Dear Sir,

I would like to thank and congratulate The Royal Gazette on the excellent America’s Cup handbook that you inserted in each copy of the Gazette on February 21.

It is an excellent guide to what the America’s Cup is all about, the individual teams and its potential economic effect on Bermuda.

I would, however, urge you to reprint it and have sufficient copies delivered to every school for every child, have copies distributed to and available at all retail stores, provide each taxi and bus driver with one, put one in every hotel room.

Give the guide as much circulation as possible so as to give every Bermudian and all our visitors as much knowledge and understanding as possible of what the America’s Cup is about.

Bermuda and Bermudians have developed a time-honoured tradition of supporting their favourite sports teams by wearing their colours and flying their flags. We see the red-and-blue and the light blue-and-dark blue flags of the Cup Match teams that we support. Those of us fortunate enough to hail from the Eastern Counties wear the colours and fly the flags of our county team.

Many of us wear the kit and fly the flags of the international football teams that we support. During the World Cup and the European Championship, we see Bermudians and residents flying the national flags of the countries they support, with the English and Portuguese flags leading the pack. It is now time for all of us to apply this tradition as a way to show our support for the America’s Cup, and buy in by adopting a team and flying its flag from the roofs of our cars and the riggings of our boats and on the clothes we wear.

By Easter, we should be flying the flags of the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Japan, New Zealand and France, depending upon the team we already support or adopt for the period of the America’s Cup. Not only will this demonstrate our buy-in, it will encourage friendly rivalry between us and add a huge amount of colour to a landscape already the most beautiful in the world.

WENDELL HOLLIS