St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sailing Association (SVGSA) welcomed two of the world’s top sailing race management experts to the islands over the weekend.
Maria Torrijo and Fabien Bach are in the middle of a series of Caribbean clinics, including SVG, The Bahamas and Grenada.
The funding of this course came from World Sailing, the International Federation for Sailing, and is in recognition of the progress the SVG Sailing Association has made over the last five years with its competitive racing.
Thirteen club officials and sailors from across SVG gathered at Blue Lagoon Hotel Conference Centre for this interactive course, introducing topics such as course laying, starting, and finishing sequences, scoring protocols, rules and penalties.
“It was such a great clinic and will raise our standard of competition to an international level. I’m looking forward to putting what we have learned into practice,” Vanessa Hadley from Vincy Sailing Club said.
“With the SVG High Performance Sailing Centre opening soon this is a great next step to arranging regional and eventually international events in the country,” a press release stated.
Albert Ollivierre from the Okean’s Club in Canouan said:
“We need to learn this and teach it to our youth sailors, so they are ready for international competition.”
SVG Sailing Association said it is committed to a sailing programme that teaches sailing skills within the community for fun, to gain vocational qualifications for careers in the sailing industry and also to represent SVG in international competitions.
This course is the next step on this journey.
Unless and until this project includes all areas in SVG, I am not impressed.