Next installment of the Sophisticated Lady and fairwinds Mission to Haiti

am continuing along with this story of the trip to Haiti. As of today, Sophisticated Lady left Haiti last night and is headed back this way. I have not heard from Fairwinds to see where they are...
Again, these are taken from the reports that Rick is filing on Traveltalkonline, a central place to let everyone know what is going on, so you can follow along on there and get more up to date info then I post!
***Rick continues**
Just got an update from DHL... our parts have cleared customs and are available for delivery! Yahooo!! Now all we have to do is contact Dr Leger and make sure he receives the package, and then we will be going back to Les Cayes to meet him and collect our engine parts! Rotary Club rocks! After hearing how hard it is to get things into Haiti, we're smiling ear-to-ear just knowing we'll have them soon!

Also just heard that our new crewmate is on his way as well... He ferried to St Thomas yesterday afternoon, then flies to Port au Prince via Miami today, then flies to Les Cayes where we'll meet him on Friday. He has our mainsail from Doyle as well, so hopefully he gets through with no problems and then we should be able to get underway shortly after that!

Everyone is getting very antsy, having sat here so long... all are looking very forward to getting underway again and finally making our way home! I'm going to try and contact a friend of mine that's on a boat in Tortola with a SSB radio like ours... I've managed to reach her on the radio from here before, so going to try and set up a daily check-in schedule to update our position and progress, and i'll see if I can get her to post updates here for everyone while we're at sea.

I'm still yet to set things up with Doyle for the new mainsail... got distracted with looking after my charter first, and they arrive in Tortola tomorrow late afternoon... Handling logistics from here has been a real challenge to say the least, but there is a boat taking over the charter and meeting them at the airport on schedule.

Really hope everything goes smoothly, done the best I can from this end, and directed them to Jeremy's Cyber Cafe if anything goes wrong, so they can find phone and email access, and a cold drink on me to celebrate their arrival.

Today was a very hectic and stressful day, but feels like everything should be fine now. Wanted to post more pictures today, but couldn't make it happen and I know they are going to shut the internet down any minute now... was warned that 7pm would be latest tonight, so will try again tomorrow.
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Just heard from Dr Leger, the Haitian Rotary contact in Les Cayes, he said he had received the package and was sending it on the ferry boat so we should have it this afternoon... this will be like Christmas here for us! Somehow he managed to get it expidited through without even having paid customs yet, but they released it to him and will send the bill when it is processed next week... thank god for Rotary! Andrew is supposed to be landing in Port au Prince any minute now, and Phelix is standing by to find him a flight out to Les Cayes where he can pick up a ferry over to Ile La Vache where 'Sophisticated Lady' is anchored.

Looks like the charter is working out ok, the replacement boat is provisioning and getting ready to head over to Trellis Bay to receive guests at the airport... sorry to miss the charter, but thankful we were able to get it looked after successfully! Many thanks again to Julie Cooper and Michael Beans for all their assistance in coordinating everything in Tortola!

Things are finally starting to come together... we've been stranded in Haiti for 16 days now... it's been an experience, but everyone is ready to head home. Days have been busy trying to organize everything and keep things moving, and evenings have become more casual, especially with the engine jury-rigged... having electricity and fridge again have been great, and Kira's been enjoying watching movies every night. Moral is improving, and the other night we had some of our new local friends over for dinner and a movie. Kira had been craving pancakes, but we had no eggs... the guys went into the village and came back with 3 fresh eggs, so she rewarded them by making up a huge batch of delicious fruit filled pancakes that the guys really enjoyed!

After that we all watched the Harrison Ford movie "6 days 7 nights"... it's funny... that was always one of my favorite movies, but watching it this time and seeing them bandage that plane back together with string, tape, sticks, whatever they could find, made me think, wow... that's us right now except we're on a sailboat! lol We keep having to fix things with only what we have onboard since you can't get absolutely anything here... case in point, the other day the alternator stopped working and closer inspection revealed that the alternator mounting bracket had cracked in half and the alternator was literally just hanging there. Only took about 2 seconds to realize that hey, we're not getting that fixed here... it was definitely going to require a trip to a welding shop. We started thinking of ways to brace it so we could at least keep it supported enough to tension the belt and give us some power at least. I started going through the spare supplies locker again and came up with a small piece of teak that could be cut into proper size and wedged under the alternator... only problem was that the brace directly coupled the engine to the hull of the boat so as soon as we started the engine everything started to vibrate badly. A little more thinking and looking through things onboard and I had the idea that a good piece of rubber between the brace and the hull should dampen the vibration enough... that's where a spare Sperry Topsider Flipflop came into the realm of it's next job onboard! We cut the brace down to match the new height, and wedged the two under the alternator by gently tapping them into place with a hammer... the alternator tensioned up perfectly, no more vibration, and it's been working perfectly ever since! Not a great long term solution, but should get us home with electrics intact at least.


