Some of the wonderful St Andrews College Campus students, who live on campus joined with Sony again this year to run their camp. They ‘adopt’ students from various parts of Sydney for a weekend, to give them experiences they may never have again, and to create bonds with children who live with different abilities.
Each child has a partner or two. They sleep, eat, shower, play and care for each other through many different activities over the weekend. By the time they come to sailing on Saturday afternoon, they know each other quite well, and are able to communicate. Every child who came this morning was so happy to get into the boat and enjoy the light breeze and gorgeous scenery, and their partners were grateful for the down-time they were able to experience on the deck at Manly Yacht Club. While they were doing this, a different team cooked a delicious lunch for them and looked after other needs, so that all concentration was the on-water activity. Mieke, Ella, Lochie, Matt, Addie, two Peters, Mark, Ricky, Jaden, James, Ethan, Jackson, Talicia, Shelby, Justin, Caleb, Luke, Nam and Cooper absolutely loved their sailing times. Addie was a little reluctant to get in the boat the first time, but after she had watched from the pontoon for a little while, she got the idea, and jumped in happily.
A couple of the kids also got a go on Charlie’s Chariot to round out their experiences of the day.
Sailors who took them were: Denis, Jim, Jackie, David, Mal, Jack, John, Michael, Jannie.
Support Boat drivers this morning were Jim and Warwick. Ken and Eli were observers and photographers at different times. Carolyn was in charge of the day, Helen was registrar, quite a difficult job today with so many people coming and going. Tony was Time-Keeper, aided by Lyn, and Wilma looked after life-jackets. Samir had a sailing lesson, as did Nic, and the day went very smoothly.
We had just got everything away when the other teams arrived to put boats on the water, a very well timed operation.
