There is a saying – “teach your kids to love sailing and they’ll never have enough money for drugs”
This holds true, with a range of programmes being run all over the world where kids who have had problems are being sent on sailing courses to help refocus their minds from crime and antisocial behaviour to something more positive. This piece will look at a few of them and assess whether there is a definite route to a better life by learning the soft skills of sailing.
The Daily Mail rejoices in negative headlines about rehabilitation programmes for kids who would otherwise end up career criminals, citing in one case a young man from Denmark who ended up drug dealing after taking part in one of the country’s youth rehabilitation programmes through Den Maritime Base.
The same newspaper also seems to believe that life in prison is comfortable and a bit of a ‘holiday camp’. Tell that to anyone working in the UK criminal justice system and they will either laugh at you as if you’re an idiot or tell you the truth – prison isn’t a comfortable sojourn from life unless you really have a hard life!
Such fears of young tearaways robbing and burgling their way through marinas do actually filter through to boat owners and sailors, with posts on the YBW sailing forum where yachties express such fears – probably garnered from believing what they read in the paper.
One of the reasons many people choose to sail is for the lack of comfort and the real challenge in doing something that can be dangerous.
The stories people tell down the pub after an adventure at sea tend to be where things got a little hairy and they had to stretch themselves mentally and physically in order to make it to the bar to tell the tale. For the very experienced sailor this may well be stories of 20ft beam seas in storm force winds, but for many it may be engine failure or blowing out a sail and somehow making it back.
For the inexperienced sailor who has to play a part in getting the boat back home, such experiences are extremely intense and will be burned deep in their minds.
One of the accidents I had at sea was on the Spirit of Fairbridge off western Scotland where the outer jib broke loose and proceeded to destroy the inner jib with its sheet in a Force 6. All hell broke loose, but for me the memory was of being told to get back as I wasn’t insured, even though despite being a client of Fairbridge I probably had more sailing experience than most of the crew fighting the flailing jib sheet. The other clients aboard? They would have experienced something far more dramatic and intense than I.
There are a number of soft skills people learn. The boat needs to sail for upwards of 8 hours a day so they must do watches at the helm or keeping a lookout – this is about responsibility. Setting sail is about teamwork, as is cooking and cleaning.
In slightly more intense situations such as the jib breaking loose it is about being switched on enough to get involved. Living with 10 other people in a small space is about communication and relationships. Ok, so the guy in your watch is not someone you’d hang out with at home, but you learn to get along.
Despite the odd negative headline, a large number of charities around the world have been quietly using sailing as a form of rehabilitation for decades. The Danish government spends $60 million a year on getting kids on the straight and narrow, with some great success stories despite the odd pasting in the UK media for doing so.
The UK’s Spirit of Fairbridge has been taking troubled kids sail training for more than 20 years. The Fairbrdge programme, now under the Prince’s Trust umbrella, claims to have an 85% rehabilitation rate for young people who had really troubled lives.
Portsmouth’s Police and Crime Commissioner is sending troubled teens on sail training programmes, including getting their RYA Youth Sailing Scheme Level 1 certificate.
A very new programme has just been set up in the US called Sail for Justice whereby seven youths are being sent sailing across the Atlantic as part of a pilot to prevent them from reoffending.
The programme isn’t just about teaching them to sail and giving them a jolly across the pond, but is designed to get them their GED certificate so they have the opportunity to get a job as part of their recovery from a life that has been wayward in the past.
With 75% of US kids who end up in prison reoffending on release, the scheme is designed to use positive influence on their lives as opposed to the stick approach.
On the 22nd November the first crew races across the Atlantic. If the success of other national programmes is anything to go by, most of them should come back not to a life of crime, but one where they ‘don’t have enough money for drugs’!