Funding: RIB for rescuers in Chios, Greece

’Refugees are still trying to get to Greek shores.

Refugees sea traffic between Greece and Turkey is much lower after agreement signed between EU and Turkey. It was reduced but has not ended. An average daily refugee arrivals in May is 59 people a day, according to UNHCR documents. It’s still a lot people and risk of drowning is high because they use very poor in quality, overloaded dinghies.

Silent deaths

Local NGOs are very professional and make a great work. However most of them operates on land and it’s very difficult or impossible to help people in distress at the sea. There are also silent deaths – when boat sinks at night and nobody see it. It happened for example near North coast of Samos, ca 20 nautical miles form our patrol area, but there was nobody notice and inform us about such distress.

Sailing season and increase of the charter prices

At Chios we  use chartered sailing boats, most often Bavaria 50 – cause it suits our search and rescue action needs. W charter these sailboats from Lavrion company and price is workable during winter. But sailing season starts soon and charter price will rise up to 3500 euro per week.

RIB instead of a charter

For the price of two weeks long one 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. Offer included engine and trolley. All together is 7000 euros, tax included. Boat is already registered in Greece.

Professional rescuers

In our team we have experienced rescuers from Chios. Last months they had courses with RNLI so they exactly know how to help people from RIB and how to conduct a professional sea rescue operation.

CROWDFUNDING – 7 000 EUR for a RIB PONTOON

That’s why we decided to run our crowdfunding action to be able to buy at list one RIB pontoon for our rescuers on Chios island in Greece. Information on how to participate in this crowdfunding action can be found here on our Facebook profile.

SUCCEED!

We want to thank all our private donors to make this crowdfunding action successfully completed!

You let us save many lives out here!