The EUROSAF European Sailing Academy Working Party (ESA WP) held a fruitful meeting in Barcelona on 16 December. The meeting was hosted by Fundació Navegació Oceànica Barcelona (FNOB), organizers of the Barcelona World Race and developers of many educational tools directed at secondary school and University levels. Their premisses at the Port of Barcelona comprise their offices and a wonderful exhibition area centered on oceanic navigation.
The main topic of the meeting was the EUROSAF ESA-WEST project that aims to organize a yearly hands-on symposium about sailing-related research and industry projects at the beginning of 2021.
Mireia Cornudella, responsible for education and training at FNOB, welcomed the participants and confirmed FNOB’s interest in being involved with such a wide-ranging, compelling, and education related project.
Nobert Gelardo, professor at Facultat de Nàutica of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and Blanca Fullana, professional consultant and professor at Facultat de Comunicació of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, were supportive and immediately saw the interest for both their Universities to be involved together with the added-value opportunities over the importance for a city such as Barcelona, sea-related and internationally focused, to be the starting point of the ESA-WEST yearly series of events.
Alessandro Pezzoli, professor at Politecnico di Torino and vice-chair of the EUROSAF ESA WP, valued the possibility to start moving ahead with a date and place, instead of the difficulty and uncertainty linked to drafting and running a ERASMUS+ project, as was previously intended.
All attendees deplored the absence of Maciej Kot, from Delphia Yachts, Poland, who could not attend due to family reasons and whose industry focus and experience was considered an indispensable input to the project.
Josep M. Pla, EUROSAF president, thanked all participants for their interest and valuable input and encouraged them to seek a formal commitment from their respective organizations to the ESA-WEST project in order to start in February 2020 with the first preparatory steps. All participants exchanged season’s greetings and vowed to continue working on the project with the New Year.