 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Floating on flotsam
By DONNA WINCHESTER, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- Christina Amaya, 11, had been hearing about the Recycle Regatta from her mother for weeks. She knew the students in Mrs. Amaya's Spanish class at Campbell Park Elementary had washed a week's worth of lunch trays, taped them together and wrapped them in plastic to form the base of a recyclable watercraft. She knew they had made a sail to give themselves an edge in the race against boats built by students from other schools. And she knew they had named their boat La Santa Maria after Christopher Columbus' ship. It was enough to make Christina want a boat of her own. So, the St. Jude Cathedral School fifth-grader gathered friends from John Hopkins Middle School and Perkins Elementary and approached her father, Hermann, after they arrived at Spa Beach for the race on Saturday. "My daughter said, 'Dad, will you help us? We need to put together a craft, and we've got 30 minutes,' " said Amaya, adding that as the husband of a teacher, he has learned to expect the unexpected. Father, daughter and friends sorted through plastic bottles and barrels, Styrofoam lunch trays and PVC tubing piled on the shore for entrants who had waited until the morning of the regatta to build their crafts. A half-hour later, they were at the shoreline with their "adaptive wave flow" contraption, ready for the first race. The Recycle Regatta, which attracted about 100 students from Campbell Park, Perkins and Bay Point elementary schools, John Hopkins Middle School and Lakewood and Pinellas Park high schools, kicked off the Regatta and Fiesta del Sol al Sol, a 10-day event that celebrates Florida's business and cultural relationship with Mexico. It also was a precursor to the 34th annual 456-mile yacht race from St. Petersburg to Isla Mujeres off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula that is the centerpiece of the fiesta. Organizers of the event wanted more participation this year from schoolchildren to emphasize the role of education in cultural exchange, said fiesta executive director Jan Zack. Figuring a Recycle Regatta was a natural for young people, they asked Pinellas County Schools' recycling coordinator Wayne Hefty to organize it. Hefty spent months visiting elementary, middle and high schools promoting the regatta. He delivered truckloads of recyclable materials, from 2-liter bottles to 50-gallon plastic drums, to schools that expressed an interest and helped some of the students get started on their entries. To involve more children in the fiesta, Zack proposed a sail exchange between St. Petersburg and Mexican schoolchildren. She asked Jan Kucerik, the district's world languages supervisor and a member of the fiesta's education subcommittee, to organize the effort. Kucerik worked with teachers at Campbell Park, Perkins and Bay Point elementary schools, where Spanish is part of the core curriculum. The children designed the sails during the week and painted them Saturday before the races. Participants in the adult regatta, which leaves St. Petersburg on Friday, will take them to Mexico and exchange them for sails painted by the children on Isla Mujeres. While the canvas panels were drying in the sun Saturday, the kids hit the beach. Steve Simo, 11, a fifth-grader from Campbell Park, eagerly awaited his turn aboard La Santa Maria. Gabrielle Rushing and Emily Kaelber, Perkins Elementary fifth-graders, learned about grace under pressure when their craft capsized along the 50-yard course. And Max Silavutiset, David Simm and Jared Blitz, seniors at Lakewood High, found out that traffic on the high seas can be as treacherous as traffic on dry land when another boat cut them off, costing them a first-place finish. In the end, it didn't matter who came in first, because all the participants got trophies. Perkins' Floating Sombrero I was honored for Best Decorated. Bay Point's Olas de Leche won Best Use of Recycled Material. Pinellas Park's Lil' No. 1 was named Best Engineered Craft Built on the Day of the Race. Christina and her pals walked away with the award for Best Designed Craft, which they turned over to her father. After the awards ceremony, the students dragged their crafts, some the worse for the wear, across the sand and lined them up at the recycle container on the beach. "It's kind of sad," said Marcus Caulkins, a Lakewood High freshman, admitting that he had grown attached to his boat. "But we know that recycling is the best way." It was the point Hefty wanted to make. "To me, this was a light, fun way of bringing an important message to the forefront," he said, adding that the students seemed to take the recycling message seriously. "They're the ones who go home and say, 'Mom, how come we don't recycle? How come we don't conserve water?' We're all too busy to listen, but they're still sponges."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times South Pinellas desks |
