The attractions are steadily growing in one Africa’s fastest developing tourist destinations. After a decommissioning and send-off ceremony for the Spirit of Malabo on October 12, 2017 from the Gateway Marina in Brooklyn, New York, this historic vessel is off to Equatorial Guinea.
This vessel was used for a five-thousand-mile solo transatlantic row from Las Palmas, Canary Islands and made landfall with the Spirit of Malabo at New York’s Brooklyn Bridge on November 28, 2015. The journey would take arduous twenty-one months.
The transatlantic row was for AIDS awareness and to memorialize the countless numbers of Africans that died during the transatlantic slave trade and worked on plantations in the Americas and Caribbean. The vessel was sponsored by the Republic of Equatorial Guinea along with numerous partners both locally, nationally and worldwide.
The Brazilian built rowboat will now be transported back to Africa where it will be on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Equatorial Guinea in the city of Malabo. Rowing and safety gear, books, equipment, diaries, charts, navigation tools, still photos and fishing apparatus that were part of the Atlantic crossing will accompany the museum exhibition.
The decommissioning and send-off ceremony for the Spirit of Malabo is designed to coincide with the celebration of Equatorial Guinea’s 49th Year of Independence from Spain. The Spirit of Malabo will be transported by Maersk Line, the worlds largest container shipping company.
WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS ARTICLE:
- The Brazilian built rowboat will now be transported back to Africa where it will be on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Equatorial Guinea in the city of Malabo.
- The transatlantic row was for AIDS awareness and to memorialize the countless numbers of Africans that died during the transatlantic slave trade and worked on plantations in the Americas and Caribbean.
- After a decommissioning and send-off ceremony for the Spirit of Malabo on October 12, 2017 from the Gateway Marina in Brooklyn, New York, this historic vessel is off to Equatorial Guinea.
