Latest news with #NasMares
France 24
13 hours ago
- Sport
- France 24
'You try not to bump into things:' blind sailing in Rio
He navigated confidently, despite not being able to see his stunning surroundings, including Rio's iconic Sugarloaf mountain. "You are being guided by a blind man!" Araujo, who lost his sight shortly after birth due to excess oxygen in his incubator, told his fellow sailors jokingly. Araujo was one of five Brazilians with visual or hearing disabilities who were shown the ropes on a yacht recently during a three-day sailing course run by the Nas Mares environmental organization. The rookie mariners were first schooled on vessels in Rio's main marina before testing their chops in Guanabara, the big natural harbor at the heart of Rio. As a para skateboarder, Araujo, 31, knows a thing or two about trying to stay upright. But sailing is "very different," he said, adding: "I never imagined myself being skipper of a boat." A year before it hosted the Olympic Games and Paralympics in 2016, Brazil passed an Inclusion of People with Disabilities Act aimed at eliminating hurdles to accessing transport, housing, services, education and sport. Latin America's biggest country also tackled the issue of funding by allocating 0.87 percent of all lottery funds to paralympic sport. Eduardo Soares, a 44-year-old physical education teacher from Sao Paulo who took part in the free sailing course, said the improvements had been life-changing. "Over the past 10 years, things have become much easier," Soares, who was born with a visual disability, said. Steering by sound, smell, touch Some 6.5 million of Brazil's 210 million citizens are visually impaired and 2.3 million have hearing disabilities, according to the IBGE statistics institute. While many wealthy countries, including Australia, Britain, France and the United States, have sailing associations for the blind or partially sighted, few in Latin America get the chance to skipper a boat. Araujo, a lover of extreme sports, said sailing was a way of combatting the isolation of people with disabilities, many of whom "don't like to try new things." His heightened sense of hearing, smell and touch made him and his crew particularly receptive to non-visual stimuli on the boat, including the direction of the wind and the vessel's vibrations. "My sensory faculties helped me to keep the boat on course," he said with pride. Juliana Poncioni Mota, director of Nas Mares, said the idea of offering the classes came when she was at sea with a blind, 13-year-old boy. She caught herself trying to describe the beauty of their surroundings for him in visual terms. "It led me to rethink how to... translate what I see for someone who doesn't have that perception (sight)," she said. Because her monohull is not adapted for people with disabilities she and her fellow sailing instructors describe in detail to each participant the location and characteristics of the helm, the mast, the boom and sails. A sign language interpreter conveys the instructions to a trainee with a hearing disability. Then touch is the key to getting the hang of things. The apprentices explore all the boat's instruments by hand, as well as a scale model of the vessel and of a humpback whale, lest they come across one of the enormous cetaceans which migrate to Rio's coast between June and August to breed. For Rodrigo Machado, a 45-year-old former Paralympic swimmer who was making his sailing debut, taking the helm involves "working it out in your mind, without seeing" which, he said, is what the visually impaired do every day. "On the street, you try not to bump into things, it's normal," he said. On this outing, much to their disappointment, the seamen heard no whale song coming across the underwater microphone. But they all vowed to soon get their feet wet again.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Fishermen, sailing champions clean up trash-covered Rio island
Fisherman Jose Antonio Crispin recalls the days when he would throw out a net and get a decent haul of fish around Pombeba Island, a small oasis in Rio de Janeiro's iconic Guanabara Bay that is being suffocated by trash. "Now, the net only brings garbage, garbage, garbage. And we can't survive that way," the 60-year-old told AFP, as a team of volunteers including a two-time Olympic sailing champion endured record heat this week to collect hundreds of sacks of plastic waste in a clean-up drive on the island. The tiny island is a magnet for waste in Guanabara Bay -- the site of one of the world's most postcard-perfect views and a graveyard of failed plans to clean up waters flooded with rubbish, raw sewage and chemicals. Fishermen like Crispin receive a payment for helping in the clean-up initiative to make up for his loss of income. The drive to clean up 80 tonnes of waste suffocating the shores of Pombeba is led by former sailor Juliana Poncioni, 37, director of the Nas Mares ocean conservation organization. Guanabara Bay provided one of the biggest headaches during Rio's hosting of the 2016 Olympics, as sailors complained about floating trash and filthy waters despite a rush of clean-up measures. Two-time Olympic sailing champion Martine Grael and other members of her SailGP racing team were also among around 50 volunteers involved in the clean-up. "What we really want are actions that make a difference," said Grael, 34. Poncioni said emerging patches of sand from under the trash "bring hope," but the untenable situation should also be a wake-up call for politicians. "This problem is not in Guanabara Bay or Brazil or Rio de Janeiro, it is a global problem," said Poncioni. "We have to stop the plastic tsunami. As humanity, we produce 400 million tons of plastic per year, and 11 million end up in the ocean." A team of researchers from the Biotema environmental monitoring group was also on the island, studying the presence of microplastics -- which have been found on the highest mountain peak, in the deepest ocean trench and scattered throughout almost every part of the human body. "Once consumed by aquatic microorganisms, (microplastics) are transported to our body, causing toxicity," said team leader Andre Salomao, while placing samples of sand and plastic waste in glass containers. The dire state of the waters in Guanabara Bay again came under the spotlight last month when Rio de Janeiro and the neighboring city of Niteroi presented their candidacy to host the 2031 Pan American Games. Water and sanitation operator Aguas do Rio in 2021 signed a contract to spend millions of dollars to clean up the bay. When presenting their candidacy for the Pan American games, authorities renewed their commitment to properly treat the wastewater of 10 million residents living around the bay in Rio and other municipalities, by 2030. ll/app/fb/sw
