Challenges with young people are the same everywhere in the world, according to the Bermuda Sloop Foundation?s (BSF) designate captain.

Capt. Chris Blake ? who was awarded an OBE in 2001 for services to sail training and youth development ? blamed television for some of the ills of young people in society.

?They end up getting stuck behind it and not actually seeing the real world so when they get confronted by the real world they are led astray by people with stronger characters than perhaps they are and not necessarily in the right direction,? Capt. Blake told Hamilton Rotarians this week. ?The beautiful thing about Bermuda, different to other organisations, it is a very compact society. There are a lot of people who really love their Island and want to see the Island go forwards and introducing a vessel like the sloop I think will help them do that.?

Capt. Blake said he taught sailing in the UK, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Europe for the last 30 years. ?A lot of people say ?sail training? and they think immediately they are going to teach people how to sail,? Capt. Blake said. ?Well, that?s no help. I don?t know how to sail. As far as I am concerned you put a sail up, it goes forwards. You pull it down and the bloody thing stops.

?What we do is use the vehicle in order to try and get young people to take a bit of responsibility for themselves, to be able to work together as a team, take them away from that environment. One advantage we do have is they can?t get off or if they do they get very wet.?

Capt. Blake said the problem with old-school methods was that some students got sucked back into old behaviours by peer pressure when they left the ship.

?They used to do it the old-fashioned way. Take them out. Give them a hard time. Bring them back and send them on their way rejoicing,? he said. ?You have to be a very, very strong individual to carry on from where you were when you left the ship. So what we are trying to do is keep our programme an ongoing programme.? Capt. Blake said the BSF will take students to sea at 14-years-old ? two years earlier than most other sail training organisations.

?We are trying to catch them at a younger age,? he said. ?At 16, by that time most of these kids are a bit far down and they are quite difficult to change their minds. They are more into the peer pressure system and they tend to get locked in and go down a dusty road that way. Not all of them, but a lot of them.?

He also said BSF was introducing programmes trying to relate to what students did on the ship to what they could do off in their own lives.

However, one of the worst things about sail training was that it tended to attract either those whose parents could afford it, he said, or those who were ordered to come on board by courts.

?A big lump of the population gets missed out and perhaps they would benefit as much, maybe even more,? Capt. Blake said. ?I would suggest you try and support ?Mr. Average? to come on the ship and maybe support them financially in order to do it because ?Mr. Average? might end up being excellent if he is just given that little extra chance.

Bermudian students onboard the BSF ship ? due to arrive around Cup Match ? will run their own onboard system, even appointing their own captain and making their own decisions.