Our new alternator brace with Sperry Topsider vibration damper!
Another thing that's been problematic to deal with aside from just communications in general, has been the laptops themselves. I now have one that has a completely shorted battery, but works on the charger... and my Mac has a working battery, but the charger died making it completely useless! By some miracle, the two chargers are running very similar voltage and amperage on their outputs, so I soldered the output of the good charger into the input of the Mac, and was lucky enough that it actually worked... for a while anyway! Turns out the Mac charge wire has a micro-circuit in it for the little light that turns on when it's charging... The circuit was shorted due to corrosion inside, probably got salt water in it, and that was probably why the original charger died... took out the circuit and tried to solder the charge wires directly to the connector, but then the tip on my soldering gun split in half so now I'm trying to solder a delicate connection with a huge soldering gun, while simultaneously trying to hold the broken tip together with a set of pliers to make a good enough connection for it heat up and actually melt the solder... I'm telling you, people ask "what do you do all day on a sailboat?"... well, let me tell ya... no, on second thought let's leave that for another day!

Another major issue has been getting fuel... there has been an island wide fuel crisis developing this past week that saw gasoline in very short supply, and if you wanted it you had to pay $10-12US per gallon! We were lucky that Ian & Karen went to mainland the day before prices spiked and filled a jerry can for our dinghy... but even they reported that the actual filling stations were shut down and people were selling gas by the gallon out of anything they had while just sitting on street corners across from the gas stations! Ian was finding this interesting enough to film until a dispute broke out in the lineup of people buying gas, and some guy threw a half liter of gas in another guys face... needless to say, Ian put away the camera and started walking real fast! Getting diesel was getting chancy because even the shipment that was due to the hotel for the generator was long overdue and they were about to run out which meant no power for the entire hotel. It finally arrived on tuesday so we were able to get our fuel tank filled on the boat and top up all our jerry cans.


Our diesel delivery boat


Pumping the fuel into our tanks by hand


Reserve tanks all filled up!

So that was great... between our local friends filling our water tanks, and finally getting diesel for the boat, we're just about ready for departure... just need our parts and our crew with mainsail, and with any luck we'll still get out of here this weekend sometime!

Anyway, that's it for now, here's a few more pictures for you, and we'll talk to you soon!


'Sophisticated Lady' and 'Fairwind' at anchor in Ile La Vache harbor of Cay Cook at Port Morgan


Pastor Phelix with wife and new baby boy!


Phelix on way to church last Sunday


Inside the church... notice the thatch ceiling!


Everyone dressed nice for church


Ian interviewing Phelix before the congregation


Some of the local houses in the village


The local water supply... which by the way is brackish (salty)

PS... we've also agreed to help Phelix find sponsors for some of the children on the island that would be benefited most by additional support and education... We took a lot portrait photos for this cause, but here's just a few of the children of Ile La Vache. More to follow after we're home.











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Kerrys words

I would add onto that, although he is not as literate and a story teller like Rick, Harry Birch on Fairwinds has had many troubles with delivering his parts as well... He sent around this appeal to the Charter Yachts the other day..

As you know we left Tortolla with a cargo of outboard engines to diliver to the Island of Isle a Vache Haiti for Micheal Beans good Samaritain foundation
My engine broke down in St Thomas and we failed to get a mechanic to solve the problem. I decided that it was very important to get the engines here together with food cloths and medicines ect. However we sailed down under wind power,and found here that the engine is siezed. We also expeiranced a severe gale one day before arrival that damaged my mainsail,that also lost my dingy .
My funds are extreemly low and Carron who came on the voyage with Ricks yacht Sophiscated Lady has lent me the cost of two air tickets back from Jamica to Tortola . I plan to sail Fairwind on down wind to Jamica thenI must lift Fairwind in Port Antonio as I also have a shaft coupling problem that needs replacing.
My situation is somewhat fraught with anxiety as to where I will raise the money for the repairs and boat yard.
I volanteered for this charity project and I appeal to all cruising charter yacht owners to help me with funds in my time of distress.
Regards to all Harry

I do applaud all, but also think the whole situation is a shame, as money that could have gone to helping TRULY poor people more, has turned into "helping the people who can afford to own a boat in the Caribbean,"
I probably should have unregistered before I wrote this, but it is just a thought.
I think we are going a little overboard here with the heroism stuff and that makes me uncomfortable although I fully support (and have financially) the situation and believe it was a good deed that circumstances dictated went awry.

