I will be leaving this Thursday, 28 June, for London to attend a Public Administration International (PAI)  study programme that focuses on the promotion of heritage and culture conservation: it’s importance in the society, methods of maintenance, tourism values, funding agencies and economic impact.

This is being funded by the Ministry and Department of Culture and it seems I will be the only person representing the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is a five-day seminar that should secure a broad base of information on how to forge ahead with an aspect of most countries that usually is overlooked, culture, mainly due to priority restraints of the more looming areas of governance.

The study programme invites both the public sector and NGOs and actually works toward a mutual understanding of the cooperation needed by both entities in order to realise social needs.

One of the big topics on the agenda is self-sustainability. Aside from avenues for fund raising, this is our next step. We must become self-sufficient to exist. We have Sloops and are looking to have a location and we have the respect of the community at large. That should add up, with a few good minds concentrated on keeping us solvent, to several business opportunities. Our goal this year should be to take the steps necessary to become self-sufficient and I am hoping there is a lot of pertinent information regarding this quest about to be revealed in London.

We can do the model Sloop replicas, construct a sailing centre with restaurant and rentable bungalows, rent out a variety of non-pollutant vessels, give guided tours under sail, oar and staff, and do regular fund raising events to administer educational and research programmes and projects. But we need staff and we need to pay that staff a livable wage to keep them working.

A simple Federation budget with programmes paying workers is still looking around $250,000 to make this organisation professional. To make it what it should be that figure should be trebled and include a lot of training of personnel.

After two and a little more then a half years we are just starting out. Government is slowly starting to recognize us as an important social entity and though they still don’t really know how to put us in a category they are finding it more and more difficult to ignore us, especially with Hon. Dr. Carlton Mills at the reigns of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture.

I promise to bring back all there is to bring back from London that will assist the construction of a strong culture and heritage foundation here. We will have a meeting with all of the local cultural entities to go over all the information I will bring back with me.

Our Baby Is Due 
Katya and I are having a baby, if on schedule, this 14 August in London. The coincidence of being offered a chance to fly over with her to London for her settling in period, because of the culture and heritage programme, on the date recommended by our baby doctor is one of the happiest things that has happened to us here. We could not have afforded to do this otherwise.

We will be in London for eleven days getting her set up comfortably with her mother and reviewing hospitals before and after the conference.

I will return for about two and a half weeks to work on our projects and get the Bahamas phase of our book, SPIRIT- The Turks Islands and Caicos Islands Sloops, out of the way and assist with more information on creating a National Archives here.

Art and Writing Competition
This is always a hard one. When we had the first Art and Writing Competitions back in the proto-type for the Primary Schools Maritime Heritage Programme, Sailing Our Sloops, the raw talent (and their copiers) really took our breaths away- they were really listening and experiencing what we were putting out there!

The present sixth-graders are no exception. This year we had Katya, Simone Been and myself as judges and we wanted almost all of those submitting work to win. That is sort of a problem with competitions anyway. It is not that anybody really looses but that there is a focus on the one that everybody thought to be the best. Unfortunately, the ones not thought to be the best usually feel that they were not good enough. I want to say to any parents of any of those children who submitted work that they were almost all great. I have to say almost because of the peeking over the shoulder artists and writers who are still in schools because I remember them when I was in primary school too.

The winners are Jerold Joseph in Art and Jamila Morgan in the Writing Competition.

Regatta Commission

At the prompting of the Caicos Sloop racers, who are both members of the Federation and not, I am proposing that the Turks and Caicos Maritime Heritage Federation proposes to assist in the formation of a regulatory body established to control competitive maritime activities in the Turks and Caicos Islands, such as:

 The Regatta Commission:

This body is to be comprised of people who are not participating in the schedule of nautical events as vessel owners nor as Captains of vessels. In the case of Board Competitions, no Commissioner can be an active participant in any scheduled Board event.

Individuals who have accepted an invitation to sit on the Regatta Commission:

The other official roles of the proposed Regatta Commission are to organise Judges and Umpire Committees which deliver throughout the TCI their services and to educate throughout the TCI on specific types of nautical event organisation so there will be a uniform regulatory system throughout our archipelago. In this manner we are able to invite international competition to these waters.

