First boat arrives for IFDS Worlds

PUNTA GORDA, NOV. 9, 2011 — To Paralympic Games disabled sailing team hopefuls Ken Kelly and Brenda Hopkin of British Columbia, Charlotte Harbor represents their field of dreams, and a boat named Nick’s Karma represents their golden chance to make those dreams come true.

Kelly, 66, who is paralyzed from the chest down due to a 1976 gunshot wound, and Hopkin, 46, who had a leg amputated after a drunken driver crashed head-on into her car in 1985, are the first competitors in the 2012 IFDS World Championship disabled sailing regatta to arrive for training on Charlotte Harbor. 

The regatta is set for Jan. 7-15, 2012.

Kelly and Hopkin will be dueling against one other Canadian team vying to qualify for their country’s Paralympics team. The winner will compete in the 2012 Paralympics in Weymouth, England.

“The other Canadian team is no slacker,” Hopkin said Wednesday, as she washed her SCUD-18 race boat at a warehouse in Punta Gorda. “But Ken and I have a lot of desire, and we really want to represent Canada in the Paralympics."

It will be a longshot. Both had spent years racing with other teams that disbanded earlier this year. Normally, that would dash the hopes of Paralympic hopefuls. On their level, teams train by racing throughout the four years leading up to each Paralympics.

Kelly and Hopkin leased apartments in the Punta Gorda area in October. Their boat is to be hoisted into the water at the Charlotte Harbor Yacht Club today. They hope to sail daily to catch up with their competition.

“We’re trying to do in three months what normally takes four years,” Hopkin said.

Since he learned to sail in the late 1980s, Kelly has competed in world-class events in Australia, Greece, Denmark, England, Germany, China and the U.S.

“Racing became very addictive and became a huge part of my life satisfaction,” he said. “It takes you away from your wheelchair and puts you on the ocean.”

Both sailors knew each other from sailing in Victoria, British Columbia. They talked about mounting a last-ditch campaign for the Paralympics. However, they didn’t have a boat. That’s where Nick’s Karma comes in.

The boat was so named by its owner, disabled racer Sarah Skeels of New Hampshire, who bought it from the family of Nick Scandone.

Scandone was a disabled American yachtsman who won a gold medal in the boat in the 2008 games in Beijing, China. He died just four months after that victory, at age 43, of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Skeels had to drop out of contention this year after her team split up. So she and her husband Brian offered to rent their boat to Kelly and Hopkin.

“This is a gold medal boat,” Hopkin said. “Things are falling into place.”

Since mid-October, the team has been sailing in Miami while waiting for the Charlotte Harbor Regatta organization to install floating docks. The docks enable disabled sailors to get into their boats. Wednesday, regatta volunteers began installing the docks after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit the same day, according to Brian Gleason, regatta chairman and the Sun’s editorial page editor.

-- GREG MARTIN, SUN NEWSPAPERS