The Royal Gazette - October 4th 2005



Making Progress

Photo: Left to right: Community Affairs and Sport Minister Dale Butler, BSF Director Dwayne Trott, BSF Chairman Alan Burland, accept cheques from Sandys Middle School principal Dr. Melvyn Bassett

Drumline Cash Boost for Sloop
Banging the drum for Bermuda and particularly her young people has taken on a whole new meaning after a marching band festival raised $60,000 that will go some way to giving youngsters the opportunity to set sail on an educational schooner and to make music.

A sail training schooner is currently being built in Maine and is due to arrive in Bermuda next summer when the Bermuda Sloop Foundation will use it to allow a training and learning experience like no other.

Fittingly, for a project that will offer character-building and teamwork, the latest piece of fund raising was achieved by an event that was also a community celebration of teamwork.

The Drumline Bermuda Marching Band Festival at the National Stadium in May brought together bands from across the island featuring the Bermuda Regiment and from overseas including the swinging Howard University Marching Band.  The sell-out event was an overwhelming success with thousands of spectators packing both sides of the stadium.

The spectacle generated $60,000 to be shared by the Bermuda Sloop Foundation, the Government's scholarship programme and the new community sports complex in Sandys.

The co-chairman of the event was Sandys Middle School principal Dr. Melvyn Bassett. He handed over cheques to the Bermuda Sloop Foundation and to Dale Butler, Minister for Community Affairs and Sport, and said he hoped it would benefit "youth-focused projects, particularly music scholarships.

Accepting the funding boost, BSF Chairman Alan Burland said: " We are in turn going to give the money that we have been donated today by Drumline to Sandys Middle School to sponsor a 5 day learning voyage for the first year on the vessel."

The Bermuda Sloop Foundation schooner SPIRIT OF BERMUDA should be delivered here in the summer of 2006. SPIRIT is a three mast, 88 foot long recreation of civilian schooners built in Bermuda (1810-1840).  She will be fitted out as a sail training ship. Webcam at http://www.bermudasloop.org  to view the construction yard in Rockport, Maine, where she is being built.