In order to impose judgments on the Rules the Regatta Commission will have to undergo study programmes with qualified and experienced nautical event instructors and be certified as TCI Regatta Commission Judges, Measurers, Race Officers and Umpires.

The Rules to be utilized will come from both of the international regulatory bodies, the RYA-Royal Yachting Association (UK) and the ISAF- International Sailing Federation (Intl/USA/Olympics).

Flare Guns and Safety Afloat

When H and I sat in the water looking at the an empty sky where a star burst flare was supposed to have been bursting we really wanted to chase it with a gun propelled flare, knowing that that would work. Here, we had tried three sky bursts with nothing but failing successes. We had tried hand held flares, looking less then a mile away at a rescue boat towing another Sloop through that third storm, but two were only able to be held three feet up in four foot swells and one did not light.

Back on  dry land we asked on How Culture Works and wrote in several newspapers about the reasoning for flare guns being illegal. The answers from one hundred percent of the people answering either on the programme or on the street was that they should not be but probably because of a couple of incidents where they were used to kill.

Then, I get a telephone call and on the other end I am told that a couple of lawyers got interested in the flare gun controversy and swear that they cannot find a law against the possession of a flare gun anywhere.

I did not get their names, so I wrote about this possibility in this Log and have been receiving the same information from people within the Marine Police and the Maritime Department and the DECR. Everybody has been accepting the law but nobody seems to have actually seen the printed word about the law.

I actually have people wanting to form a lobby to lobby toward the repeal of this ‘law’ but have told them to wait until we get an answer from the Attorney General’s Office, which should be the final word on if flare guns are legal in the Turks and Caicos Islands or not…

Six and a half hours after our fleeting eleation turned dour resolve and our would be rescuer moved across the horizon with Maroons I in tow, the two of us, wet and exhausted climbed aboard a DECR boat because of the keen awareness of Cap Cox. We should have been ashore with our Sloop in tow at least five hours prior and not have Cap out there scouring the waters in the darkness. Shooting a propelled flare way up in the air would have been noted easily by the other boats out there.

If this is a law then this is the only country in the world that has such a law against a piece of safety equipment designated as Distress Signaling Equipment in Chapman’s Piloting Seamanship & Small Boat Handling.

Generally, most thought flare guns should be controlled by registration, because it is a firearm as well as safety equipment.

Chalk Sound Programmes
We will be heading off the Chalk Sound Programmes with the Junior Park Warden Programme of the DECR this year. This specially designed programme will combine our basic sailing (a Caicos Sloop) class with Sloop model rigging and sailing.

Rhonda Lee-Dalrymple, the Education Officer at the DECR combined a couple of our programmes to design this unique two-day experiential educational programme. We are just working out the wrinkles in getting it to the students easily and in an enjoyable manner.

Leale Missick Takes the Helm
Federation Chairman Goldray Ewing gave his tiller over to his crewmember, 9-year old Leale Missick, the Leale might be Leo and the Missick might be Misick, nobody is sure and I could not reach LM.

Goldray remembers the youngster coming up to him about two years back and exclaiming, “I want to learn how to sail on your boat.” and that was that. That would have also put him at 7 years old. Well, Leale could be seen in almost every race and regatta since that time either helming Maroons I or crewing.

When Goldray gave the youngster the tiller, to everybody’s surprise, Leale beamed his heart out and everybody clapped. But, that was not the end. Goldray confided to Leale that though this was his boat now, it was to sail in Chalk Sound, not Northside, which he felt was putting too much responsibility on the youth.

Last Friday saw Leale down at Smokey’s and up at Sailing Paradise challenging every adult he could find who had or sailed a Sloop to a race. He did it again on Saturday, calling out to adults that they were too yellow to race against his crew of seven to nine year olds…

Well, they are out sailing every day this weekend, trading tacks in a cadence that shows more then heart, a lot of tenacity and a desire for efficiency. I think we have to watch out for this little crew of ragamuffins on the race course.