A long deployment comes to an end.
For four weeks, our volunteer crew members Eden, Momo, Juliette, Rob and David, together with skipper Matthias, were training, keeping watch and looking out for distress cases at sea on our sailing vessel Trotamar III.
Even though the crew had to seek shelter from strong winds on Lampedusa for several days, most of the time the weather and the sea were relatively calm in May on the Central Mediterranean Sea. That’s why there have been many distress calls in recent weeks for small refugee boats that started from Tunisia or Libya towards Europe.
We have been on the lookout for overcrowded, unseaworthy small boats several times, for which the Alarmphone or the authorities had alerted. On Saturday, May 17, we accompanied 46 people on a wooden boat and provided them with life jackets and drinking water – until the Italian coastguard arrived and rescued everyone.

On Tuesday, May 20, we came across another escape boat. After we issued life jackets to all 64 people, the boat was able to restart its engine and sailed off towards Lampedusa.
Our crew is ending this deployment in Licata with an organizational and psychological debriefing. The CompassCollective is already hard at work in the meantime preparing for the Kulturelle Landpartie in Wendland, where we will be hosting several events. We hope to see you there!