april 2020 CARIBBEAN COMPAss pAGE 28Tres Hombres –An Unusual‘Green’ Freighterby D’Arcy O’ConnorI made a point of meeting the Dutch captainof Tres Hombres, 30-year-old Wiebe Randstake.D'ARCY O’CONNORI was recently in St. George’s harbor, Grenada, on theLido Deck of the 360-foot barque Sea Cloud having abeer with Simon Kwinta, the ship’s hotel manager, whenhe directed my attention to a 105-foot brigantine tiedalongside the adjacent Customs dock. “Amazing!” Simonexclaimed, shaking his head. “She got here all the wayfrom Las Palmas (Canary Islands) without an engine.”Simon, who’s been at sea all his life and aboard SeaCloud for 35 years, is someone I assumed had seen it all.Yet he was obviously impressed by Tres Hombres, anengineless 77-year-old wooden cargo ship that hadrecently spent 22 days crossing the Atlantic to deliver 200litres of Portuguese olive oil and cases of British organicseaweed to several Grenada restaurants and resorts.Inspired by Simon’s awe, I made a point of meetingthe Dutch captain of Tres Hombres, 30-year-old WiebeRandstake, who invited me aboard.On deck the ship was organized chaos with deeplytanned young men and women offloading cargo andcleaning the woodwork or tarring the standing rigging.Wiebe himself was huddled with two representatives ofthe Grenada Chocolate Company discussing the futureshipment of their famous organic dark chocolate barsto the Netherlands. Below deck in one of the ship’s twolarge cargo holds I was assailed by the sweet aroma ofoak-barreled Foursquare rum that she’d loaded a fewdays earlier in Barbados. The second hold was beingreadied to take on 12 tons of coffee beans in SantaMarta, Colombia, the ship’s next scheduled port ofcall. From there she’d be sailing north to the DominicanRepublic to load cocoa beans and more rum. All of thiswould be delivered to Amsterdam on another Atlanticcrossing — again propelled only by the wind.Following my tour of Tres Hombres, Wiebe and I headedfor a pizza lunch at the nearby Port Louis Marinawhere the lanky blond-haired captain proudly describedhis ship and its basic mission — to transport goods sustainablyfrom port to port without leaving a carbon footprint.Wiebe, who’s been sailing since the age of 12, hasspent the last six years on Tres Hombres.Under his command are six seasoned ship’s officersas well as eight “trainees” — young men and womenwho, leaving their video game consoles and designerjeans at home, sign on for the opportunity to live in thepast while visiting foreign ports on a traditional tallship. Moreover, the trainees get a hands-on educationin the art of seamanship, navigation and square-rigsail handling. At sea, life is a spartan routine of eat,sleep, work — no different than it was for cargo vesselcrews of centuries past. And, says Wiebe, by the endof an Atlantic crossing, the trainees are a close-knitfamily of fellow mariners with memories and friendshipsthey’ll carry for life,Tres Hombres was built in 1943 as a cutter-riggedminesweeper for the German navy. After the war shewas reincarnated first as a Baltic fishing boat and lateras a coastal trader and passenger vessel between theIrish north coast and the Aran Islands before being laidup for several decades. In 2007 a trio (hence the ship’sname) of Dutchmen found her and came up with theidea of turning her into an emission-free freighter. Herdiesel engine, fuel tanks and drive shaft were removedbefore she was towed to Amsterdam for a completemakeover into a two-masted cargo-carrying brigantine.Apart from being engineless, she has only a limitedsupply of electrical energy — all of it clean and sustainable.Solar panels, wind turbines and a tow generatorprovide what power is needed to charge batteries thatfeed necessities such as her navigation instruments,UHF radio, satellite phone and running lights. Thereare no power-gobblers like electric winches or windlass,air conditioning or refrigeration aboard this ship.With a cargo capacity of 45 tons, Tres Hombres is thelarger of two sailing ships currently used by aNetherlands-based consortium known as Fairtransport.Their other vessel, Nordlys, is a 78-foot wooden schooneroriginally built as a fishing trawler in 1873. With acargo capacity of 25 tons, Nordlys today operates as anengineless coastal cargo vessel in European andScandinavian waters.But it is the transatlantic emission-free shippingcapabilities of Tres Hombres that Wiebe is most enthusiasticabout. He says that with her 3,600 square feetof ten squaresails and studsails set, Tres Hombresaveraged seven to eight knots during its latest Atlanticcrossing, and she’s occasionally run before the wind atover 14 knots. Moreover, with careful sail manipulationshe can ease her way through a crowded harborand sidle up to a dock as smoothly as any ship her sizewith an auxiliary engine.Fairtransport has even bigger plans in the works.Wiebe tells me that a three-masted topsail clipper shipis currently under construction in Ceiba, Costa Rica.(See cover story in the November 2019 issue of Compassat www.caribbeancompass.com/online/november-19compass_online.pdf) After she’s launched in aboutthree years time, the 168-foot engineless vessel will beused to provide emission-free cargo service along theNorth and Central American West Coast.And looking even further ahead, Wiebe envisions apollution-free future with engineless clipper shipsdelivering European and North American cargothroughout the Pacific. Or as he put it, “riding a greenwave all the way to Australia.”D’Arcy O’Connor is a veteran journalist, TV documentarywriter, published author and round-the-world sailor.He has contributed to the Wall Street Journal,People, Yachting, National Geographic, En Route andmany other publications. His most recent book (2018) isThe Secret Treasure of Oak Island. He lives in Montrealand spends winters in Grenada.The best anchorages are onlyin Don Street’s Caribbean pilotsWhen cruising the Caribbean be sureto have Street’s guides on board asyour primary PILOT. Only Street has: Inter-island and harbour pilotage Tidal information All eastern Caribbean anchoragesStreet’s pilotage information is timelessand is your key to a quiet night’ssleep in unspoilt anchorages!Other guides are best for shore-sideinformation & are provided to the charterfleets so what harbours & anchoragesthey do include are more crowded.Street’s pilots include: south east & eastcoast Grenada, the south & east coast ofCarriacou, & the east coasts of Cannouan& Martinique. These are not coveredby other guides but Street considersthem the best in the eastern Caribbeannow Venezuela is no longer safe.The perfect pilotage companionfor all the other guidesOrder onlineUSA/Caribbean:iUniverse or Amazon(search Donald M. Street)UK/Europe: www.imray.com(search: Don Street)
april 2020 CARIBBEAN COMPAss pAGE 29