The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

ELEAZOR ‘the Sailing Barber’ Johnson clearly remembers the days when they used their workboats that were a means of transportation from one island to the next for competition.

Now he says Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis is making the right decision in announcing that sailing should be the national sport of the Bahamas and that it came at the right time when the focus was on Sir Durward ‘Sea Wolf’ Knowles, one of the most decorated sailors ever.

It came during the closing ceremonies of the Sir Durward Knowles 100 Regatta that was recently held in Montagu Bay to coincide with the 100th birthday of the oldest living Olympic gold medallist in the world.

“During those early days, we used to use the boats to get from island to island or to get to Nassau,” said Johnson, who grew up in Acklins where he began sailing on the boat named “The Avenger.”

“So when I hear what he said, it gave me a spirit of satisfaction because this was something that we were waiting to hear for a long time because sailing has done a lot for the development of this country.”

From the time he was born in 1939, Johnson said he witnessed the boat racing after the sailors would have made their journeys as far as Haiti and back. He said they did the racing as a form of recreation and it just grew into the fierce competition that they experience today.

At present, cricket is listed as the national sport of the Bahamas but the popular sport that is played throughout the Caribbean has taken a back seat to more of the traditional sports like basketball, athletics, swimming and volleyball in the island nation.

No other sport, however, draws the kind of participation from the residents - and even the visitors - than sailing as they flock to the waterfront to enjoy the keen rivalry and the festive atmosphere on the shoreline. “If you don’t have the regattas on these islands, the people don’t make any money,” Johnson said. “When they have the regattas on the islands, it’s like Christmas come early.

“When Algernon Allen was the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, he said the regatta should be spread out from island to island so that everybody gets a piece of the pie.”

Johnson’s only concern is that when the regattas are held, the organizers should be honest with the boat owners and skippers and pay them the monies that they are due for competing.

He said too many times, the regatta committees secure the funding and when it’s time to pay, the boat owners and skippers are cut short and have to find the funding to pay their crew.

“It’s very costly when you have to take a crew of sailors to the islands to compete for your boat,” said Johnson, the owner of the Lady in Red, Lady Nathalie. “A lot of the boat owners and skippers rely on the money they male to pay their sailors.

“So we just want government to make sure that when they give money to these regatta committees that the money is used to make sure that the people who make the regatta happen get paid what they are owed.”

Johnson also insisted that the regatta committees should find a way to ensure that the sailors are properly accommodated when they come to the islands to compete.

“Some of these islands raised the prices too high for the hotel rooms for the sailors to rent for that week when they are there to compete,” he said. “A lot of the sailors are now sleeping on the mail boats because it cost too much to rent the rooms.”

For the past 30 years, Johnson has hosted the one of the most successful regattas in the country, the St Valentine Catch Me If You Can Regatta in February.

The race started in 1987 as a challenge with his Lady in Nathalie taking on some of the other boats in friendly competition on Sundays when there wasn’t anything to do from December to April in Montagu Bay and it then developed into a full blown Catch Me If You Can Regatta.

He said that one of the things that his committee ensures is that they account for the money they receive from government and even Sir Durward Knowles, who has been one of his major contributors, is well spent.

“When I say I am going to pay you, I am going to pay you,” he stated. “I assist some of the boats coming in like Running Tide, Lady Muriel and Rupert’s Legend. I don’t have a problem doing that. I make sure that everybody gets paid.”

If the sport do indeed become the national sport of the country, Johnson said he would like to see more of the young people getting involved in not just saying, but building the boats.

But he said the sport and the history of it should be taught in the schools because the young people need to know the origin of the sport and its significance to the Family Island development.

“We could make the Bahamas a very nice place with sailing as the national sport because we have so many tourists who come just to watch the regatta competition,” he said.

“We have some of the best beaches in the world and that is what attracts so many people when the regattas are held on the islands. So we could make this work.”