Geert van der Kolk a sailor and writer from the Netherlands who has written 10 books (in Dutch), has announced a plan he calls The Exodus Project. After many years of sailing in the Caribbean, visiting Haiti and hearing about and seeing the effects of Haitian refugees crammed into boats into an attempt to flee the poverty and corruption of Haiti, Van der Kolk plans to return to the Haitian island of Île à Vache and build a traditional Haitian sloop. With this boat and a crew of Haitian and American volunteers, he will try to sail to Florida.
According to van der Kolk, “it will be a great sporting challenge, and an attempt to reconstruct the experience of all those anonymous boat people. Hopefully the project will draw some much-needed attention to Haiti’s problems.”
“Our first test will be to get through the Windward Passage, going against the trade winds. Next are hundreds of miles of shoals, coral reefs and desert islands in the Bahamas. Finally, we’ll have to cross the Gulf Stream.”
For more info and ways you can help go to his website.