I spent a few more days in Luperón to wait out the weather. Hubert had some things for which he needed some help and he invited me and his friend Franck for dinner at the El Bucanero. Afterwards we played a bit of pool which was real fun. Franck’s guitar didn’t need to be recorded but inspected. That had been a misunderstanding and after I had checked out the guitar he gave me three glasses of honey freshly made on his farm. I took a walk to the beach and went swimming and enjoyed myself but was also eager to leave. I still had a lot of miles ahead of me and there was still enough time (Zoe and I were supposed to meet in Varadero on April 12) but more adverse weather would quickly reduce this time to nothing. On Easter Sunday night the waves were finally small enough and from a direction where they wouldn’t break in the entrance to the reef and the Armada gave me permission to leave. Everything went smoothly and we sailed into a great sunset which was only the first of a series of unbelievable sunsets and sunrises.
The waves outside where still a bit uncomfortable and met Amy on the beam while the wind was from behind and we were going wing on wing. The seas were very confused. But we had a good steady wind with not too many gusts and I soon got used to the motion. I had set a course for Great Inagua Island (Bahamas) in order to get away from the Haitian coast as quickly as possible without having too much of a detour. Stayed up all night because someone was jamming the vhf radio (Haiti?) and I was afraid there could be unlit boats (refugees, fishermen, pirates :-)) on the way and I really wanted to be on the lookout all the time all the time at least for this one night.
The morning of the second day I had put some music on while brushing my teeth and started dancing to one of the songs of John Scofield’s Gospel record. I was feeling great. The weather was nice and I had almost passed the windward passage and was nearing Cuban waters. The waves were now much more comfortable. We must have had some current with us because we were going fairly fast. and at 1800 I was able to see the Cuban coast. The night was uneventful and I tried to raise the Guardia Frontera on the radio with no success. I put the flags up and tried again in the morning shortly before entering the lagoon into Puerto de Vita. No answer. I tried a few more times. Then I tried in Spanish and got an answer immediately. “Bienvenido amigo!” They told me there would be space in the marina and I could just dock alongside and wait for the authorities. The channel is well marked with buoys but after halfway they change direction. In the chart this is somewhat visible but makes no sense at all so I tried to sail along the markers. All of a sudden the depth was 1,20 m. Luckily I had anticipated this confusion and we were going dead slow. Amy’s draught is 1,10 m so we were very close to touching the bottom. I turned around immediately and we felt our way around to stay in the deeper water and thus arrived at the marina unharmed.
There was absolutely no wind and it was already really hot. The doctor came on board first and he checked my temperature and my eyes and found that I was healthy. I was then asked to take down the yellow (quarantine) flag. Then came customs and searched the boat. After that Imigraciòn and after that the captain from the Port Authority. All this took awhile but everybody was real friendly and I was tired and happy. After all this came the man with the drug sniffing dog. Since Amy is small the dog had to jump quite a bit into the cockpit. She sniffed around the boat a bit, found no drugs and after that peed in my cockpit. The drug-dog keeper was really embarrassed but I was in too good a mood to care and it was actually pretty funny.
After that I needed to go up to the oficina de Imigración and got my visa. “Bienvenido a Cuba, amigo”.
The lady at the marina office spoke perfect English but I asked her to speak Spanish with me so I could practice. Of course everything took much longer that way but she didn’t mind. She offered to exchange some money for me on the black market which I accepted gladly.
There was a French boat on the pontoon which I had already seen in Luperón with four young people on board and they invited me over for dinner and told me the drug dog had peed in their cockpit, too. I had a great evening and later slept like a rock.
The next morning I picked up my huge bundle of Cuban Peso bills and decided to go to the nearby town of Santa Lucia. It was ten kilometres away and I was told the way to the bus stop (2km) and if no bus would come I could always flag down “carros particulares” (sort of a private group taxi, like the aluguers in Cabo Verde). I went to the station. No bus came. But how would I know which one was a Carro particular? After overcoming my initial embarrassment, I started waving to very car that passed. No one stopped. Hmm. I was either doing something wrong or they wanted nothing to do with the sweating gringo. After an hour of waiting in 35 degrees of heat I started walking, still hoping and waving at cars.
I reached Santa Lucia on foot after two hours somewhat exhausted from the heat but the landscape was beautiful and the town, too. I found some things to buy and got a card to use the state owned Internet for five hours. Then there was the matter of the way home. There was a big bus depot but I was told that the buses to Puerto de Vita would stop at another place where I would have to wait and wave 🙂 My heart sank a bit at the prospect of another hour of fruitless waving and I only tried for a short while, then gave up and walked the 10 km home.
There was supposed to be a good fish restaurant near the marina and I thought I now deserved eating out and walked over there at dusk. As I passed some houses someone called and wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing here. In no time I was sitting on the front porch of Anna the grandmother with her son and granddaughter and we were talking and they wanted to know everything about the trip. As much as I was enjoying this I was also very hungry and needed to leave for the restaurant. The food was very good and incredibly cheap and it had a great view across the lagoon.
I had initially wanted to go on the next day but there was no wind at all so I stayed. The weather forecast wasn’t very promising. There was another cold front with lots of wind and waves which I would not be able to avoid unless I would wait for another week or so. At the dock I helped Roberto with his tourist catamaran. I also gave him one of my parachute rockets which he couldn’t get here. I now still have three left which I hope I never need to use. We spoke about pirate stories and how apparently every sailor likes to watch pirate movies or read pirate books. I told him that I had just finished reading “Treasure island”. He told me he was going to Tenerife soon and work there as a skipper. I assume he will not return.
I told the authorities that I would leave the next day at 0700 and they said they would be there for the paperwork. Then I dove to clean the underwater ship which was difficult because the water was very murky and I could hardly see anything. I went over the 350 mile trip to Varadero and the weather, cooked some dinner and went to bed.