Posts Tagged captain

Passage From Petit-Goave, Haiti To Isla Roatan, Honduras

Jul 6

Posted by doctorben in CAPTAINS BLOG | No Comments

July 5, 2010. Port Antonio, Jamaica

Well, our passage from Haiti to Honduras was briefly interrupted. Our first day sailing from Haiti brought fine cruising downwind and down current, but as we began to cross the Windward Passage between Haiti and Jamaica we hit heavy weather. A beam sea of 8-10 foot waves made for a miserable roll. After 48 hours of fighting the helm, driving through lightning and winds reaching 55 mph, we found ourselves passing north of Port Antonio on Jamaica’s NE coast.

With our generator overheating and crew exhausted, we turned south and arrived in Port Antonio just after daybreak. Errol Flynn Marina in Port Antonio has been giving free dockage to boats coming to or from work in Haiti. Only a mile from land, the seas subsided, and we got shelter. We cruised into the protected harbor and pulled gently up to the dock. I was at the helm, and I will never forget the enormous feeling of relief that washed over me as I heard ‘All lines secure’ called out from the deck. I shut down both engines and relaxed fully for the first time in over 2 months.

We lived at anchor, enduring squalls and gales and constant maintenance, for well over 8 weeks in Haiti with nowhere to tie up or deep water to try and anchor in. Once or twice in Haiti our anchor dragged on a windy night and we had to pull and reset. An hour after we tied up at Port Antonio, a squall came through with 40 mile an hour winds, and I paid zero attention to it; a luxury we never had the whole time in Haiti.

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Tags: ben labrot, boat, captain, floatingdoctors, haiti, Haitians, medical, medicine, Petit-Goave, sailing

The countdown

Mar 11

Posted by doctorben in CAPTAINS BLOG | 1 Comment

“The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea” –Vladimir Nobokov

Looking back over the last 2 years, I really feel for old Vladimir’s sentiment. Two years of planning and hard work have last week been realized when Southern Wind took to the air again. She was lifted off the hard ground on the travel lift a few days ago and gently lowered back into the welcoming embrace of the ocean, her hull all repaired and sound, her bottom paint and hull shining fresh, her clean propellers eager to bite into the water and once again push her out of the safety of the harbor, into the deep blue and over the horizon to far shores under different stars. A ship up on blocks in a marine yard always looks out of place somehow; stranded in a world alien to her needs and abilities like a fish dying on a dock, unable to understand why its swimming motions aren’t propelling it to safety, or like a water turtle turned on its back by some cruel tormentor and struggling futilely in the hot. I especially hate to see ships whose owners get them up into the marine yard and then neglect them or give up on them, letting them molder until they have to be sold for scrap. Ships aren’t made to die slowly on land, their repairs forgotten or given up; their purpose is not to rot away at their moorings. Taking them to sea is a risk—every single time, but every time I see a beautiful ship tied like a forgotten pet, unused year after year, or a once-proud vessel that has seen wonders none of us will ever know shoved into a far corner of a marine yard with long grass growing under its keel, I remember an old quote that I often think of when I am faced with a risk (as most decisions of consequence in our lives always involve): “A ship in port is safe…but that’s not what ships are built for.”

Fresh, new and ready for the welcoming arms of the sea

At last, Southern Wind is returning where she belongs, and true to her namesake she will carry us south to new places and new people who do not yet know that soon a white sail and red hull will appear over the horizon and bring a team of people who have demonstrated time and again during this long process their commitment and courage to doing whatever it takes to bring aid and help wherever it is needed.

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Tags: ben labrot, captain, charity, doctor, doctors, donation, floating doctors, haiti, medical, medical mission, medicine, relief work, sailing, St. Augustine

The Southern Wind Leaves Her Dock in Palm Coast For The Last Time…

Jan 29

Posted by doctorben in CAPTAINS BLOG | 2 Comments

On Friday January 22nd, we moved Southern Wind from the dock where we have been working for months in Palm Coast, 30 miles north up the Intracoastal Waterway to St. Augustine for a haul-out and two weeks of yard work at St. Augustine Marine Center before we sail for Haiti. Haiti has always been our fist planned destination, and ever since the earthquake we have been frantically trying to finish our work on Southern Wind and set sail. The Rotary Club here has raised money for additional fuel–normally we would travel under sail as much as possible to avoid using too much fuel, but people are more important than diesel and when we depart, we will travel with all sails up and both engines pushing hard all the way to Haiti.

Our project is designed to deliver medical supplies where there are no ports, so the devastation in Haiti’s commercial ports will not deter us from going. Also, we originally planned to sail on from Haiti, but we are leaving some of our field gear here in Florida to make foom for additional supplies and volunteers. Our friend Veronica from Rotary has a bus that we can store our surplus gear in and collect when we return to Florida to drop off Volunteers and take on new arrivals before departing for Central America.

St. Augustine Marine Centers 100ton Travellift

First, though, we had to get Southern Wind safely out of the canal where she has lain for ten years, over the 6-foot bar between our canal and the intracoastal, and safely up the intracoastal to the marine yard in St. Augustine for a haul out the next m0rning. Southern Wind is a BIG boat–70 tons, and this would be our first time feeling how she moves in the water. Captain Ryan Emberley, our friend from West Marine in Jacksonville, was aboard to pilot the ship safely on the maiden voyage of her rebirth after years of exposure to weather and slowly dying in her quiet canal.

We were to dock at St. Augustine Marine’s long dock on arrival, stay there the weekend, and haul Monday morning. We calculated that at 10 knots and no problems, the 30 mile run to St. Augustine could TECHNICALLY be made in 3 hours, but even though I think all of us figured there was no way things would go that smoothly, none of us anticipated the Three Hour Tour we would all experience over the next 72 hours.

Besides working so hard for so long, besides our desire to put our project into action, despite the earthquake in Haiti that has us chomping at the bit to set sail, we had one additional reason to want to move Southern Wind out of her canal–lots and lots of dead fish. A record cold snap (of course, right? While we were here in Palm Coast, we have had record floods, record cold…what’s next?) kept the temperature around or below freezing for days on end, and the canals got so cold that THOUSANDS of fish–mostly catfish, but also snook, jacks, mullet, needlefish–froze to death, and in the two slightly warmer days of preparation to move Southern Wind, all their rotting bodies floated onthe surface and the tides and wind brought ALL the canals’ dead fish down into our blind end canal.

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Tags: ben labrot, boat, canal, captain, dock, doctors, floating doctors, floatingdoctors, palm coast, sail, sailboat, sailing, Southern wind, St. Augustine

Hope Floats

Dec 19

Posted by IM in Videos | No Comments

As we near our departure, we wanted to show everyone who has supported us the faces behind Floating Doctors. This is us, interviewed and edited by NotThisBody, and posted to answer (in our own voices) a lot of the questions that we have been asked over the past many months. Thank you to everyone who made it possible for us to get to this point, and wishing you a prosperous and healthy holidays from all of us at Floating Doctors.