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Back to Rick

Thanks Kerry, because I tend to agree... I respect everyone's sentiments, but it's been making me considerably uncomfortable... we are just normal people in an unfortunate circumstance, doing the best we can to get through. I've always posted blogs based on my adventures at sea, and there have been a lot of them... only have to look at the ships log on my website to know that... this is just a very difficult one to work our way out of being where we are.

I had just sent an email to Rotary the other day about how much I regret that we've been put in a position to need this much help to get back underway. It really is a shame that money has to be spent in such ways, but that boils down to the reason we had to come here in the first place... we just had that discussion today actually, and everyone here has re-affirmed our original indications that if we had tried to ship these gifts and outboard engines, there's a good chance they never would have made it. All we tried to do was help avoid that possibility by volunteering to help. None of us ever thought we'd end up broken down here for almost 3 weeks with no source of help to get back out.

I had also just sent an email to Rotary to request that Harry receive help first, because he quietly slid off to Jamaica without any idea of whether any help was coming at all. He is planning on selling his car to help pay for his haulout and engine repairs, and the only reason he didn't ask for anything here is because he knew his engine was already seized before he left the BVI's... that doesn't change the fact that he and his crew still decided to set sail without an engine, and it's hard to say how many of the rest of us would have done the same... He just knew that he was carrying precious cargo, and decided not to stop at anything in order to deliver it... now there's a hero.

This has turned in to something I never quite expected... yes, we are in quite a predicament, and we really appreciate how much effort people have put forth to help us find our way out... but I really hope people don't lose sight of why we are actually here and what the original mission was in fact... That is what we need to remember... and that is what we are going to try and help with most when we finally get back to our lives in the 'real' world. There is a lot we can help with here, and I know we all plan to do what we can.
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Wow, you guys are great... I really can't believe some of the things I'm reading, but just know that we all appreciate your support and help. Having been criticized recently for using the word 'stranded' in Haiti has me considering what it really is that's happened to us. My conclusion is still that we are in fact quite stranded. It is not a word that I like to use, and certainly don't like being in any situation that I can't work out of without outside help, but that's where we are unfortunately. We are close to getting out of here, but the only reason that we have been able to rectify this situation as quickly as we have, is the fact that modern day communications exist that made it possible for us to reach the outside world. If it weren't for that, most certainly I would have still found a way out of here sooner or later, but it would have taken much more time... and given the fact that we are all still employed back in the real world... spending months here would not be a great thing for any of us.

I'm glad to hear people stand up for Harry too, he deserves it. You can use the same paypal account as before by emailing to charter@windinmysails.com or you can contact Stephen Cooper with Tortola Rotary directly. I have turned over access to the Paypal account to Stephen anyway, so he'll be the one who handles disbursements for both boats.

On a lighter note, we finally received our engine parts and I have the engine fixed and ready to roll! I must admit to being very nervous when first powering it up and hoping my diagnosis of the problem was the right one... we only had one chance at this. Everything worked perfectly as soon as she turned over and we are now back in great shape and have lots more spares onboard for our voyage home. Thanks much to Tom Gerker of Parts & Power, Stephen and Julie Cooper of Rotary, Dr Robert Leger of Haiti Rotary, DHL for helping expedite the package through customs, and everyone else including all of you here for all your extended help.

A special thank-you to Andrew, our new crewmember who arrived yesterday with mainsail in hand, having volunteered to fly in to give us an extra hand for the return trip. We're going to move 'Sophisticated Lady' around the other side of the island later today, there is a bay with a big wide open beach that will give us enough room to stretch out the sails together and match everything up and transfer all the hardware from our mainsail to the replacement that Doyle lent us. They sent us lots of sail repair tape, 5200 glue, and duct tape, so we're going to reinforce the patch the locals sewed over the hole in our jib. All-in-all we're getting into shape quickly now, and expect to sail out either late tomorrow, or Tuesday, just depending on preferred weather window. Will keep you posted when possible.