Sunday, January 29, 2012

Destination Haiti

After taking fuel in Staniel Cay and anchoring for the night in Little Farmer Cay, we sailed on, with another night at anchor 30 miles before exiting the bank, to finally drop the hook in Haiti in front of a small village in "La petite Gonave".

This was a first encounter for Country Boy and Karen with kindness, dignity, great poverty, all those things that make Haiti what it is. We spent the night there before sailing on to Grand Goave where Max was waiting for us.

That day, we were supposed to have lunch at "Chez Christian" with the crews of the three french sailboats that had made it to Grand Goave. In fact, lunch started around 5 p.m. and we came back to the boat well into the night.

Next day, it was a kind of tourist trip to Port au Prince, in a bus supplied by my friend Lionel Pressoir, that took us through Port au Prince and Petionville. We had a wonderful lunch and a good taste of haitian cuisine before returning to the boats. Later that day, the three Haitian brothers present in the country at the time, plus the four of us, american brothers, we conducted a ceremony to invite Max into our community of sailors under the name "Moun ak grand ke" (the man with a big heart). This was followed by a wonderful dinner buffet and good entertainment in wich Piper and Country Boy participated.

This was to me of great significance as I had tried to achieve this for the last 10 years, and I am convinced that the brothers of Haiti will greatly benefit from this injection of new blood.

No comments: