32' Mission Navigation Cargo Dory (2020) - HOPE FOR HAITI

Custom Cargo Dory for Caribbean Mission Service

This boat was built by volunteers and donations at Mission Navigation, Beaufort, NC, for use by Team Haiti-4-Jesus in Le Basse, Haiti and surrounding villages without access by road. It will transport food, water, medical supplies, building materials, and passengers between ports and these villages to support their orphanage, schools, and hospital. If pangoes are the pickup trucks of the Caribbean, this is a dump truck: rugged, simple, and safe to carry heavier loads in coastal waters.

The boat is designed on the lines of a classic dory per John Gardner to offer the most efficient movement of large loads, but stretched to a hull length of 32 feet with a proportionate 10 foot beam to provide 195 cubic feet of enclosed cargo in two holds. This displacement hull boat is built with multiple layers of cold-molded plywood and fiberglass. The deck is protected with a pickup truck type bed liner coating, and the keel and wheel are protected by a stainless steel shoe (added after the pictures).

The boat has been named Hope for Haiti to convey its intended purpose. As an entirely volunteer effort, the construction was a multi-year project with multiple interruptions. The most notable was its first unpiloted sea trial during hurricane Florence, when the completed hull was washed off its stands outside the boat construction shed and driven by the wind and storm surge from Jarret Bay across a flooded field and dashed against a grove of pine trees. The boat was recovered by dragging it back to the shed with a backhoe. The hull was undamaged; the holds were dry; but there was a lot of mud to scrub off the bottom before it could receive its anti-fouling bottom paint. With that trial, Hope for Haiti proved its sea worthiness and ruggedness for mission service.

As the last bolts were being tightened to align the driveshaft with the inboard 30 HP BetaMarine diesel, the international borders were closing with the spread of the COVID pandemic. Hope for Haiti has been sitting on the hard in Beaufort, NC ready but waiting. Arrangements are now concluding to transport this rugged cargo dory to Haiti this Spring so she can again return to coastal waters, this time with a captain and fairer weather. Bon voyage and Godspeed.