Amistad still under stormy skies

As they have plied the Caribbean for the past several months, the crew members of the schooner Amistad probably have not been following Connecticut's budget crisis.

But it has been following them.

The schooner has already overcome delayed aid payments from the state during its historic voyage to Cuba this spring, which helped throw added uncertainty into the vessel's travels.

Now, as the Amistad conducts emergency repairs and readies for a voyage back north to the Mystic Seaport, it's dealing with another cut, thanks to the package of spending reductions approved last week by the Democrat-controlled legislature and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Amistad America, the nonprofit group that operates the New Haven-based schooner, was expecting a final payment of roughly $140,000 from the state in April, representing the last installment of the $400,000 that Rell and the legislators committed to the organization in the two-year budget deal passed last fall.

But the check that ultimately arrived was for a little more than $88,000, a shortfall that only added to the fiscal woes the organization has had to overcome as it pursued the trip to Cuba and other missions around the Caribbean over the past several months.

At earlier instances, late state payments - and insufficient funds from private donors - have delayed payments to the crew and postponed provisioning and moving the ship down the coast toward the Caribbean. At one point, ship's captain Sean Bercaw had to leave port carrying only as much fuel as he could afford.

The most recent cut is part of the state's ongoing effort to shrink discretionary spending to close a deficit in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, said Jeffrey R. Beckham, a spokesman for the Office of Policy & Management, Rell's budget office.

Rell used her budget rescission authority to reduce the payment to the Amistad by 5 percent last fall, Beckham said, and included another 5 percent cut in the deficit mitigation package it negotiated with Democrats last week. The administration also shifted the payment schedule for the group's grant from three installments to quarterly payments, Beckham said, as the administration has worked to hold back spending wherever it can to pull the budget back into balance.

Amistad America's executive director, Gregory Belanger, said his organization understood the state's fiscal quandary.

"We have always been very grateful for the state's support, and we also understand that these are extraordinary fiscal times," said Belanger, who was reached as he traveled back north from Cape Canaveral, Fla., where Bercaw and the crew made an emergency stop last week to repair fitting that gave way in heavy seas and could have imperiled the schooner's entire rigging.

That unscheduled stop means the vessel will miss out on a planned reception in Wilmington, N.C., where nine historically black colleges planned to sign a consortium agreement for future student travel on board the Amistad. Instead, William Pinkney, the ship's captain emeritus, will attend the reception to represent the Amistad.

The Amistad is expected to reach New London on schedule on May 20, in time for a new historical exhibit at the Custom House on Bank Street, Belanger said.

"It's very hard for us to manage our budget when these things are changing," Belanger said of the state's funding cuts, "but it seems like that's the reality for many other nonprofits."

Meanwhile, all is not quite lost. Beckham and Karen Senich, the executive director of the state Commission on Culture and Tourism, both said they expected that roughly $25,000 that remains in the Amistad account and was not swept away in last week's deficit bill would soon be sent to help the schooner manage its expenses.

"We expect this money to be released shortly," Beckham said.

t.mann@theday.com