So. We were in a remote anchorage along the Southern Cuban coast – somewhere in the Jardin De La Reyna. NOMAD and Songerie were the only two boats in sight. NOMAD had only a few inches of water under her keels, and we had a ton of chain out – so we were completely secure.

Jardin De La Reyna

As soon as we dropped our anchor Jaco called on the radio and asked if we were diving. I told him that I had too much work to do on the boat.  Just seeing if I could get a rise out of him. He called my bluff and thirty minutes later Cristelle, Jaco, and I were heading to the outside of the reef.

On the way we talked about the fish species in the area, sizes, depths. The prevailing wisdom was that there were many a grouper in the area – primarily Yellowfin and Black Grouper. I asked about Nassau Grouper (my favorite), but Jaco hadn’t seen many in the area last time ‘round.

The goal, today, was nice a nice grouper or two and a nice Mutton Snapper. Hogfish were on the menu, but we weren’t diving in prime Hogfish area. Cubera Snapper were common in the area as well – but we didn’t have enough info on Ciguatera, so today’s hunting was like a trip to the grocery store (and not like a big-game safari); we were shooting tasty fish that were good table-size.

And, as I dove into the water I told Jaco what the old Mexican fisherman told me a lifetime ago in Mexico: the first one in shoots twice. I saw him flash a smile as I rolled of the dinghy.

As soon as I was in the water I saw a good Mutton Snapper and before Jaco had his wetsuit on we had a Mutton Snapper boated. I reloaded and was off again. Within five minutes I’d found and cornered a nice Yellowfin Grouper. The fish was deep in a hole and I was having trouble getting my speargun angled correctly – but I did it. Of course – shooting the fish is only half of the battle, the other half is getting them out of the hole. Twenty minutes a few curses later, the Yellowfin Grouper was boated as well.

With the immediate dinner-need satisfied it was time to explore and begin being selective. I did what all experienced spearfishermen do – I headed to deeper water and looked for The Wall. Really, just any structure in deeper water that would hold fish. After a bit of kicking, I found it.

On the way to The Wall I saw several Nassau Grouper, but – as hard as it was – I refrained from boating them thinking they may be rare here. I was wrong. At The Wall I saw several more and eventually decided that I really wanted a Nassau Grouper sandwhich. And so, when I was sitting on the bottom and the fifth Nassau Grouper visited me, I put a shaft into him.

At one point in this dive Jaco was sitting on the bottom, and I was watching from the surface as a school of 100+ pound Tarpon came and visited him. In that moment Jaco had two large Dog Snapper, two Yellowfin Grouper, and a Hogfish all within range. But a real spearfisherman isn’t made by the fish he takes, but by the fish he leaves. Selective shooting and selective hunting is important. He let them all pass, looking for the right fish. And I was proud to be diving with him.

Mature Hogfish

 

And I was so f***ing happy to, finally, be diving in untouched waters. The amount of marine life here was exceptional. We earned this.

A perfect dinner

For a couple of days we stayed and dove and hunted and ate and drank together in this paradise. But then a Northern threatened and so we took the dinghy and scouted the area looking for a way into a protected lagoon, to sit out the high winds that were coming.

The first-day grouper haul

 

Ana, the fisherwoman

We checked depths and holding and entrances to the lagoon, and then – holding our breath and gritting our teeth – we eased through the shallow water with Songerie and NOMAD – into the lagoon where we dropped anchor in complete protection. Once there, Jaco and Cristelle brought out their smoker and we commandeered a decrepit fishing shack to smoke our fish, smoke fine cigars, and drink Cuba’s excellent rum.

Our fish-smoking hideout

Fish-smoking, cigars, friends, rum

And with full freezers, full stomachs and fuzzy heads – we planned our next move down the Cuban coastline.

Jardin De La Reyna

Trinidad, Cuba (and other stuff)

Sorry for the delay in posts. I was sailing through a remote part of the South Cuban coastline. Can’t tell you where because the fishing was too good. But I will, eventually, share some pictures. It might be paradise.

One more thing: I’m taking a step backwards on the Cuban coffee. It’s good. But I really do prefer Colombian (and even some Panamanian) coffee. So there.

And since we’re sidetracked, as you can see in the picture – if you turn left, you’ll find your chariot to heaven.

Anyways. Where was I?

Trinidad, Cuba

 

So we woke up very hungover and very tired from our night of rum tasting with Jaco and Cristelle on Songerie (there, finally, I’ve spelled the names right) in the harbor of Cienfuegos. And then we had coffee and threw stuff in backpacks and then it was time for the cab and we were on our way. Much of this part of Cuba resembles desert and on the road there are land-crabs that migrate in droves and the smell of the unlucky ones on the road is so strong you smell them before you see them. The smell is similar to seaweed that has rotted and then been heated.

