Four sailors tacked back and forth in their Pico sailboats , ducking under the sail and popping back up again as though they were born doing it.
This summer, they’ll help represent the Virgin Islands in Athens for the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games, but last Thursday, they were showing off their sailing skills at Manuel Reef for the unveiling of a series of stamps depicting themselves and other Sailability BVI sailors.
Postmaster General Kevin Smith presented the stamps at the ceremony, including a commemorative collection of the six-stamp series to Geoff Holt, a quadriplegic who was granted belonger status here after he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 2010.
Mr. Smith called Mr. Holt a symbol of tenacity and perseverance, and he said he hopes the stamps will help inspire the people of the VI to “make the seemingly impossible a reality.”
In Mr. Holt’s remarks at the ceremony, he said he was pleased and humbled to be on a stamp, and joked that he thought it was an honour only granted to dead people. On two of the stamps that feature him, Mr. Holt is shown on his boat, Impossible Dream. His trans-Atlantic journey ended in the VI, which was also where, in 1984, the injury that left him paralysed from the chest down took place.
The full article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue.