JOANNA GARDINER TRUSTEE AT
DEAF SAILING UK Above
The Deaf Sailing UK team, with Joanna front-centre, at the World Deaf Sailing Championships 2024.
Championships and World Blind Fleet Racing Championships. There’s more work to do in Sailability.
“Offering Sailability activities at your club means you genuinely are at the heart of your community”
Joff points out that around a fifth of the general population have a physical or mental health disability yet only one in ten of the UK’s 1,000 sailing clubs and training centres offer regular Sailability programmes. ‘Most clubs say they want to be at the heart of their communities. If you’re running a Sailability activity you genuinely are,’ he says. The RYA has some Sailability funding available and gives advice to clubs that want to improve what they offer. For sailors, it offers advice and information on local para sailing clubs via its website. And those benefits I mentioned at the beginning? Both Joff and Brett were reticent to speak on sailors’ behalf. Joff references the positivity of being active, the strong sense of community in para sailing and the self-confidence racing can bring. Brett agrees: ‘In a boat, everyone’s on a level playing field and can all race against each other. The sense of achievement affects people’s lives, even their families.’ Disabled? On the water, these sailors are anything but.
For more information, visit
www.rya.org.uk/sailability
You only need to know her sailing history to understand why Joanna Gardiner promotes racing. ‘I enjoyed it,’ she says of club racing in the mid- 1970s, ‘but because everybody there was hearing, I wasn’t included. They didn’t teach me how to race.’ Understand that and you’ll grasp
why she founded a children’s deaf sailing group near Bristol and why, as an instructor with the Andrew Simpson Centres, she launched a deaf sailing group five years ago. As she explains: ‘I don’t want anyone else to feel isolated like I was those years ago.’ After a week’s training at Rutland
Water, Joanna led a team of eight sailors aged between 18 and 60 to Lithuania to represent Deaf Sailing UK in September’s World Deaf Sailing Championships: ‘We had ten days there and it was a wonderful experience.’ The team finished a creditable mid-table. Perhaps more than gold, however,
Joanna seeks sailors. ‘I want deaf sailing to spread all over the UK. I’m really the only instructor. I’ve said to everyone on my course, if you have the skills, become an instructor. It’s just showing people they can do it to keep things going. They could be involved in the GB team if they have the skills.’
SUPPORTING SAILABILITY
The success of so many sailors in getting to the start line, and in some cases onto the podium, has been down to their hard work, the support of volunteers and the co-ordination of a variety of organisations. The RYA has played a small part in that, through vital National Lottery funding from Sport England.
32
rya.org.uk WINTER 2024
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
