Crew and school children & headmaster gather on the foredeck of Big Fish
When a Tsunami ravaged Robinson Crusoe Island following the earthquake that hit Chile early this year 629 residents of the coastal village of Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe Island were affected when a tsunami estimated to have been five meters in height, hit the island without warning of the onrushing wave that virtually flattened the town, destroying houses, government offices, church, businesses and the village’s only school.
While the islanders await governmental assistance, some aid is trickling in from private donations. The 45 metre superyacht Big Fish, on her way from Fort Lauderdale to the Antarctic Peninsula for charter operations, stopped in Robinson Crusoe Island after learning of the villager’s plight.
The Captain of Big Fish, Capt. Winston Joyce-Clarke, , agreed to carry and distribute a variety of needed goods to the school on Robinson Crusoe Island. The gifts, totaling more than US$8,400, included laptop computers, printer, numerous school supplies, and sports equipment for the 150 children left without a school in the tsunami’s wake.
“We are delighted to be participating in this important effort,” said the yachts owner Richard Beattie. “Big Fish was built to visit the most remote and pristine places of earth in safety and comfort,” he said. We want to leave all the places we visit in our travels as good – if not better – than before our arrival. Yachts are conspicuous for their size and beauty, and we must also help make them equally conspicuous for the benefit they can provide to the remote populations they visit. Just as we experience joy from yachting, we must also leave joy in our wakes.”
Big Fish, the flagship of Aquos Yachts, is currently in Ushuia, at the southern tip of Patagonia, waiting for a weather window to cross the infamous Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. There, she will continue her extraordinarily successful maiden voyage charter career, offering the only fly-in, fly-out luxury yacht charters offered in Antarctica. In February, she will continue her planned circumnavigation up the South American east coast to Rio de Janeiro (in time for Carnival!), then to the Amazon, on the the Caribbean and next to Northern Europe and Scandinavia. In August, she will conclude her circumnavigation by cruising the fabled and never-before-attempted-by-a-yacht Northeast Passage over the top of Russia, visiting places never seen before from the deck of a yacht or cruise ship