On Tuesday, Jimmy Buffett flew to earthquake-stricken Haiti, filling his airplane with tents for some of the millions of Haitians that are now homeless:

Jimmy Buffett may sing about “Surfing in a Hurricane,” but cruising through Haiti’s earthquake-ravaged capital nearly left the singer without words.

“It’s like it was bombed,” the singer told The Associated Press after touring the ravaged country’s capital.

Buffett loaded his seaplane with tents for some of the 1.2 million Haitians who lost their homes and set a course for the Caribbean nation on Tuesday.

The singer is a lover of Haitian music who has his own room named after him at the famed Hotel Oloffson.

“Haiti’s something worth saving to me,” he said.

He was convinced to make his first visit to Haiti since 1994 because of the needs of so many after the magnitude-7 quake struck on Jan. 12. On Tuesday, he was escorted by U.S. Embassy security personnel past downtown and the destroyed national cathedral.

Shortly after the quake struck, Buffett recorded a video message asking his fans to help out by donating to the relief effort.

In 2007 Jimmy Buffett and several partners formed Last Mango Racing Stables, a horse racing owners group.

Last Mango is hoping to field their horse Daddy Forty Nine in this year’s Kentucky Derby:

A total of 366 three-year-olds are nominated to the Derby and the other Triple Crown races, from two-year-old champion Lookin At Lucky, to a long shot gelding co-owned by Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees, to a full brother of ill-fated 2006 Derby winner Barbaro.

The Derby field is limited to 20 starters, and it’ll be the prep races from Arkansas to Arcadia, Calif., New Orleans to New York, and Gulfstream to Keeneland that determine who ends up at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.

The usual Derby-driven trainers dominate the list of nominees. Four-time Derby winner D. Wayne Lukas has 19 nominees, two-time Derby winner Nick Zito has 15 and three-time Derby winner Bob Baffert has 13. Todd Pletcher tops them all with 20 as he seeks his first Derby winner (he’s 0-for-24).

Brees’ Derby hopeful is Daddy Forty Nine. The gelding is owned by Last Mango Racing Stable, formed by New Orleans Saints vice president of communications Greg Bensel. Other partners include Saints coach Sean Payton, singer Jimmy Buffett and the Monday Night Football announcing crew of Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden.

The owners group enjoyed limited success in 2008 with a horse named Pulaski County.

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour awoke Tuesday afternoon to the sounds of Jimmy Buffett’s “Window On The World”. Mission Control sent up the music at 4:14 pm with the shuttle 220 miles up docked to the International Space Station.

Two American astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station today while crewmates inside the complex crank open for the first time shutters covering seven windows on the Italian-built Cupola observation deck.

“That song is very appropriate today,” said Endeavour mission specialist Kay Hire, who, like Buffett, is a native of Mobile, Ala. “On a day that we’ll be working on opening our new window on the world.”

This isn’t the first time Buffett’s music has served as an astronaut wake-up call. In 2006, the crew of Atlantis awoke to “Twelve Volt Man” and in 2008 it was “Oysters and Pearls” that was played to another Atlantis team.

Endeavour and its crew of six launched February 8th and are scheduled to return to earth on Sunday.

Update – You can listen to the recording of the song and astronaut Kay Hire’s reaction to it here (from NASA via @WAOTNC)

Here’s a photo of Jimmy Buffett and his daughter Savannah Jane with the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl trophy after the Saints won the Super Bowl last night in Miami:

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a great, detailed article on Jimmy and his history with the New Orleans Saints: “Jimmy Buffett bleeds black and gold for the Super Bowl-bound New Orleans Saints”

In 1967, the then-unknown, 20-year-old singer-songwriter took a break from Bourbon Street to attend the Saints franchise’s first regular season game in Tulane Stadium.

Nearly 43 years later, Buffett, now a multifaceted, multi-millionaire entertainer/ entrepreneur, piloted his own Falcon 900 jet from an island in the South Pacific to New Orleans for the NFC Championship Game.

In between was “43 years of Lent,” Buffett said this week. “But once I went to that first game, they were my team for life.”

His celebrity – and the fact that Saints coach Sean Payton is a fan — affords Buffett opportunities not available to the average Who Dat. He celebrated the Saints’ Jan. 24 victory over the Vikings in the locker room.

With Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV set in south Florida, just up U.S. Route 1 from Buffett’s spiritual home in Key West, his Saints fever is spiking.

“People don’t understand what that NFC championship game meant,” he said. “It was an incredible football game, an incredible battle. But it was also a renaissance, a rebirth from horrible years of suffering through being a Saints fan, to surviving a hurricane.”

To Buffett, the win reinforced that “there’s something on the other side.”

Be sure to read the full article here.

Here’s video of the Saints locker room after the NFC Championship game. You can see Buffett in the video: