My Favorite Post of the Year From Bruce’s Smith’s Voyage

Tillerman asked for favorite posts of the year. My favorite post can be found here. Back in March, there was the tragic news that a boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of DR. Most of the passengers perished. Here is an excerpt:

A boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of the Dominican Republic, leaving at least eight passengers dead and 44 missing, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday. The boat was traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos islands when it caught fire about 25 miles north of the Dominican Republic, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Barry Bena said Thursday. Two migrants were pulled alive from the water Wednesday and brought to a hospital in Montecristi on the Dominican Republic's north coast. The two adults, a man and a woman, were being treated for burns and dehydration, Dr. Maria Belliard said. It appeared the migrants had been in the water for at least a day when they were spotted by a U.S. yacht cruising from Panama, said Capt. Jose Antonio Carrero, commander of the Dominican Navy's northern operations. "They found just the two people, not the boat, not anything," Carrero said.

The rescuers in this story were Bruce and Jan Smith. Their rescue account is incredible. It is one of the most gripping blog posts I have read. They pulled this poor couple out of the water. They were the soul survivors and hard been clinging to the wreckage for 3 days. The following summed up Bruce and Jan's dilemma.  Their story is very moving.

One night some time ago, in the cockpit of a friend’s boat, the after-dinner conversation was around the question, “If you came across a small fishing boat miles offshore and they needed water, would you give it to them?” Human compassion stood on one side, pitted against personal safety and the threat of piracy. Someone knew a cruising boat that had faced the question head-on. Debating it was food for thought for all of us who venture offshore.