Holiday Sailors Save Shipwreck Survivors

by Sail-World Cruising/Phil Helsel,New Haven Register on 10 Mar 2007 It must have been the last thing they thought could happen when they went on a sailing holiday. Two US sailors on a holiday cruise of the Caribbean have saved the lives of some Haiti shipwreck survivors. Bruce Smith, 52, and his wife Jan Hein were sailing from Panama to Antigua last Tuesday when Jan spotted what looked like a weather buoy in the water miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

They sailed closer, and realized that what she had seen was actually two badly burned Haitian migrants, clinging to the wreckage of a charred fiberglass boat. The 27-year-old man and 23-year-old woman said they had been in the water for days, after the gas tank on their makeshift craft exploded miles off the coast of Dominican Republic.

'The woman was thrown over the top of the boat wearing tiny shorts and a cotton T-shirt; the man, holding himself and her tightly to what was left of the craft, had on only a pair of white briefs,' Hein said in an e-mail. 'It was a heart-wrenching, horrifying scene.'

An estimated 56 people were aboard the homemade boat, which was shuttling migrants from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos Islands when it caught fire and sank last week. Rescuers called off the search Sunday.

Smith’s mother, Ginny Smith of Milford, said she was amazed to hear the story this week, news of which was sent by e-mails from Smith and Hein in the Caribbean to family members.

'I think it’s absolutely tremendous that they were able to save a couple of people,' said Ginny Smith, who lives in a cottage on the shore of the Housatonic River.

Bruce Smith and his wife are still in the Caribbean and couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday, but Hein’s e-mail tells of the harrowing rescue in detail. Hein described how they pulled the pair to safety aboard Smith’s hand-made 34-foot sailboat, the Woodwind, and how they tried to communicate with the survivors even though neither spoke French.

The man introduced himself as Djenson Loucien and the woman said her name was Julia Cililu. They said they had been adrift for three days.

Smith and Hein were in the midst of a 12-day journey and hadn’t prepared for a rescue; still, they did what they could, giving the survivors ibuprofen to dull the pain and Pedialyte to drink.

'Each time we gave him something, he looked in our eyes and said, ‘Thank you, thank you, God bless you,’' Hein wrote.

By using bits of Spanish, English and hand gestures, Hein said she and her husband learned the gas tank on the doomed craft had exploded three days before. But they didn’t learn that all the rest of the passengers were feared dead until they pulled into Montecristi Bay, Dominican Republic.

Smith took his first trip to the Caribbean over 30 years ago, after he graduated from Law, Ginny Smith said, and returned thoroughly sunburned. But Smith eventually returned there and he met his wife, a teacher from Gig Harbor, Wash.

They were married in Gig Harbor on Aug. 3, 1983, and have a son, Kess, who attends Washington State College, Ginny Smith said. Bruce Smith and Hein embarked on their current nine-month trip from Gig Harbor to Antigua so that Smith, an artist who paints for the Bahama Breeze restaurant chain, could get some new ideas, she said. Ginny Smith hasn’t been able to speak to her son since the rescue.

Thousands of Haitians take to the sea on flimsy boats each year, heading north toward Florida to escape grinding poverty and frequent political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Nearly all are intercepted and repatriated to their homeland, where the vast majority of the nation’s 8 million people lives on less than $1 a day.

Authorities have not yet determined where the migrants were headed or when they set sail. The rescued pair are in serious condition at a local hospital and are expected to remain there for at least two weeks.