Sundried crab

Trinidad is cool. It’s very touristic, which makes it slightly less of my-kind-of-place.

Trinidad, Cuba and transport

It’s quaint and beautiful and has real cobblestone streets, very narrow, that wind up and down hills. The sun roasts you, so you wear straw hats. There are tractors in the streets. Horses and mules are a big part of transportation.

Cuba’s only Harley

Moto

The market

Cars!

During the middle of the day there is very little to do, and so you either walk and roast and burn looking at the sights – or you sit in the shade and drink too many mojitos and smoke fine cigars and watch people and listen to music.

We did a little of both, but I’ll let you guess which of the two scenarios I prefer.

The winner

In Trinidad there is a plaza. It is a fine place. But just up the hill from this plaza there is a stage and a place to drink and at the top of the hill there is the Casa De Musica. On the stage they play Buena Vista Social Club and people dance and sweat and smile. You can see excellent dancing, or maybe you can dance excellently and therefore you would be dancing excellently and I would be watching you dance excellently and drinking excellent mojitos and smoking fine cigars.

And we would both be happy.

The spot

The spot

There is a man with a donkey that so personifies Cuba that he charges money to take a picture. But he is Cuba, so the picture is priceless and we love him. Here is this man.

Cuba, personified

When he’s not standing in the Plaza, he is walking ever-so-slowly to a new spot in the Plaza or he is napping in the shade of a building or his donkey with his cigar falling out of his mouth.

For rent, photos

In Cuba, you usually stay (besides hotels – which are really for the uber-tourist) in casa-particulars. These are typically a couple of rooms in a Cuban’s house that have been converted so that guests can stay there. We stay in casa-particulars. They are fine, and they have A/C (usually) and hot showers (usually). For me, those two things are very luxurious.  And they let you smoke cigars there…

Cigars and our room

So we had A/C and hot showers. And during the day we were asked directions to the Cave Bar. We had no idea what it was, but quickly decided it was somewhere worth visiting. That night we found it and it was, as the name implies, a bar in a cave. Complete with bathrooms in cave rooms.

Not just any bar, though. It’s luxurious and clubby and it stands in stark contrast to virtually everything around it. Looking back, it’s a very strange thing. But it has a remarkable turnout and once inside you could just as well be in a club in Miami – which I used to frequent once in a while. We danced and sweated a lot and then ran out of money for drinks and were having trouble standing without weaving so we went back down the long hill and through the dark alleys to our room.

Streets

Gator-stairs

And on the way we met a Russian guy that was coupled up with a Cuban woman. They insisted that we eat with them. We were very drunk and not hungry but we agreed and I’m not exactly sure why. They were quite a pair. She kept telling us how in love they were, and it was in rapid-fire Spanish and I was having trouble understanding her. His English was even harder to understand so she did most of the talking as none of us spoke Russian. They had known each other two weeks and she had two children with another man and since she couldn’t leave Cuba and he wasn’t immigrating it made the whole thing seem very strange.

Then we left the restaurant with most of our meals in to-go containers and laughed and weaved our way back to our room where we slept in A/C, took hot showers woke up late still a little groggy.

Then we went back to the plaza and the stage and had mojitos.

Then it was time to get back to the boat.

Back Home

Everything was how we left it and getting back to the boat was a major relief and it made me want to just sleep and read and play chess and drink Cuba Libre’s.

That wasn’t in the cards.

Instead we needed to plan and resupply and buy things and use the Internet (which is an adventure in itself). For all of this we needed to fight the money fight, which is tough for Americans and only slightly less so for Brazilians. That’s the thing about Cuba – it’s a pain in the ass to do anything.

We were desperate to leave and see the coast. I was desperate to freedive and explore the reefs and chase giant Grouper and Hogfish and Cubera Snapper. Without the diving and the sailing I was gaining weight and without eating fish I was in withdrawals. And without a beautiful coastline we both felt cheated. And without blue water under my keels I felt my time was being wasted. Why, if there is no bluewater under my keels, did I put all of my money in a rapidly depreciating maintenance headache?

So we hurried and rushed and ran and shopped and carried things too heavy. Then I worked on the boat. Then I found a variety of other problems so I did more boatwork. Then I fixed most of those problems and I found water in my starboard saildrive oil and that is a problem that I couldn’t fix and it infuriated me (it was my fault – fishing line in the prop again). But it was time to leave and time doesn’t sleep and so neither did we.

