Crt 160613 Lastedit 20-12-27

Cuba Holidays
Part One: Caribbean sailing

June 30, 2016. Tomorrow I shall be sixty-five. My planned holiday with Roland to Cuba will postpone the disaster with 6 hours. But it will last 24 hours anyway. I think of how I could take a purely Westward flight at about 50^o North at 23:59 hrs. tonight and fly to the international date line. I could arrive there at the same time 23:59, and skip my birthday passing that line. Roland will be 80 in August. Two old scarred gorillas on the loose.

... Departure from Heeg ultra lightweight: that white bag was all ...

But instead we land on Cuba (there's a box you can tick on the custom's form "do you plan to import any pornography"?). I was told I would see a lot of young girls waiting for tourists at the airport but nothing of the sort. Later, in Havana however I got quite some offers for female services in the streets and on the terraces. But at 65 and in 30+ degrees Celsius, in clothes soaked with salty sweat my urges were nowhere near seduction level.

Besides, we had shunned the expensive internet boat rent offers to come and negotiate for a sailing boat on the spot. Havana's Marina Hemingway, suggested on internet to have such services, was less then 10% occupied and there were no boats for rent. Sauntering left and right made me meet Michel (tradesman, from Strasbourg, fluent French, English and Spanish), who suspected we should go to Cienfuegos (350 km SE), called to verify and put us on and air-conditioned bus for a ride of over 300 km.

Michel turned out to have been our decisive contact: Cienfuegos' Caribbean harbour sported three sailing boat rent companies with a 70 or 80 piece fleet, almost completely moored, for, we were told, we had come in the low season, summer, with its heat and hurricane risk. Almost the entire fleet was in busy maintenance, repair and upgrade for the the next high season. Company #1 was to busy with that and too formally organized to meet our justified expectation of a firmly reduced fee, but called the colleagues where they knew things were different. To international standards, we got a nice contract. And a quite an affordable captain. And a cook. No responsibilities, no cooking, shopping under local assistance. Everybody who read about our previous trip, last year, in the Aegean, will feel my relief. 

... and it was the same type of Lagoon cat!! ...

And it was a Lagoon, of the same type! But this time crew would be in the port hull, we tourists starboard, and I got that hut with the safety hatch that featured so prominently in last year's story.

... an additional argument against opening the safety hatch swimming by ...

Through the safety hatch I saw an additional argument against opening it. After showing the picture I was told this was only a sabalo, a large, not very tasty fish with too many bones.

That first sailing day would be an 8 hours trip to a line of small and tiny islands about 60 km South of the Cuban coast in the Caribbean. We immediately learned from our crew the latest exclamation of ultimate satisfaction: "apolulu" https://youtu.be/DD1K8u-Z4_c

... our five day trip from Cienfuegos forth and back over the yellow line ...

... Yoel, our cook, caught a dorado for lunch (live it has no such grey squares, those were prints of our bottom board) ...

... savouring the dorado ...

Our night mooring was West of Cayo Guano del Este (21.661612, -81.040360),  a tiny island guiding ships in the shallows to Cuba with its light house. Quite a decent thunderstorm passed East: https://youtu.be/Ye1xYm5yzLw

Our cook's favourite expression was: ""tomorrow will be better", and indeed the next day he caught, wearing his Messi shirt, a barracuda [Youtube: Marinero Messi catches baracuda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S98Y7AOqGPY]

... our Lagoon ""Marlene" at Caya Largo ...

We adapted ourselves to the crew's mode of navigation, which was to use the engines as long as this was faster than sail, with genoa or main sail as stabilizer when the wind would allow it. As a result we were on sail only a few hours in those five days, and even this seemed to be on Roland's request.
What I did, however, was taking control over the sound system. A Lagoon has a radio with two additional speakers on the rear deck and two on the front deck. Captain Mario started under the assumption he could keep the system all day full blast on rap, hip-hop and other US noise pollution of the type so clearly showing why mankind on earth should die out as quickly as possible. After my stopping of this, cook Yoel approached me as a mediator in a highly serious matter, indicating life would be unbearable to cpt. Mario when he would have to suffer five days without any US noise pollution. I struck a balance that made me realize a no rap or hip-hop clause, or better a crew does not touch the radio clause, should be firmly in your contract when you rent a boat. I would have paid them double for it. 

... be culinary unattractive and then come begging for food: more of those untasty sabalos next to our jetty ...

... but these are even smarter ...

The two dolphins at this jetty, however, could not escape. Under the jetty were steel wire grids. But they had learned to push a man holding himself stiff, against his foot-soles and balance him in upright position like Jesus in the Red Sea ... could this have been the trick? Our captain Mario apparently had qualified for it and was set upright elegantly, then mercilessly dropped in favour of the fish offered as a reward. I swam to the grid from the outside, asking Roland to come and take a picture very quickly, as I expected the dolphins to come to me in a split second and then very quickly get bored with me since I am only an academic philosopher. I was totally right and Roland was too late.

... a very hot beach mooring at Caya Largo ... where I found the conch in the picture below...

... the next island Cayo Rico was deserted this low season. Around the empty restaurant healthy young cats and iguanas apparently had no trouble finding, in good accord, food and water ...

... turtle mid-sea on her way to her eggs-laying beach ...

Yoel's next barracuda-catch got snatched by a small shark but I missed the incident.

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... one of our Cienfuegos purchases had been rum for these guys, who indeed appeared on day three and swam over to us with quite some excellent fresh lobster, another issue you fail to anticipate without a local cook helping you with the shopping ...

... the old man and the sea ...

In fact, disappointed with the steeply declining quality of Musil's Man without qualities in the second half, I downloaded on my cell phone Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, a story drifting on the sea North of Havana, the old man being a Cuban fisherman. I liked it, though it had a faint flavour here and there of the average cliché price winning story. Then I continued with For Whom the Bell Tolls but had to abort at a sad incident ruining the book's promising start, after some 40 pages: our rebellious hero and Spanish warlord-in-spe meets a girl. But worse (for a story, that is), she is healthy, very beautiful, young, intelligent and unconditionally in love with him. That was the definitive end of my Hemingway-studies.

... only the Romeo y Julieta was not a fake ...

Every loyal reader will wonder why thus far I did not deal at all with cigars. Let me do so now. On the entire way from the airport until Caya Largo, the first five days or so, I did not see any single person smoking a cigar. Marina Hemingway had them on sale for just little below European prices. In my estimate, the shop's seller was not a cigar smoker. I had taken three Partagas Mille Fleurs full circle from Europe to Cuba, so after three days my stock was depleted. An official Cienfuegos hotel sold me three, all three very bad fakes, one even too bad to smoke at all, for little below what you pay for the real ones in Europe. Another bar had a damaged Cohiba for full price which was authentic. A Romeo y Julieta was not the one belonging to the tube it had been squeezed in, but was likely the proper make. I bought it. On Caya Largo I bought another three. All very bad fakes. Of one, the PUNCH, I doubted even whether the stuff inside the covering leaf was tobacco at all. It looked more like horse dung enhanced with straw. All the same sold not far under the price of a real PUNCH in Europe. Mind you: all sold in official, government supervised premises.

... Apolulu!!! This "Cohiba" turned out to be a ... Cohiba! ...

That was Roland's and mine's hot but very nice Caribian sailing trip. The second week we planned for Havana but this blog is now long enough so that will be told in a separate one.

All Cuba photos: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMHgTzQGH_2tJGTHK_6y_qEs52mYHlAc5OrcEjM

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