Sailing to Cuba

You may be wondering what we’ve been up to the past three weeks. The best two words I can think of to describe our experience are “sensory overload”. We departed Duncan Town in the Ragged Islands at 4 am with the three other boats we’ve been traveling with; Dream Catcher, Rollick and Water Lilly. The plan was simple, get to Cuba before dark. The sail down was great the following wind and seas had us averaging 7+ knots and we caught a nice Wahoo to boot. Around 2 pm that afternoon the coast of Cuba began sprouting up on the southern horizon. The Bahamas are flat Cuba is not, it was amazing to see the mountains appear to grow as we approached the coast. With our yellow quarantine flag flying above the stars and stripes a smooth entry into the harbor was followed by putting the hook down exactly 12 hours after our departure, we were in Cuba.

The following morning around 8 am a Cuban doctor arrived along with an official who took our passports leaving the doctor aboard who enjoyed a cup of coffee while taking our temperatures. After declaring us “healthy” the doctor instructed us to take down the quarantine flag and head into the marina. Docking presented a challenge as all the boats bows are tied to mooring balls and the sterns are tied to the dock (called a Med mooring) which in theory sounds simple. The difficulty was getting the lines attached to the two mooring balls which were 30 feet apart while also getting lines to the dock. After us entertaining the folks already tied to the dock we were boarded by numerous officials. First aboard was a fellow interested in seeing our rice, flour and meat all OK, next aboard was a fellow with a small dog who searched and sniffed Makana for drugs. The last official returned our passport (sans a stamp) and completed the check-in declaring us OK to go ashore with 30 day visas and welcomed us to Cuba.