We pulled up anchor at 6PM that evening, with 15 knots of wind in our face.   We knew we were going the right way, because the wind was in our face. That is, afterall, how sailing works in the Caribe. So we motored until we got out of the harbor.

The weatherman told us that the wind would die after sunset and then we’d motor down the coast. But he lied. Once we left the harbor the wind picked up. Now it was gusting 30 knots in our face and I was only able to do 4 knots into the wind with both engines. The waves were smashing us too. Things were bouncing around and knives were dropping and glass stuff was breaking. Jaco was pretty unhappy (Songerie has become our official sailing buddy) about the whole thing, but it was great to have him and Cristelle with us in the shit.

After a couple of hours I checked the engines and the saildrives and found that the starboard saildrive was worryingly low on oil. This was a major problem and when I shut off the starboard engine we were now doing 3 knots, sometimes 2.5 into the wind. I’ll save you the technical details, but some numbnut wrapped fishing line in his brand new oil seal (around the prop) which allowed water in and then experimented with a solution that made the problem worse and then that numbnut found himself in desperate need of both engines/saildrives. Of course that numbnut is the captain and that captain is me, just in case self-deprecating humor isn’t clear on the interwebs.

Anyways, now that I had heavy winds on the nose – I was trying to power NOMAD with only a single 29 horsepower engine. To make a long story short, I used some very colorful (and, I might add, creative) language and then we pushed on and then the wind let up and then we were sailing a little. Then the wind died and we were back to motoring and I was worried about everything and so we took a route that was shorter and motored all night and most of the following day.

Then we saw our destination. There was a reef line and it looked impenetrable and as if to emphasize this, there was a very recent wreck laying on top of the reef. Another yacht on the reef, another dream ruined. Another reminder to stay vigilant and not make mistakes and pay attention and think quickly and move even more quickly.

You can lose it all so quickly. That kind of heartbreak that will make you sick of love.

But we had some waypoints and we had some old charts and we had Songerie leading us in – they had beaten us quite soundly as we were down to one motor/saildrive. Coming through the reef made me nervous and then it was suddenly only two meters deep and that makes me nervous too. After an hour of tense single-motoring through coral-strewn shallow-water we dropped our anchor and looked around.

NOMAD and Songerie were the only two boats in 100 miles and it was stunningly beautiful and remarkably remote. Desert scrub turns to mangrove turns to beach turns to shimmering, crystal clear water over healthy and untouched reef.

And I remembered again why I work so hard to get to places where people haven’t screwed it up yet.

You guys can have all of the cities.

You can have all of the well-charted and well-explored and well-settled lands and waters. If there are roads there, it’s already ruined.  I’m sticking to my guns: the most beautiful places on Earth are places where few humans have been and where none live.

You can argue with me if you want, but if you do – it just means you haven’t seen what I have. And that’s The Truth.

Trinidad, Cuba (and other stuff)

Hecho En Cuba

This post was made in Cuba. As is an ever-increasing amount of stuff onboard NOMAD. Coffee – what might be the best in the world (or at least that I’ve tried so far) is onboard, made in Cuba. A good, and reasonably priced aged rum is onboard, made in Cuba. And cigars. Good God.   We have all the best cigars, hecho en Cuba.

Our first day we vowed to spend watching movies and eating and not working and not moving and not preparing. Our literal vow was “we won’t do shit.” Writing that sentence makes it seem badly worded and more profane – but that was our vow. And we kept it. Of course, it was an easy vow to keep as we were both exhausted and slightly hungover – a product of the combination of our passage and our night at the marina bar.

Then it was time to explore. Jacko and Crystelle came by and took me into town to meet their friend Lili. Lili runs a Casa Particular (like a hostel) and she can make arrangements for inland travel simply and economically. She’s a good woman to know.

Then we stopped in for a beer ($1 Presidente, ice cold, with a fabulous view). Then it was on to the cigar guy. This being my first time in Cuba and having only a passing interest in cigars previously – this was a treat that I didn’t understand the value of. But as I tried a few cigars with a good sipping rum, and priced the high-end, handrolled Cuban cigars we were getting against the actual street value of these cigars – I realized how important it is to know the cigar guy. The cigar guy is important.

Because we know the cigar guy, our stash went from this:

The beginning

To this:

Ever-growing

And some of those cigar boxes contain 25 cigars that are sold here for $30 per cigar. Stateside? More. You can do the math, but, basically, we have a very nice collection of cigars. And it cost us a tiny fraction of what the average person pays on the street. So if you’re a cigar type and you bump into me out there and want to smoke a genuine Cohiba Maduro… Well, you should say so. Maybe you prefer a Cohiba Esplindido (Castro’s favorite). Maybe a Romeo Y Julieta (my favorite, and Churchill’s). Cohiba Robusto? Montechristo number 2? Montechristo Master? Hemmingway liked the Montechristos.

