Two boats filled with humanitarian supplies travelling from Mexico to Cuba have been located days after contact with them was lost in the Caribbean, organisers say.
The boats were located by the Mexican Navy and the crews are safe, a spokesman for the Nuestra America Convoy said.
He did not explain why the two boats - the Friendship and Tiger Moth - had disappeared.
They are among several vessels that have sought to carry supplies to the island nation since the US imposed an oil blockade in January, prompting a chronic fuel shortage.
The Mexican Navy has not commented on how it located the boats, which departed Isla Mujeres, in Mexico’s easternmost state of Quintana Roo, on 20 March, and had been due to arrive at their destination on Monday or Tuesday.
If those are the boats in the image, that’s really stretching the definition of what an “aid” ship can be.
Same as the Gaza flotillas. These are pleasure craft and sailboats mostly. The cargo they can transport is minuscule.
These flotillas aren’t about bringing anything more than a symbolic amount of aid. Their main goal is (social) media attention.
Is it surprising if they take a pleasure cruise shortcut after their donation drives? The Gaza flotilla ships were at least twice as big, involved more, and they also looked the part. These look like surfer dude sailboats on vacation.
Even symbolically these don’t seem to hold up to scrutiny. I am not a ship connoisseur, but still…
Who cares? Why is it a bad thing that some Mexicans with boats decided to join an aid flotilla? You do know what a flotilla is, right? It’s not about the size of one individual craft
Strawman much?
Oh? Then please explain the point of your criticism
Each of those boats can easily stick 5-10 MW of solar panels and ≈ .7 to 1 GJ worth of batteries into their holds for that short of a cruise. That brings two entire towns back online. It’s certainly not nothing.
If just these two boats are the only source that China has of getting solar panels and batteries to Cuba, they can get the entire country off of oil dependency in a year or two. I seriously doubt that is the case though.
And did they? I would have gone with refined uranium, that stuff is pretty valuable. I must have missed where they can carry the freight containers worth of solar panels you claim they are.
That’s about 2 pallets of solar panels and batteries each, not a shipping container. That’s 0.0138 of a standard shipping container. I used to stack them 4 wide, 3 high, and 24 deep when I was a forklift operator. If you are shipping something that is light, and doesn’t matter if it overheats, you can do 4×4×26. Maybe more.
Their hold can easily contain an extra 4 pallets.
If those particular boats did or not, I don’t know, and that is irrelevant anyway. They definitely shipped some pallets of something, and other boats and ships exist and are providing aid.
They were carrying 2 tons of supply, so Cuba at least got something but that’s less than a truck can carry. I don’t know of any solar panel technology that could provide “5-10MW” that could be shipped in just 2 tons.
Sumud Flotilla used to have photos of their cargo on their website. It was so embarrassingly little, they took them down.
Of course you don’t have to believe the claims they were empty.
Your first link directs to a 404 and your second links to a Jerusalem Post article. I’m disinclined to believe either link is an authoritative primary source.
Seems very suspiciously like a hasbara plant.
Yes, the first link is a 404 because they deleted the images, as I pointed out at the same time.