Before leaving for a long sail through the Caribbean on their boat Sunrise, Bill and Lara Calfee and their daughter Isobel agreed to carry sails collected by Sails for Sustenance to fishermen in Haiti. Sunrise docked briefly in Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove before the next leg of their voyage and took aboard 11 sails. From Miami they sailed around the Bahamas, and then to Haiti. They recently made the drop-off to Wagner Tanis of Friends of Ile a Vache who will distribute the sails to the local fishermen for use on their fishing boats. Click the thumbnails below for more photos taken by Bill and Lara while in Ile a Vache, Haiti. You can follow the adventures of Sunrise on their blog.
On Sunday the University of Miami Sailing Canes spent the afternoon preparing 76 sails for the next shipment to fishermen in Haiti. The ‘Canes sail out of Coconut Grove Sailing Club and are currently ranked among the Top 20 teams in the nation. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for announcements of the next time we will be packing sails.
On Saturday Chicago-based volunteers Allen Carter and Jeff Gockstetter were on their way to the regatta in Key West when they passed through Miami and dropped off a load of sails that they had collected since August. On Sunday nine South Florida volunteers gathered at SFS HQ to prepare the sails for shipment to Haiti. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for announcements of the next time we will be packing sails.
Sails for Sustenance was mentioned in an article written by an AP correspondent based in Haiti and published around the web by various news outlets.
On Saturday Michael Laas and Michael Carcaise began packing another load of sails for Haiti. We need your help with our ongoing preparations of the next shipment. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for announcements of the next time we will be packing sails.
Today Mike Carcaise and Oscar Sardiñas dropped 18 bags of sails off at Food for the Poor’s shipping facility in Coconut Creek. The load consists of a total of 63 sails and will travel to Port-au-Prince via sea freight over the next week. In Port-au-Prince the sails will be retrieved by representatives of Fondation Paradis des Indiens and Hope for Haiti and taken to their final destinations of Abricots and Ile-aVache, respectively.
Bernard Chauvet is considered among the most experienced and knowledgeable sport fishermen in Haiti. He was appointed as a special consultant to Food for the Poor’s project to help fishing villages. Over the years, Mr. Chauvet has developed relationships with hundreds of subsistence fishermen all over Haiti.
Grand Sable lies on Ile-a-Vache, a rural island (12,000 acres) off the southwest peninsula of Haiti. It is said that the name Ile-a-Vache (Cow Island) was given by the French due to the great number of cattle left on the island by Spaniards.
Testasse is a small village a few miles east of Jeremie. At the beginning of 2008, Haitian Health Foundation commissioned the production of six 14 ft. fiberglass fishing boats to be made by a local Haitian boat-builder. SFS provided sails for the new boats.
Abricots is a fishing village of 1,000 inhabitants located in the county of Grande Anse on the SW peninsula. Sails are distributed to the fishermen of Abricots by Fondation Paradis des Indiens (FPDI)–which operates schools and programs to empower all people of Abricots to achieve financial independence and self-sufficiency through entrepreneurial development.
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Promote Sails for Sustenance in your fleet or at your yacht club. Collect sails or hold a fundraiser to support a Haitian fishing village. Click here to learn more.
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