The recently launched Plauer Hai-Live association on the Mecklenburg Lake District wants to create a new sports center for people with disabilities. The focus should be on sailing. The seven-time 2.4 mR world champion Heiko Kröger will speak about the Paralympic class.
The club already owns a 2.4 mR boat that was donated by the Friends of the Plau Health Center. The long-term goal is to build a high-performance class on site. The ships, elegant one-man keel yachts, are unsinkable and built in such a way that the sailing person sits very deep in them: also good for the disabled with high cross-sections, says Annett Schumann, chairwoman of Plauer Hai-Live. The first eight club members are currently trying to find sponsors for other ships.
The climatic health resort of Plau am See on the Mecklenburg Lake District offers the best conditions with its training and competition area and the old sailing tradition. What makes the old fishing and rafting town particularly attractive for disabled athletes is the proximity of a clinic with a rehabilitation center. The tax office has provisionally confirmed the non-profit status of the association, emphasizes Annett Schumann. The surgical nurse, who is enthusiastic about sailing, and her husband Peter Schumann, neurosurgeon at the Plau am See Clinic, developed the idea together with Wolfgang Giese, who runs a barrier-free hostel on site. The location, 300 meters as the crow flies from the Marinund Segelschule, offers newly renovated space for overnight stays and club events
The founding ceremony will also take place there from February 25th to 26th. The seven-time reigning world champion of the 2.4 mR class will present the fast regatta boat on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday the club members want to present the club boat in the sports hall of the clinic, after which a safety training with faint-proof life jackets will take place in the swimming pool. "It should be a sports facility that integrates everyone, wheelchair and non-wheelchair," says Annett Schumann, "and that combines competitive, rehabilitation and recreational sports." In cooperation with other organizations for the disabled and private sponsors, it is planned to develop the project into a supra-regional sports center for the disabled
Information at: Plauer Hai-Live, Association for the Integration of the Disabled, Erste Wasserstr. 3, 19395 Plau, Tel. 038735/81864. Email: [email protected]. Dates: Saturday, February 25th, from 12 noon until evening; Sunday, February 26th, from 8.30 a.m. until noo
You can find more about sailing activities by and for the disabled in our handicap section.