Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The Pointe-a-Pierre Yacht Club is to be up­grad­ed to ac­com­mo­date a range of wa­ter sports, in­clud­ing wind­surf­ing, jet-ski­ing, sail­ing and swim­ming. This was re­vealed by the club's chair­man, Sheri­ba Ali-Ra­jack, as she launched the 2012 Pointe-a-Pierre Sail­ing Re­gat­ta. The event was host­ed by the yacht sec­tion of the club, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Sail­ing As­so­ci­a­tion. Lo­cal par­tic­i­pants were joined by sailors from the US, Cana­da, the UK, the US Vir­gin Is­lands and St Vin­cent.

Ali-Ra­jack said years ago the club was vi­brant: "Dur­ing the school va­ca­tion it was com­mon to see chil­dren par­tak­ing in wa­ter sports and adults en­joy­ing them­selves at the club. We had sail­boats from var­i­ous parts of the world vis­it­ing the club. This area used to be bustling with ac­tiv­i­ties on a Fri­day evening and week­ends." She said the club will rein­tro­duce recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties that were of­fered years ago.

"We want to ex­pand on them. The Pointe-a-Pierre Club, to­geth­er with the yacht­ing sec­tion, has am­bi­tious­ly em­barked on a project to re­build the club­house in a more mod­ern and cre­ative way," Ali-Ra­jack said. She said new boat-launch­ing fa­cil­i­ties and a larg­er stor­age area will be built near the jet­ty.

Dur­ing the launch, pres­i­dent of the T&T Sail­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Regi­nald Williams hand­ed over ten sets of Op­ti­mist dinghy equip­ment to the club. "This equip­ment sig­ni­fies the re-es­tab­lish­ment of the Pointe-a-Pierre Yacht Club, along with the es­tab­lish­ment of a new youth sail train­ing pro­gramme to be op­er­at­ed from the Yacht Club lo­ca­tion, with the sup­port of the T&T Sail­ing As­so­ci­a­tion," Williams said.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion was com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Pointe-a-Pierre Yacht Club to de­vel­op sail­ing. Head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Petrotrin, Gillian Fri­day, pre­sent­ed an award to Michael Camps for sail­ing around the world. Ali-Ra­jack award­ed Harold and Kwailan La Bor­de for their his­toric voy­ages.