The Believe, Belong, Achieve interns look back on their Changemakers Tour

Three weeks. Three cities. Three interns from Rocking the Boat who came into the Changemakers Tour as sailing instructors from the Bronx and came out of it with a much bigger understanding of what a career in sailing could look like.

Jade Adon, Hailley Robles, and Myah Recinos joined Team Francesca Clapcich Powered by 11th Hour Racing for the very first Believe, Belong, Achieve Internship Program, working across the team's communications, technical, and operations departments as the team made its way down the East Coast from Boston to Newport to New York, in the lead-up to the start of The Ocean Race Atlantic. Now that the tour has wrapped, we asked them to look back on what they expected, what surprised them, and what they're taking away with them.

Meredith Rodgers / 11th Hour Racing

Panels that redefined leadership

At The Helm: Leadership in Sport & Industry Ocean Race was a panel held in Brooklyn, where Frankie spoke about equity in sailing alongside Caroline Pottash and Dawda Jobarteh. Hailley walked in expecting a heavier conversation about everything working against access in the sport. Instead, it was the opposite. "Her core message stuck with me: the talent is everywhere. It always has been," Hailley said. "The problem was never that great athletes and great people don't exist in every community, it's that they haven't always had the chance to get out there." Frankie also pushed back on the "friend of a friend" way of hiring that often happens in sailing, arguing that drive and ability should matter more than who someone happens to know.

A night at the game

After The Ocean Race panel, the whole team headed to Barclays Center for a WNBA game, and for both Jade and Myah, it was the first live basketball game either of them had ever seen.

Myah, who has lived in New York City her whole life, felt the earlier panel's points about opening doors came full circle that night. "I felt the messages spoken at the panel really resonated," she said. Frankie made sure the interns were included in every part of the outing, right down to insisting on a group photo afterward, a small thing that both interns pointed to as a moment they felt genuinely folded into the team.

Getting hands-on

Not every highlight was a conversation and for Myah it was a change in role. She spent her first week on the comms team in Newport, but once the tour reached Brooklyn, she asked for something different: a shot at working with the tech team. She got it and worked alongside Marcella, Stu, and Ryan on maintenance for the IMOCA.

"I got the chance to work with Marcella and help with maintenance on the IMOCA, which was very exciting as I'm a very hands-on person," Myah said. Getting on the grinder with Frankie and Marcella became the highlight of her week, and stepping into a role she'd never done before pushed her outside her comfort zone in the best way.

Working across teams

By the time the tour reached New York, Jade noticed something had shifted. In Newport, DMG Mori and MSIG Europe had shared the same dock area without much interaction. In Brooklyn, with the race just days away, that had changed. "Coming into the internship, I thought everyone who had specific roles would just be working on exactly that," Jade said. "But seeing everyone, whether they were with comms or with the tech team, working together to get the same job done honestly surprised me."

Hailley saw a version of that same shift from a different vantage point entirely: at Manhatta, a high-end restaurant and bar located 60 floors above the Financial District in New York City, all six Ocean Race teams gathered in one room. She heard from Richard Brisius, Race Chairman of The Ocean Race, along with Michelle Carnevale, President of 11th Hour Racing, and Julie Coker, President and CEO of NYC Tourism and Conventions, among others. The networking was valuable, but watching every team in the field come together toward something bigger was what stayed with her. "I got to watch it happen from the best seat in the city!" she said.

What they're taking with them

Looking back, all three interns landed on some version of the exact goal of the Believe, Belong, Achieve program: this internship opened doors they didn't know existed. Myah said meeting people in the sailing world who weren't the sailors onboard opened her eyes to the full range of marine career options, and that Frankie's team taught her that the phrase "it takes a village" is literal. Jade said the experience solidified their path toward becoming a sailing educator, and offered simple advice for whoever takes on the internship next: "Expect to be yourself. Everyone has been unapologetically themself, and it's very refreshing to see in an environment that usually is very posh."

Hailley summed up the tour this way: "This internship was a great step out of my comfort zone and opened my eyes to not only the physical work that is put into sailing, but also the behind-the-scenes work it takes to run a sailing team."

Hailley Robles, Jade Adon, and Myah Recinos

Maud Helfgott-polaRYSE / 11th Hour Racing

To follow the team along for The Ocean Race Atlantic, check out our Instagram here!