Teaching Filipino youth to sail

MANILA, Philippines — While the Philippines routinely produces some of the best seafarers in the world, it would not be a stretch to surmise that the average Filipino knows little about sailing. This is a shame, of course. One of the advantages of our archipelago is the access to water and the activities and experiences it can provide us.

The science behind playing

73-year-old entrepreneur Robert La Quey wants to encourage Filipinos to go beyond the beach, beginning as early as childhood. After building boats for several years, La Quey found it most rewarding to build very small boats for children. These clocked in at 8-feet long and were appropriately dubbed Baby Bangkas. 

According to La Quey, these Baby Bangkas, which were made of stitch and glue, fiberglass, and reinforced plywood, can comfortably handle a load of up to 70 kilograms. “This means two or three 10-year-olds or one or two 14-year-olds,” he said.

La Quey built these boats with the help of his supervisor, Gilbert Nosares, who is also a skilled boat builder. La Quey, a computer scientist and physicist by trade, would do the design, and then Nosares would then complete the work under his supervision. 

Their efforts appear to be paying off. No matter the age, the children who ride the Baby Bangkas in Matabungkay Bay, Batangas seem to take to them fairly rapidly. “The children love it. They quickly learn to paddle the Baby Bangkas and become quite adept at using them,” La Quey said, chiding that while all of them wear life jackets, the children who grew up in the bay can swim like fish. 

For La Quey, the goal here is to not necessarily get children to love the open waters – though that is always a nice bonus – but to get them to play. This aim is a welcome one in the age of the iPad. La Quey points to the science of brain development for the power that play can have. 

“While often dismissed as ‘just fun,’ play is the vital activity that children use to learn about and interact with their world, and gain the mental, physical, and social skills necessary to succeed in their adult lives,” said La Quey, who was once a researcher at UC San Diego and Princeton University, and who holds a PhD in theoretical physics. 

He invoked the work of professor Karen Hutchison from Rowan University who also argued that play is the way children prepare for their adult lives and broader society. “Through self-directed play, children can follow their interests, explore the unknown, link outcomes with choices, conquer their fears, and make friends,” he said.

The future of Baby Bangkas

Even if part of the aim is to get children to explore, La Quey and his team still must ensure that they are able to do so within a safe environment. He said that the children must be adequately supervised and wear life jackets. 

While La Quey said that the boats are essentially unsinkable, they are of course not really put to work in the toughest of conditions. “The Baby Bangkas are intended for use here in Matabungkay Bay, being the outer coral reef in areas where the water is often less than 3 feet deep,” he said.

After initially crowdfunding on Indiegogo, La Quey wants to consider going that route again once he has better campaign materials and a longer track record. In the meantime, he can sell a Baby Bangka, complete with an awning and two paddles, for P6,000 ($128.40). 

La Quey’s vision for Baby Bangkas is simple: He wants to build more of them. He measures his progress against the balsas (bamboo rafts) that Matabungkay Bay is known for. “I want to build one Baby Bangka for every balsa,” he said.

To meet this goal, he will have to deploy about 100 Baby Bangkas. “I will use a small team of older children (15 to 18) to build, deploy, manage, and maintain the fleet of Baby Bangkas,” La Quey said. – Rappler.com

$1=P46.73