AC Endeavour Officially Opens Dockyard Base
America’s Cup Endeavour – the youth education and community sailing initiative – held a ceremony to officially open its new Dockyard location on Wednesday evening.
Now hundreds of nine to 12-year-old students can learn to sail in both the west end and the east end. The St. George’s location opened in October during the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Bermuda event with the support of the Bermuda Sea Cadet association.
The official opening was attended by Endeavour co-chairs Sir Russell Coutts and Sir John Swan, Premier Michael Dunkley, Governor George Fergusson, Minister of Community, Culture and Sport Patricia Gordon-Pamplin and representatives from the various partners who support AC Endeavour.
The new facility is located on the grass in front of the Clocktower Mall and became operational in February.
The base was created with five 40-foot containers, which were donated from the last America’s Cup. Local businesses in Bermuda have heavily supported the venture by donating materials, personnel and time.
“It’s fantastic to see so much community support for AC Endeavour in Bermuda,” said Russell Coutts at the ceremony on Wednesday. “Already over 800 kids have gone through the program and had an opportunity to enhance their knowledge through the STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths] curriculum and on water programing.”
Tom Herbert-Evans, Community Sailing Manager for America’s Cup Event Authority [ACEA], said: “We are so excited to have now started the program in Dockyard as more Bermudian youth will be given the opportunity to sail regardless of socio-economic background.
“WEDCo were the magic link who supported us in locating the site and provided us with access to key amenities. In getting this site up and running I have never witnessed such camaraderie amongst businesses to support a project like this.”
Joanna Cranfield, Business Development Manager for WEDco, said: “It’s nice to see those that are benefitting from the America’s Cup putting something tangible back into the community, specifically in the West End where much of the action from the 35th America’s Cup will take place. We were happy to help support a wonderful initiative for Bermuda’s youth.”
After WEDCo provided approval, volunteers from PWC and Butterfield Bank removed the old deck. The planning application was completed by Linberg and Simmons with shipping absorbed by the Neptune Group. Bermuda Forwarders then stored the containers and moved them to Dockyard.
Local contractors donated time and resources to initiate the build. BCM McAlpine got the ball rolling by providing employee Maurice Caines as the project manager for the site followed by Horsfield Landscaping & Barclay Construction digging holes and setting the slab.
SAL poured the concrete and Island Construction donated the beams that the structure sits on. Correia Construction provided an enormous amount of resource and donated a crew and crane for two days to set the structure in place.
Once the structure was in position, Solid Rock installed the finishing touches, sealed the gaps between the container rooftops and ACS connected the structure to the grid and ensured that the internal electrics were up to standard.
Finally, Dickinson Welding cut the beams and Pembroke Paint donated the finishing glossy pink coat, which is visible from Two Rock Passage. Inside the facility are educational info-graphs, thanks to Bermuda Blue Printing and ACEA designers Lyn Winford and Christina White.
Logic Communications have provided network capabilities to enable our students to log their experiences and also log marine debris into the tracker app.
America’s Cup Endeavour is open to students aged nine-years-old to 12-years-old. A cross-curricular five-day programme for all 11 and 12-year-olds and an after-school programme for nine and ten-year-olds will provide the Island’s youth with an incredible opportunity to learn how to sail on four different types of boats: Optimist, RS Feva, Hobie Waves and O’Pen BIC.
AC Endeavour provides an avenue to success for youths across all backgrounds in Bermuda as they experience an interactive STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math] curriculum, water safety knowledge, and an opportunity to develop life skills through a second-to-none community sailing programme.
They will also be exposed to science, technology, engineering, arts and math educational activities in an experiential classroom to improve their overall learning experience and foster their interest in pursuing STEAM career pathways in the future.
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So great for Bermuda’s youth
Such a positive outlet for our youth. But we dont need the AC here, right? Bermudians will not benefit from this, right? I hope that every child who can benefit from this ceases the opportunity.