Crowd funding: RIB Pontoon for rescuers in Chios, Greece
Many Refugees are still trying to get to Europe
The sea traffic of Refugees between Greece and Turkey is much lower after the agreement between the EU and Turkey. It was reduced but has not ended. The average daily refugee arrivals in May is still high – 59 people a day, according to UNHCR documents. It’s still a lot of people, and the risk of drowning is high because of the use of poor quality, overloaded dinghies.
Silent deaths near the Greek coasts
Local NGOs are very professional and are doing a great job every day. However, most of them operate on land, and it’s very difficult or impossible for them to help people in distress at the sea. Because of not enough people to control the situation on the water, the horrific silent deaths are still a problem. Silent deaths are when a boat with refugees sinks at night, and people die because there is nobody who can see it and react. A terrible thing like this happened, for example, near the northern coast of Samos, ca 20 nautical miles from our patrol area – but there was nobody to notice and inform us about the distress.
Sailing season and increase of the charter prices
For our search and rescue actions near Chios island, we use mainly chartered sailing boats, most often Bavaria 50 type – cause it suits our specific needs very well. We rent these sailboats from the Lavrion company with the help of private donors. The price for the charter is workable during winter, but the sailing season starts soon. The charter price will rise to 3500 euros per week – that change is limiting our renting possibilities significantly. As a result, we have fewer boats to patrol the area around the island.
Solution: RIB instead of a charter
For the price of two weeks long boat charter, we can buy a good rescue RIB and use it in rescue actions for years! We found a well maintained, twelve-person RIB in Greece. The offer included an engine and trolley. All together it’s 7 000 euros, tax included. The boat is already registered in Greece. We have experienced rescuers from Chios in our team. They had special training with RNLI, so we can assure they know how to work with RIB and conduct a professional sea rescue operation.
of 7000 EURO gathered
Crowd founding for a RIB PONTOON
That’s why we decided to run our crowdfunding action to be able to buy at least one RIB Pontoon for our rescuers on Chios island in Greece. Information about this crowdfunding action was published on our website and Facebook profile (here).
We want to thank all our private donors for making this crowdfunding action possible and completed quickly!
You let us save many lives with your generous support!
Below you can see the RIB Pontoon we have bought for our search & rescue actions.
