Of the 10 years I was serving with Mercy Ships, I spent 7even years on this ship, and here uou will find informatiopn about the ship, my time onboard and the people that I worked with and came to call friends.
Formerly a Norwegian ferry, the Caribbean Mercy was acquired by Mercy Ships in 1994. In her 12-year history as a Mercy Ship, the Caribbean Mercy visited 137 total ports, conducting field service assignments in 56 port visits to 13 different developing nations, primarily in Central America and the Caribbean basin. An average crew of 120 volunteers from more than 20 nations served onboard.
the picture below is the final resting spot in Chickasaw Alabama of the Caribbean Mercy below you will also find some links to memory presentation several pages of pictures and Outreach that I did with this ministry, from the time I stepped on the gangway in 1997 to do my DTS until the time we stood on the dock and took the last crew picture in 2006. In between those times where some very exciting times some very hard times and too many stories to account for here also below will be a couple of stories that different crew members have wrote just to give you an idea what ship life was like also you will find a link to the last sale of the anastasis because I did also spend three Summers aboard that ship and a trip from Africa to Europe also with good memories
1994 to 2006, the 265-foot Caribbean Mercy focused on the Caribbean basin and South and Central America. Her international crew of 120 volunteers gave spiritual and physical assistance to the poor and needy. The ship was outfitted with a surgical eye unit allowing her to perform hundred of orthopedic, maxillofacial, cataract and strabismus surgeries on board. Additional projects included mobile medical and dental clinics, well-drilling, and relief and development projects. Photo Credit: Paul Tonetti
Big Waves:
In the summer of 1998 sailing North off the coast somewhere between Mexico and California we encountered some very huge waves, too big to make you seasick, but just enough to take your feet out from under you! I gave my camera to my friend Marco who was on bridge duty and asked him to take a few pictures and the water as it crashed over the bow
One of my projects on board was to install a live streaming webcam where people could log in and see where the ship was and what we were doing. In the picture below we were docked in Honduras also one of my projects was installing CCTV security cameras forward and aft on the ship.
Last Sail
Last Sail to Mobile, Alabama shipyard. Who Remembers that Sail? I know I will never forget that one! How many times did the motor breakdown and we drifted into Mexican waters. However stopping in Cozumel for repairs was not so bad. Hear is an image from the satellite tracking device (also installed by me) showing where the motor stopped and we were drifting streight for Mexico.
The following is a story written by my friend Abe Quilling, it could have very easily been written by Me was a very common story amongst us all. I like this one though because I was part of this story as he went to Guatemala City where my heart was and then to Puerto Barrios where I’m currently located now. Yes I was on Board the ship in Puerto Barrios when he arrived from Guatemala City.
THE STORY OF MY TIME WITH THE CARIBBEAN MERCY -Abe Quilling
May 2001
I believe it was around the twenty-eighth of May when my brother Ben and I found ourselves in Victoria, Canada aboard the M/V Caribbean Mercy (where it was just starting it’s public relations tour down the west coast of America). Ben was to work for three months in the engine room and I, after a short time in the kitchen, was to start a Discipleship Training School (DTS) on board the ship. The ship in itself, when we got there, seemed huge. Two hundred and eighty feet of crisscrossed walkways and hundreds of rooms. At first we were lost in just getting from our sleeping quarters to the dining room and back again!
A few days before the DTS started the students started filtering in. A Canadian here, a couple from Germany there, some Swedes and of course a few more States people like myself showed up. All in all there was about nineteen of us all total for the school and outreach. We had three months of lectures and then two months working in Guatemala to look forward to. As the ship sailed down the West Coast of America on it P.R. tour we would be in our lecture phase, then our team would fly down to Guatemala to prepare for the ship that would get there a month later.
Each week, as we went with the ship south, we had a different speaker that would lecture for around four hours every morning (except for weekends). The afternoons were our work times where each one of us helped with running the ship. The speakers, for the most part, I found to be very good. They had some really good things to talk about, everything from marriage and dating to spiritual warfare. At the end of those three months I felt like my brain was going to explode with all the info that was being poured into it!
We left San Diego, our last port on the P.R. tour, a few days after the lecture phase to fly to Guatemala City. From there we took a very interesting bus ride east to the little port town of Puerto Barrios where the ship would be docking. For the first month that we were there we did weekly and daily prayer walks in the town. We focused on the poorer side of it where the population was mainly black people that were the dissidents of slaves that the Spanish brought over with them. We did street dramas and open airs and also went weekly to this little school for mentally handicapped children, that first month. We started a twenty-four-hour prayer session that lasted a couple weeks; I really think that that was the best thing we did down there. Having a truly lasting impact.
When the ship landed our life down there did a one-eighty and most of our time was spent working to get the ship ready for ministry other than working with the people. Many hot and sweaty hours spent down in the cargo holds!
The eighteenth of Nov. we found ourselves back in Guatemala City saying some tearful goodbyes and watching as our friends got into there taxies to head for the airport. Their homes in sight! Mine was still a couple weeks off though for I had a trip planned with my brother, friend and three other DTS’ers. We were planning on spending a week on the beaches of Belize and another week in beautiful Antigua, Guatemala. It was a wonderful holiday with a long flight and snowy Montana at its end.
-Abe
During my time on board the ship I maintained an official unofficial website that could be used by the crew to send to their supporters. A site that showed more details of what they were doing along with pictures that included all the crew, then after the ship was retired I converted this to a memory website and then 20 years later I took the site down, but I have preserved it in a series of PDF files listed below. Feel free to look or download the files or even share, you may enjoy looking at the ones of the pictures, that includes a lot of us and what the ship did especially the memory presentation compiled by our Communications Department on board the ship