Believe it or not, the coffee was harder to get our hands on than the cigars. The (good) coffee really isn’t available to the average Cuban. One of our new Cuban friends told me something I remember hearing in Colombia. Our Cuban friend said: “All of our best things are for export, in Cuba we’re left in prison with the rejects.” In Colombia, another friend told me all of the best cocaine and the best women were exported. Patterns, for better or for worse.

We finally found the coffee in a hotel catering to gringos.

Drummer!!

Drummer was here. We met them in San Blas, and they introduced us to Jacko and Crystelle – so when the Drummer crew returned to their boat – a party seemed inevitable. It all started when Amber rowed up to our boat. She told us about her travels inland. She told us about Cuba. She told us they were leaving soon.

And that night Amber convinced us to go out. We walked and drank and talked. The next night there was a party, a dinner, on NOMAD. Jacko and Crystelle and the Drummer crew and another young Southern gringo and his girlfriend (who was Australian).   Beer and wine and good food dominated early, but later in the night high-quality sipping rum and cigars got the upper hand. Then everyone was trying to figure out how to get home before the sun rose without interrupting the flow of the party.   The party-veterans began sipping water.

Then we explored Cienfuegos a bit more and took this picture.  It’s so meta.

Picture of a picture of a Nomad

Then it was time to go to Trinidad, Cuba. We needed to get a cab, get a Casa Particular, and needed to get our shit together to leave the boat for a couple of days. We needed to pack clothes and cigars and rum and electronics. We needed to empty the fridge. We needed to get things off the deck. We needed to lock the boat.

But that night, there was something that took precedence. When one lands in a place where it is cheap to procure a specific thing – say cigars, or rum. One must take the time to pick the right thing, and then buy as much as one can store (or afford) to either sell, give, or use along the way. And so, the night before our trip to Trinidad, Cuba – we had a rum tasting. So that we could all be sure of what the best rum for the best price is, so that we could then buy copious amounts of it so that we could have a large supply of good and reasonably priced rum.

Understanding that we needed to be productive in preparation for our trip to Trinidad, that we needed to be up early for said trip, and that we wanted to feel good for said trip – it may not make sense to have a rum-tasting the night before said trip. But life is short and you are dead for a very long time.

Carpe that f***ing Diem.

So we had a rum-tasting.

And so began our land-travels into Socialist Cuba.

Hecho En Cuba

Welcome to Socialist Cuba

And we did feel welcome. Much more so than we felt in the Caymans.

We finally got our weather window and escaped Grand Cayman. 7 days, more or less, in the Caymans. It was 7 days too long. So when the weather turned favorable, we left at our earliest convenience. Cayman may be nice and pretty and safe. But it’s hellishly expensive, entirely devoid of culture, and – when the cruise ships are in – overrun by people who go on cruises (see: people who don’t have good stories). Droves of Hawaiian shirts, horrific sunburns, white tube socks with sandals, and of course fanny packs. Inhumane lines. Those cruise-goers overweight and obnoxious. All part of a massive cliché.

And so we unhooked from our mooring at 6 AM. As we came around the island it the wind picked up a little and soon we had 10-15 knots of wind and were making 6 knots, dragging a wide variety of lures. Most importantly – I’d decided to drag my Marlin lure behind a teaser. We hit 7 knots and the sun rose. It was a beautiful day and the water was a deep blue and we were headed to Cuba and it all felt good. It felt free and adventurous and lonely in the way all good adventures must be.

On the trip it was only Ana and I. Damien had been recalled stateside and was probably abusing hot showers and cooking with obscure spices. Jacko and Crystelle were sailing with us (in their boat) – in fact – they had left an hour or so earlier and we had just caught up to them.

And then the big reel started screaming. Anything that eats a 14” squid lure and makes that big reel scream is something worth catching. Or maybe it’s something worth losing. Maybe in catching something like that you lose a little of the mystery of the ocean.

Certainly processing anything that size presents its own challenges. Those thoughts were not present though, as I yelled for Ana and moved over to tighten the drag – hoping to slow down the fish. We were losing line at an incredible rate. The reel was getting warm.

And we were still doing 7 knots.

Then the fish broke the surface and begin a spectacular display. He tail-walked back and forth across the water – shaking and slashing and dancing, his background music the screaming reel.

The rod came out of the rod holder and nearly went overboard. I could feel the power of the fish. It was unbelievable.

