The Amistad in better days

In May of 2010, we posted about a serious rigging failure suffered by the schooner Amistad while in heavy seas off the Florida coast.  The schooner limped back to Mystic, CT, where she built,  to undergo $100,000 in repairs.  She has not sailed since.  This year, Amistad America, the non-profit organization behind the schooner, is hoping to get her sailing again.

Group hopes it can right the Amistad

There were no trips last year as Amistad America tried to find the money to do the repairs and then restructured its $280,000 debt with TD Bank, which had filed a lien against the nonprofit organization.

“There were times last year when I was deeply concerned if we could get through the next two months,” admitted Amistad America CEO Greg Belanger in an interview last week.

But Belanger said 2011 was a blessing in disguise for the organization, offering an opportunity to “rethink and retool” the programs and business plan to ensure the revenue needed to continue operating. He said visitors who came aboard the ship while it was docked at Mystic Seaport all year provided important feedback about its educational programs and marketing efforts.

Belanger said Amistad America has money left over from last year’s budget that it can use to start this year’s programs and remaining state bonding funds to pay for the repairs. He stressed, however, that the ship has to begin producing revenue this summer so operations can continue.

The schooner Amistad  is a replica of the slave trader La Amistad which was the scene of a revolt by African captives being transported from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba in 1839. The Africans seized control of the ship and sailed it to the coast of Long Island where they were intercepted by the USS Washington of the United States Revenue Cutter Service. The case resulting in a US Supreme Court ruling in 1841 which found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic had been illegal, because the international slave trade had been abolished, and the captives were thus not legally slaves but free.

Thanks to Tom Russell of the Traditional Sail Professionals Linked-in Group for passing the article along.