Pearl has Microphthalmia and Coloboma but her conditions have not stopped her from achieving great things. Today Pearl tells us how much she enjoys sailing with MACS.
The MACS sailing trip is the biggest highlight of our year, we are really excited to go, we’ve made excellent friends, and we’ve learnt so many new skills
Transcription of the video
Ruth says: Hi, MACS! We are delighted to be able to take part in the MACS Awareness Week. This is Pearl, and I am Ruth and we have been going with MACS young people on a sailing trip once a year for a whole week. It’s the biggest highlight of our year, we are really excited to go, we’ve made excellent friends, and we’ve learnt so many new skills.
Each year Pearl has remembered what we did the year before, and got more and more confident about what she’s able to do and how she can do it. She can get around the boat completely by herself without anybody helping her. She can get from where she sleeps all the way round the deck, and she can listen to people’s voices and know where she’s going. There are always people there to support, the team on the boat are just fantastic, the young people are just full of joy and so helpful, and we are all part of the group, which is really exciting, because we’ve learnt so many new skills.
One of the hardest things for Pearl to do and for me to achieve is having to climb over the side of the boat down the ladder and onto the dinghy, so that we could go to the shore and have barbeques on the beach and swim in the sea. We did this quite often, and we got better at it as the time went on. The team that ran the Prolific boat, they were so patient and so kind, so caring, they really helped Pearl to feel more confident about what she could do because it’s quite a bit thing to be able to go from the dinghy back onto the boat and from the boat back onto the dinghy. Not knowing how far you’re going to go down, how choppy the water was, not knowing where you’re going to land in the dinghy, or as I did once, fall out of the dinghy (!), but we did have such super time, we’ve sung a lot, we’ve danced a lot, we’ve learnt how to tie ropes, how to pull the sails together and we’ve discovered Pearl is very good at steering with the assistance of one of the team.
We have had such a privilege and we are so excited that we have been able to be part of the MACS sailing team and we are so looking forward to next year and hopefully going again. It is an absolute highlight of our year and I really hope that many more people from MACS will be able to come and join the team as the years go on, because it’s the absolutely one of the most amazing opportunities that MACS provides, thank you very much!
Pearl says: It is fantastic!
Ruth: thank you for having us!