In the serendipitous way that living onboard can be, Bob overheard a woman talking about cruising in Cuba last spring while he was in the marina laundromat a couple of days back. You just never know what you’ll find when you go ashore in a cruising community.
The woman’s name is Jules, and she and her husband have cruised the world in their Ingrid 38’ ketch named Bounty from their homeport in New Zealand. They are interesting people (obviously!) and generously willing to share their knowledge with us as we make plans for Cuba. YET it’s never a good thing when Bob meets people who have done such extensive sailing. Look out!
Jules and her husband Gary visited us that evening and carefully went through our charts of the southern coast of Cuba, giving us valuable information on various harbors and how to fit into Cuban culture while ashore. There were some significant things that differed from what we have read. There is nothing like information from people with first hand experience!
On the other hand, there is a lot of scary stuff (Bob would say ‘exciting’) hurtling toward us. Where do I begin?? Like the Bahamas, we will only approach a shoreline in daylight hours with the sun high overhead. This is good news to me because I really don’t like night sailing. Even so, there will be a fair amount of night sailing—just not when we go into harbors. Ugh. The swells will be large, but the wind should be mostly on our backs, which is more comfortable than other directions.
We will need to be tucked into good harbors at night because Cuba is a mountainous country, with katabatic winds at night–quite strong katabatic winds. (from the Greek: katabaino – to go down– is the generic term for downslope winds flowing from high elevations of mountains, plateaus, and hills down their slopes to the valleys or planes below.)
And speaking of winds–we have heard from good friends who have already crossed over the the Bahamas that there have been terrible winds there lately. In particular, there was a cold front earlier this week that brought sustained winds of 105 mph through an area of the Exumas. Our friends were anchored between Great Exuma and Stocking Island where the winds were 65 mph. A number of boats were thrown ashore and badly damaged in this blow. I was horrified to learn about this. We’ve had some bad winds there the past two years, but nothing like this! At least there are protective harbors in Cuba, unlike in the Bahamas. So—we will want to be well tucked in each night, or well offshore. I’m hoping for the former!
Also, we will need to be sensitive to situations onshore. Sometimes we will be welcomed and sometimes not. We need to read the signs of whether we should be in a particular shop buying items that the Cubans want to buy or whether we’ll be welcome to eat in particular restaurants that are for the locals. I’m so sensitive in this regard that I often over react. I’m certain that Bob and I will run into differing impressions when these situations arise. All in all, Jules and Gary gave us a wealth of advice and information.
A sobering bit of info is that our visas, which will only be good for 30 days, really cannot be extended. We have to leave Cuba for at least 24 hours in order to get a new visa for another 30 days. Since it’s impossible to sail the coast of Cuba in only 30 days we will have to face this dilemma. I was hoping that we could just anchor off the mainland someplace safe, but that is not acceptable. We need to check out of Cuba and check into another country to prove that we left. The most obvious choices from the southwestern end of Cuba are the Caymans or Jamaica. Either of these will involve another overnight sail in big ocean. Can you imagine the kind of dreams I had last night?
So the next few days to a week will be focused on finishing up our repairs and provisioning. High on my list is getting my cartoon sorted for my next tapestry. I am going to weave the final line from a favorite Robert Frost poem called “Mowing.” The culmination of that poem is “The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” This is moving to me on so many levels, and I envision that weaving this phrase will be quite enjoyable. The piece will go to my son Chris when it’s finished, so I asked him to work on the font and the spacing of the letters. After trying a couple of fonts, we both decided on Adobe Caslon. Here is a small version of it.
This is what it look like printed out full size, spread out on the floor at Staples in Vero. Don’t you like Bob’s foot for scale?
I made a little sample of the text in a different font some time ago.
In the real piece the background will be lots of blended neutral colors woven in small shapes. I hope that will have an interesting visual effect, as well as being interesting for me to weave. I hope to get warped soon!
It is now Saturday morning, and there is a large farmers’ market here in Ft. Pierce, so we’re off to check that out. We’ve been told it’s the largest, and best, market in the state. It takes place every Saturday all year long. Also, it seems we had a new guest onboard last night: a raccoon. That’s a first!
I’ll end with this silly photo Bob took of me yesterday as we walked around Ft. Pierce. I could have fun with my own jewelry store!
