Dear Sir,

What are you thinking? Your opinion piece on the Bermuda Sloop Foundation’s decision to sail last Tuesday, and the letter to the editor in Saturday’s paper, both reflect a misunderstanding of the foundation’s mission and the real risks of being at sea.

Further, they both seem to reflect a “no risk is an acceptable risk” attitude, which is unrealistic and, in the long run, damaging to the children you claim you wish to protect.

The mission of the foundation is not to take out “a party of schoolchildren” for a day sail; its vision is to provide character and educational development for Bermuda’s youth, using the unique attributes of structured, experiential learning through sail training (learning by doing).

That is, to expose them, in a real way, to the sea and its challenges and to help them to manage these challenges through teamwork and their own efforts.One cannot do this without some risk of accidents and, possibly, injury.

The key is to manage these risks effectively. This includes assessing the risks intelligently and then deciding which ones are so extreme that they must be eliminated, and which simply need to be effectively managed.

The skipper and the crew are professional and experienced and fully capably of doing this. The Spirit was not “a plaything of the winds and seas until the tugboat Faithful came to the sloop’s rescue”, as your opinion piece claims.

It was and is a well-designed, purpose-built, capably crewed sail training vessel that had two fully functioning sails, no doubt additional storm and other sails available and a fully functioning steering system.

And why your letter writer felt compelled to talk about his experience of being in the Ferry Reach area with a loss of steering is somewhat beyond me. It was the sloop’s engine, not its steering, that was a problem and the sloop is, after all, a sailing vessel.

There has been a trend, for some period of time, for parents to become ever more protective of their children and to actively try to manage and eliminate any risks to their physical and emotional safety. In the long run, this will not be helpful to them.

Children learn by taking risks and our job as parents is not to manage these risks for them, but to progressively allow them to manage them on their own. This includes allowing them to participate in well-managed, experiential learning programmes such as the one offered by the foundation.

So, please, let the professionals do their job. Our children will be better off if we do.

N. THOMAS CONYERS