Budget Marine comes onboard as a silver sponsor for Team Antigua Island Girls’ 2023 Pacific Challenge
JOHN’S, Antigua (July 13, 2022)—Team Antigua Islands Girls (TAIG) is pleased to announce Budget Marine as a silver sponsor for their Pacific Campaign 2023 titled “Back on the row again.”
The cash value of the sponsorship is USD $25,000.00, but TAIG captain Kevinia Francis said the support of the company is invaluable.
“We are mindful of the post-pandemic economic climate and competing requests, each with merit, and so we are extremely grateful to Budget Marine and General Manager Louisa Norris for Budget Marine Antigua partnering with us on our second rowing adventure,” Francis said. “We did it before, and we will once again make Antigua and Barbuda proud.”
The team aims to raise no less than USD $150,000.00, which is what it will take to get to the start line of the of the Pacific2023 challenge. The event begins in Monterey Bay in California on June 12, 2023. The path takes rowers 2,800 nautical miles to Nawiliwili Harbor in Kauai, Hawaii.
TAIG will also raise funds to aid with the construction and launch of a home for girls in trouble with the law, a project that collaborates with the Family and Social Services Division in the Ministry of Social Transformation.
Budget Marine Antigua has three stores operating out of Jolly Harbour, English Harbour and North Sound Marina. The company caters to seafarers and boast a staff complement that is 80% female. General Manager Louisa Norris said the company is “quite pleased to support Team Antigua Island Girls on their Pacific Challenge.”
ABOUT BUDGET MARINE
Budget Marine was founded in 1982 by Robbie Ferron and has become the Caribbean’s leading chandler with 13 locations across 11 countries, which are Sint Maarten, St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Antigua, Grenada, Carriacou, Trinidad, Bonaire, Curacao, Aruba, Cartegena.
Ferron writes, “Sales performances suggest that Budget Marine has found a formula to navigate its way through the complexity of the Caribbean marine equipment market in which a wide range of customer types coexist with the trade barriers experienced in the islands and the special demands of tropical waters.”
ABOUT TEAM ANTIGUA ISLAND GIRLS
Christal Clashing, the adventurer; Elvira Bell-Bailey, the health-and-wellness coach; Kevinia Francis, the personal trainer; and Samara Emmanuel, the sailor make up Team Antigua Island Girls—the history-making rowing team.
The team represented Antigua and Barbuda in the 2018 Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge. When they arrived home on Monday, January 28, 2019, after 47 days, they rowed into the history books, becoming, not just the first all-woman team from the Caribbean to compete in the TWAC, but also the first all-black team to row across any ocean.
ABOUT THE PACIFIC CHALLENGE
Organized by Atlantic Campaigns, the same team behind the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, the inaugural Pacific Challenge will have up to 20 teams. The crews will traverse the waters of the Pacific, the world’s deepest ocean. Teams begin in the historic harbor of Monterey and end in the picturesque Nawiliwili Bay on Hawaii’s fourth largest island, Kauai.