We have been overwhelmed with requests to take relief supplies to Haiti. Port-Au-Prince has become a bottleneck, the bureaucratic red-tape is now choking the supply chain. Haiti is no longer in the news, making fund raising difficult. These factors have forced many small NGO's to turn to us to get their supplies to Haiti.

The supplies have become so overwhelming, in fact, that we started to look into a larger vessel. Something with more capacity than Liberty was needed, we had over 40,000 lbs of relief supplies that needed to get to Haiti, and Liberty could only take a quarter of that. Four trips on Liberty would mean four times the expense, and time is running out. Hurricane season is coming soon.

The tall-ship community's response has been awesome. We heard about a beautiful schooner, the Halie & Matthew, laid up in Key West because of the poor winter season, waiting for the weather to improve before sailing to Maine for the start of her summer season. We offered to cover their costs and deliver her from Key West to Maine via Haiti! Her owners were delighted!

So, after a strenuous day of fund-raising, we are now in a position to make the following announcement: the crew of the schooner Liberty will be sailing the schooner Halie & Matthew to several undisclosed locations in Haiti delivering 40,000 pounds of life-saving relief supplies. Our motley crew of heavily tattooed sailors, with huge hearts, have managed to organize a grassroots movement to take a jumbo jet sized load to reopen a hospital for the United Haitian American Society of Connecticut with medical supplies from One World Medical in Chicago, and to support the humanitarian work of Child Spring International. Also supplies are bound for several smaller clinics and orphanages. With this cargo we will make a significant impact on the people of Haiti.

We are still accepting donations. We still need dry beans, peanut butter, baby formula & Vagisil.

Thank you to all our friends for supporting this relief voyage:

* United Haitian American Society of Connecticut.
* Christina from Child Spring International.
* Drew from One World Medical.
* Carl, Jeff, Dirk and Angela and all the wonderful folks from 1standAlton
* Nick Zantop from Facebook.
* Captain Joey.
* Boy Scout Troop #377, Long Island.
* 9th grade Students of Wilcox High School in Santa Clara CA.
* The Messiah Lutheran Church in Long Island.
* Hundreds of friends of the crew who gave small donations via paypal,
* Paul from Port Light Strategies for $$ and 11,000 lbs of rice
* Greg from Hundreds for Haiti.
* Tom from Thomas Hudson Photography
* Samy's Camera in Los Angeles
* Out of Frame Productions in Los Angeles
* Jetrag
* Jeff and Eliza,
* All our twitter followers who connected us to so many leads.
* All of you who read our blogs and encourage us with your calls and spreading the word.



Photo credit Cynthia Loebe