Welcome Home motorcade takes Team Antigua Island Girls through city streets after successful Pacific row
The members of Team Antigua Island Girls are being treated to a
heroic welcome following the recent completion of their Pacific
Ocean challenge.
Two Sundays ago, the trio – Christal Clashing, Kevinia
Francis, and Samara Emmanuel – ended what was dubbed the
“World’s Toughest Row” in just over 41 days.
Today, August 1, they were scheduled to be greeted with an
official welcome on their return home to Antigua and Barbuda,
having successfully braved the elements and grueling conditions of
the vast Pacific Ocean.
A motorcade involving family, friends, government officials,
sponsors, and well-wishers should have begun at about 4:30 p.m.
The procession will take to the streets in a show of support for the
Team’s accomplishment and is being organized by the Antigua and
Barbuda Tourism Authority.
It will wend its way into St. John’s, with a route that will take Team
Antigua Island Girls down Old Parham Road, across Independence
Drive, down Vivian Richards Street, and onto Market Street, Long
Street and Factory Road, ending at the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism
Authority’s headquarters at the John E. St. Luce building.
The organizers of today’s event are inviting the general public “to
come out in their numbers and with their Antigua and Barbuda flags
to show support for Team Antigua Island Girls on their return to the
country.”
Clashing, Francis and Emmanuel are being referred to as remarkable
athletes, who are known for being the first black, female team to
row the Atlantic Ocean, an accomplishment that also included a
fourth member, Elvira Bell, who sat out this last journey due to
family commitments.
The journey and their participation have not only demonstrated the
power of women’s strength and resilience but also raised funds for
building a home for vulnerable girls who get in trouble with the law.
The trio rowed an astonishing distance of approximately 2,800
nautical miles across the Pacific, a journey that began in Monterey
Bay, California, and ended in Kauai, Hawaii, on July 23.
