The 34-foot wooden boat departure from Key West, Florida, and will arrive at the Hemingway Marina in Havana on Saturday on “an educational and humanitarian mission,” Helen Jaccard, director of the Golden Rule Project, said.
She explained that they have been traveling through the United States for three and a half months and when they saw that they would be in Key West at the end of December they decided to include Cuba due to its geographical proximity and because it was the scene 60 years ago of the October Crisis (1962), when the world was perilously on the brink of nuclear war.
However, “60 years later, the United States continues to maintain a brutal economic blockade against Cuba, strangling its economic development and causing suffering to Cuban families,” Gerry Condon, former president of Veterans for Peace, and a member of the crew, noted.
“The entire world opposes the US blockade against Cuba and it is time for it to end,” he stressed, noting that “now, the confrontation between the United States and Russia over Ukraine has raised the specter of nuclear war once again.”
The five crew members of the boat were joined by Veterans for Peace members who are traveling to Havana to participate in an educational Art and Culture program coordinated by the Proximity Cuba travel agency.
The group will visit communities that were seriously hit by Hurricane Ian, which destroyed thousands of homes in the western province of Pinar del Río in September, and will bring humanitarian aid to the victims.
Golden Rule is publicizing the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and rallying support for local initiatives to pressure the US Government to join the growing number of countries that have signed and ratified the Treaty.
The conflict in Ukraine dealt a severe setback for peace lovers and highlights the very real possibility of nuclear war, the project said on its official website.
The members of the Golden Rule are heirs to the original four-man crew that in 1958 attempted to sail to the US nuclear testing site in the Marshall Islands.
The sailboat was restored for five years by Veterans for Peace and friends and set sail again in June 2015, since then she has been sailing in favor of peace and disarmament.
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