Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Help poured in from all cor­ners for the vil­lagers of Bam­boo Num­ber 2 yes­ter­day, but Amer­i­can yachtie Bruce Am­licke stood out, as he left his yacht in Ch­aguara­mas to as­sist the vil­lagers.

Am­licke, 77, of New Jer­sey, who has been in Trinidad and To­ba­go for over three years liv­ing on his sail­boat, took his dingy to help take sup­plies to those who need­ed help.

The yachtie was al­so in the com­pa­ny of mem­bers of the Yacht Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has been so good to me and I was com­pelled to come to as­sist and what I saw here to­day (Wednes­day), and I can’t imag­ine peo­ple liv­ing in this con­di­tion and the area needs a lot of pub­lic works to be done so that we don’t have to do this again,” Am­licke said.

Yacht Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Jesse James mean­while told Guardian Me­dia, “I love my coun­try and to know that peo­ple out­side here in this kind of con­di­tion and not do any­thing, it would have been wrong and it so re­al­ly heart-break­ing to see what went on here.”

He added, “The cruis­ing com­mu­ni­ty and the yachties, they do­nat­ed cash, this en­gine on­board and the dingy was do­nat­ed here, and we have some cash and so on to help be­cause this is just the be­gin­ning. This is just the be­gin­ning, in the af­ter­math for the clean-up more help will have to be poured in.”

The yachties are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the com­mu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to as­sist the vil­lagers.