REACHING
KIDS - OCEAN RACING
AND EDUCATION
teamreachingkids.org
Building
a Mini - Click on photos below to see the kids at work
Feb 23rd, 2004
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Sep 20th, 2004
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A
Mini Built in America . . . by kids.
On the shores of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania,
there's a new Mini taking shape. A very unique Mini. By the time
she sets sail, sometime Spring 2005, more than
1,000 kids will have taken part in her build.
The project is the brainchild of David Hyland,
a professor at nearby Mercyhurst
College -
mercyhurst.edu - and Jim Stewart,
Executive Director of the Bayfront
Center for Maritime Studies (BCMS)
in Erie - bayfrontcenter.org.
Dave is an avid sailor with a lot of Great Lakes distance events
along with the Newport-Bermuda race and Annapolis-Newport Race
under his keel. Dave has been a long-time
follower of the Mini Transat
and traveled to La Rochelle in 2001 for the start of the race.
Rounding out the build team are Richard Eisenberg,
Director of Boat Building at BCMS and educator Ramon Mancha.
A year ago, Dave approached Jim with a plan to do enter the 2005
Mini Transat. Expecting
Jim to be receptive to the idea but not prepared to get behind
it, Dave was more than a little bit surprised when Jim said "Great
idea. Let's build it here". That's where the kids come
in.
The mission
of the BCMS is to design and deliver unique, maritime-based educational,
vocational, and recreational opportunities for the local community.
BCMS provides programming for all the juvenile placement facilities
in Erie County and seventeen public school districts in northwest
Pennsylvania. In six years, BCMS has provided programming for
nearly 11,000 youth. These participants have built 65 boats including
canoes, kayaks, wherries, skiffs, and the Erie Boat, an authentic
replica of the two-masted cat-ketches that used to fish the waters
of Lake Erie.
If a Mini was to be built at BCMS by kids, it had to be fabricated
out of wood, as that is their primary area of expertise. Enter
Dudley Dix Yacht Design of South Africa
- dixdesign.com
- who offers the only kitted Mini design in the world made out
of wood. Last fall, Dave purchased the plans from Dudley and the
kit from CKD Boats
in Hout Bay, South Africa - it shipped on Christmas Eve, arrived
in Newark in early January, and finally arrived at BCMS on February
12. Construction began the following week.
Minis in America has
been following the progress of Reaching
Kids - Ocean Racing and Education, as hundreds
of kids help build a Mini in America. We post updates regularly,
along with a photographic account from start to finish.
For more information on BCMS, Dudley Dix Yacht Design or Mercyhurst
College, please visit their websites:
Bayfront
Center for
Maritime Studies
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Dudley
Dix
Yacht Design |
Mercyhurst
College |
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