June, after Mariners’ Week to lecture on pre-Columbian African migration to the Western Hemisphere. Dr. Rashidi has co-authored books with socio-anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima, the foremost authority on African Diosporic movement of peoples.
This will be the first lecture of this type in the Turks and Caicos Islands and part of a continuing discussion on Caribbean migration patterns before the arrival of the European. Our interest is in the new writing of history, specifically a more important emphasis being placed on the maritime aspect then in the past. Before, it just seemed that people popped up in places without having to cross oceans, and strangely enough, most thought tries to prove nobody used sails until the Egyptians or the later Phoenicians.
Mayan circumnavigation of Caribbean?
In keeping with the above theme, in doing a little research on the evolution of the Turks Islands and Caicos Islands Sloop designs I went way back into the known Caribbean maritime history to find pieces that added up to canoa trading routes utilized by the Chontol Maya people that has them sailing (though there is argument against the use of sails by them) from the Campeche area in Mexico to the West and North then East and South to Florida and Cuba, as well as a Easterly route to Florida and Cuba directly from the Yucatan. They also are recorded as making another route along the Central American coasts to South America to what is now Venezuela. There is evidence of passages to Hispaniola and one very interesting piece of evidence of their at least trading with people who came here is the pointed Chontol Mayan canoe paddle, used for steering a sailing canoa.
National Archives
All of this history stuff can get non-history minded people a bit bored, so it should be stored away from them so they can go on having a good time and we who like that kind of stuff can bury ourselves amongst our own kind in libraries, museums and their organizing overseer, archives.
When thinking of archives, which not a lot of people do, it is interesting to note that a national archives under the British system falls under the authority of the Chief Justice because when you think about it an archives houses all records of documented events which include laws as well as a book on knot tying. One aspect of an archives that is also not generally thought of is the interweaving of documents that when accomplished properly will take the researcher from one point through all the areas needed to complete the task at hand.
Okay, I am through, go back to watching or not watching CARIFTA, but remember Saturday 14 April around noon at Sailing Paradise to go sailing…
