Sea Hist01y
FOR KIDS
ast spring, a group of high school students traded their classroom in school for an ..._ .. "ocean classroom" on a sailing ship. During their long voyage, which sailed throughout the Caribbean Sea before heading up the east coast of the USA, they learned much about life at sea during the age of sail. When their ship, the schooner Harvey Gamage, made a port stop in the British Virgin Islands, they encountered the Caribbuilt sailing dugout canoe Gli Gli and her crew and learned about a very different kind of sailing tradition. Caribs are the native inhabitants of the southern Caribbean Islands who were there when Columbus first came to the New World. It was hardly new to them- their ancestors had been there for hundreds of years before the Europeans showed up. More than a thousand years ago, Caribs traveled from South America northwards in vessels just like Gli Gli and populated many of the islands in the Caribbean Sea. They continued to use these kinds of boats to travel from island to island for many generations. Seventeen-year-old Elijah Mendelsohn of Jamestown, Rhode Island, was aboard the Harvey Gamage and shares what he learned from G!i Gli's crew about the boat and its mission.
"For thousands of years, native peoples in many cultures have been using the dugout canoe for transportation. We saw this first hand when we got the chance to sail in Gli Gli, a 35-foot dugout canoe built on the island of Dominica. We met two of the people primarily responsible for creating this massive canoe, Etien Charles ("Chalo") and Aragorn Dick-Read. Aragorn is an artist with an eye for sailing, and Chalo has been building dugout canoes his whole life, a tradition that has been passed down through Carib Indians for centuries. Since her launch in 1996, Gli Gli has traveled thousands of miles. Her longest and most important journey so far was from Dominica to the Amazon River in South America, uniting Caribs throughout the 800-mile voyage. During our travels in the Caribbean, we were lucky to meet both Aragorn and Chalo, asking them any questions of the building and sailing we desired.
We not only got to see and admire the boat while we were in Trellis Bay, British Virgin Islands, but we also got the special treat of sailing it as well. This boat was a king at sailing. It cut through waves like a hot knife through butter. Gli Gli is not only sail powered, it also has oars, which the crew used to help with tacking. This beautiful canoe opened my eyes to a beautiful new realm of sailing."
Elijah and his classmates sailed in the schooner Harvey Gamage for a full semester of high schoo l with the Ocean Classroom Foundation in spring 2008.
OCEAN CLASSROOM FOUNDATION offers high school students the chance to voyage under sail for full semesters with accreditation through Proctor Academy in New Hampshire. For more information on this and other programs available to middle- and high school students, visit www.oceanc lassroom.org or call 1-800-724-SAIL.