Ana came up and saw the big rod doubled over and heard the drag screaming. She grabbed the camera. Then she saw a fish pushing 600 pounds walking across the water with it’s tail.

Then she said: “Holy Shit!”

We were still doing 7 knots.

I was yelling at Ana – to turn the boat into the wind. I was losing line. The fish was dancing behind the boat, his body completely out of the water. I’ve seen and landed a couple of Marlin, this one was big…

The reel was already hot. I could smell it.

I’m yelling at Ana and she’s fumbling with the autopilot and I’m tightening the drag and having daytime nightmares about loosing all 1000 yards of line and my best Marlin lure and this fish.

And we’re still doing 7 knots.

And then the line is slack. And my stomach drops. But I see the lure resurface and I breathe a sigh of relief and admit to myself that I had no idea what I would do with that fish even if I could bring it in.

When I’d first purchased this reel and this rod (secondhand), someone in Austin looked at me incredulously and asked what I planned on catching with such heavy machinery. I joked that I was fishing for God. And we hooked him the other day. And we lost him and that was probably the best thing we could have hoped for.

The rest of the sail was relatively uneventful, though it was fairly slow and we did a bit of motoring as we got closer to Cuba. I don’t think I’ll ever forget coming up for my shift in the morning and seeing Cuba rising up from the horizon in front of us. It’s amazing how much work and time and sweat and tears and money went into this voyage.

It’s amazing that some, hardheaded, people don’t just take planes.

Thankfully there are people which still choose methods of transportation that are adventures in themselves. Traveling this way is the definition of making it about the journey and not just the destination. Traveling this way is an accomplishment. Anybody can do a roadtrip. Anybody can get on a plane. Anybody can RV. Even motorcycles don’t hold a candle to this kind of travel.   This kind of travel is called voyaging. And it is called this for good reason.

I used to believe that anybody could buy a boat and sail long distances. Now I know better. Not just anybody can sail across open ocean from country to country on their own sailboat that they chose, outfit, refit, and continue to maintain. It takes more than I thought it would.

But we did it.

We’re here, in Cuba. They call it Socialist. I think it’s Communist. I appreciate it, whatever it is. The people are beautiful and friendly. The cars are amazing. The rum is good, bordering on great. The cigars are glorious. The coffee might be the best I’ve ever tasted. Presidente (the Dom-Rep beer) is $1, ice cold, at the bar. The mojitos are top of the line. Life is good here, for foreigners at least.

Cars!

Let’s finish the story, though. When we arrived, naturally, I found the watermaker had sprung a relatively serious leak in the endcap of the membrane enclosure. And my windlass decided not to work. And one of my battens had come off of the sailcars. Another of my sailcars had lost all of its ball-bearings. On just this single passage – a bit over 700 miles in total – an immense amount of expensive stuff was no longer serviceable.

Cienfuegos, Cuba

Coming into Cienfuegos

For many miles  we had called for the Port Captain or Port Authority. No answer. So we just dropped anchor (in typical fashion – far away from the herd) and I cracked my anchor beer.

A semi-official boat soon came up to us and told us to get to the dock ASAP. I explained that I had just laid out 50 meters of chain and that my windlass wasn’t working, so it might be a little while before I could get to the dock. And since we were going to the dock see the doctor – that if I did managed to pull in that 50 meters of chain quickly – I would likely be in much worse shape for my doctor’s exam.

Maybe it would be better to bring the doctor to us, if it’s a priority…

They agreed.

The doctor came and visited us, with the custom’s agent and a too-slick looking guy at the marina. We paid some money, he asked about our health. I gave them Panamanian coffee – they left the boat smiling and they didn’t tear my boat apart, top to bottom, nor did they threaten me.  The difference of 170 miles (Cayman to Cuba) seems to matter quite a bit.  It’s amazing how uncivilized civilization really is, and how much more civil people can be in places like Cuba.

With the doctor’s visit out of the way, we were now allowed onshore. So onshore we went. And there we found nice officials and a nice marina bar and some nice locals and some nice sailors at this nice bar. And at this bar I ordered The Liar’s Drink: A Cuba Libre (for, as we all know – Cuba will never be free).

I ordered the Cuba Libre in Ciegnfuegos, Cuba – before the herds of gringos made it. I think that’s worth remembering.

One Cuba Libre turned into a few when Jacko and Crystelle showed up.

Then we labored back to the boat. Then Ana fell off the boat as she was climbing from the dinghy onto NOMAD. Then we collapsed and slept a well-earned sleep.

In Socialist Cuba.

Booyah.

 

Welcome to Socialist Cuba