By David Harry

Staff Writer

Scarborough resident Rick Woodbury clearly recalls how his trip to Haiti started. 

“I dropped some things off and the rest is history,” he said this week.

As one of 12 people on the Sea Hunter, a salvage ship owned by Gorham resident Greg Brooks, Woodbury recently returned from delivering about 200 tons of relief supplies for earthquake victims. Along the way, he turned 50.

What he called “history” was an epic adventure of storms on the high seas, oceans of red tape and the immense frustration of seeing the worst of human nature before rediscovering the best of humanity.

One of the dozen aboard the ship was South Portland resident Julia Cote, 25, who spent three weeks helping plan and organize the trip before the ship left Portland.

“I would not have passed up a second,” Cote said about the trip as she and Woodbury let loose a tide of impressions and memories while eating breakfast at a Portland diner this week.

Cote works with Brooks at his company, Sub Sea Research, which locates and salvages shipwrecks. Woodbury, a volunteer on the ship, is a plant manager at the Portland Water District treatment plant on Portland’s East End.

The two returned to Maine last Friday. They departed Jan. 31 for a trip that was expected to take no more than a month.

“This will shape my life,” Cote said.

Woodbury divided the journey into two stages – Portland to Miami and Miami to Haiti. Neither was smooth. The trip from Portland to Miami took nearly twice the anticipated 4 1/2 days as the Sea Hunter passed through two storms.

The first brought 2 feet of snow in Washington, D.C., and forced the Sea Hunter to take refuge at the mouth of Delaware Bay. The crew of 10 employees and two volunteers rode out the storm in survival suits.

“It was a roller coaster ride you can’t buy for 30 hours,” Woodbury said.

A second storm farther down the Atlantic coast brought 20-foot waves and an indelible memory for Cote.

“Is that our life raft in the water?” Cote recalled asking as a backup life raft on the Sea Hunter was torn loose.

Woodbury said those storms convinced him the ship and its cargo were sound, even as Coast Guard officials prohibited the ship from leaving for Haiti after it reached Miami. A hold order was placed on the ship because Coast Guard officials determined the ship needed a licensed shipmaster and worried about how cargo was stored.

“The Coast Guard painted the whole boat with one brush,” Woodbury said. Coast Guard officials worried shipping pallets had shifted too much on the trip to Miami and required the shipping containers to be welded instead of chained to the deck. “I knew the ship and crew were really tight,” he added.

Ten, 20-foot shipping containers with more clothing, food and medical supplies were loaded at Miami, added to pallets of supplies brought from Portland and a stop in Boston. The ship also carried a solar-powered desalinator for a church orphanage outside Port au Prince. 

Other supplies were destined for Hope Village, an orphanage of about 800 children operated in Les Cayes by Lewiston native Fr. Marc Boisvert, Cote said. 

It took 12 days for clearance to leave Miami, about two days to reach Haiti and another five before the crew was authorized to unload the ship, Woodbury recalled.

“You close your eyes, then you reopen them and refocus,” Cote said about coping with the frustration and boredom.

Living in tight quarters with limited fresh water, Woodbury said Cote was especially good at helping the crew keep it spirits up. Crew members relished her secret stash of chocolate she handed out. 

“If you are not smiling, I have not done something right today,” Cote said.

Cote and Woodbury said unloading the Sea Hunter was never pretty. A mission to help children in an impoverished country tested the limits of charity as the crew encountered graft and corruption, Cote and Woodbury said.

In the port of Miragoane, where the ship originally intended to unload, a harbormaster wanted $100 to guide the ship to its proper anchorage spot, Woodbury said. About half the crew visited the town before eventually sailing to Les Cayes and unloading the ship.

Cote and Woodbury said horrendous poverty was accompanied by potential danger. Walking up trash-strewn dirt roads, Cote said she and others would try to avoid getting drenched with raw sewage when vehicles drove by. 

“You had to jump out of the splash zone,” Cote said.

Eventually, they found themselves the center of unfriendly attention, hostility that was evident despite the language barrier.

Who to help and how to help was always a struggle, Cote said, as she recalled a woman asking for her shoes after Cote gave her some money.

“It is tough to see 1,000 people like that. How do you give to one and not the other?” Woodbury asked.

As they returned to the Sea Hunter, Cote said she fell on the beach and immediately washed her legs with hand sanitizer, scared of infections that could come from an open wound.

In Les Cayes, Cote said night watches on deck were punctuated by shining a spotlight across the water at the small boats trying to approach the ship. By dawn, boats swarmed the ship while officials with questionable ethics supervised unloading the supplies, Woodbury said.

“You could tell an official, he had a belly on him,” Woodbury said. Officials commonly opened boxes and set aside items they wanted to keep for themselves before allowing the boxes to be unloaded, he added.

“No matter where we pulled in, they wanted first pick of the donations,” Cote said. 

Cote said there were times she and crew member Cindy Hart were confined to the bridge because of crowds swarming the deck and demanding their share of supplies.

Woodbury said the days of unloading tested his patience as greed and corruption led to potentially violent confrontations with people in boats and on the ship.

“It was a free-for-all,” Woodbury said.

As they struggled to maintain order and get supplies to the people they were intended to help, Woodbury and Cote said they marveled at the 20-foot hand-hewn boats made of hollowed palm trees Haitians sailed, paddled and steered to reach the Sea Hunter.

“They are incredibly resourceful people,” Cote said.

Exhausted after five days of unloading the ship, Cote said the visit to Hope Village reaffirmed why she wanted to make the trip.

“I got to visit their world. It was sad, it was good,” she said. Boisvert also oversees feeding the nearby village, and Cote said about 4,000 meals are prepared each day at Hope Village.

On her first night sleeping at home, Cote said she woke up early, ready for another day on the ship. She would like to return to Hope Village, even if she shudders at the thought of the flight and bus ride needed to get her there.

“In spirit, that’s where we are,” she said.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219