The “we” in the planned version is complete; see previous narration.

Today we did provisioning, the final task to be done before departure. Provisioning in Cuba is not easy, but with a reliable taxi driver – we had a very good one – we could get all what we need. But we could not get all what we wanted.

Tomorrow we will cut off the lines, refuel, and make outbound clearance. I will then be able to use my Iridium GO again and hourly position updates will appear again.

Finally destination will be the Bocas del Toro in Panama.

We are still in the Marina Hemingway in Havana.

The meaning of “we” changed. When we arrived it was my Japanese sailing friend Sh. Sh hat to fly back to Tokyo from Havana after having sailed with me almost 1500 NM.

Now “we” is my OBM and wife. We stay here in the marina looking at Cuba and I do maintenance work and few smaller repair. I also work again on the extension of the CRM system I introduced in 2018/19 in my wife’s company. Thus we are fully busy every day. We also enjoy meeting other sailors, who make a stop over for few days here and exchange lots of information.

And the meaning of “we” changes soon again. On the May 2nd, my youngest cousins arrives to sail with us to Panama. It seems that the oldest living and youngest member of the Br-clan have the sailing genres in common.

Just a quick note on our actual position. A friend was wondering what happened to us because the track stays outside Havana.

We are safe in the Marina Hemingway, which is a a good one, and located about 10 NM west of Havana. When we arrived the Guardia Frontera made again a full check of our electronics and sealed the Iridium GO, because satellite phones are not allowed in Cuba. It seems the “border protector” in Puerto de Vita was more relaxed. He only took a photo of the working device.

The message is uploaded via internet.

I get the Iridium GO unsealed when we leave the marina.

Havana looks in the early morning light like any city in the world. Nice. Sunlight reflects warm on the buildings warm and pleasant covering the negative parts of cities. High rising buildings dominate the skyline.

As the wind slowed down more than forecasted, we set main and are heading now directly to the Marina Hemingway.

No phone contact to the marina yet. Maybe they don’t work before 0900.

One way or the other we will find a solution.

Yesterday we had great sailing conditions. But they were to good.

We would have made a run to Marina Hemingway and would have arrived still in the dark of today. So we put first of all the 20 m2 jib down and reduced the genoa to a handkerchief.

With this we could slow down and have currently (0200 utc-4) an ETA of 10:00. This looks good in respect of windspeed and direction at the marina. There were have to sail along a very narrow channel with the wind Abram
Abeam from PRT.

Above is the based on the forecast of the ECMWF and GPS. But what will be the reality?

As responsive the marina in Puerto de Vita was, as poor is the response of the Marina Hemingway. Still no sign of life, no reaction to my, in the meantime closer to 10 mails. But this is not only a Cuban behavior. In Spain – mainland and the canaries – I found several of marina which do not reply to request for berth. If all these marinas would have an automated 4-letter word mail I’ll be very happy. Simply because such a 4-letter word email would allow me to understand the situation. The worst for me is always no reply at all.

So let’s see if I get a response on the phone or on the VHF.

Although the bumpy ride became already less bumpy in the morning hours of yesterday, I was not in the mood to write. A feel it had to do with lack of sleep. Now I’m feeling better again.

After the bumpy ride day, the wind was tired as well. It went down to 5 – 6 kn and we hardly moved forward.

We took out the gennaker as it was the right sail for weak winds. We had winds between 70 -100 deg AWA. With the gennaker pulled at PRT-side, flying it as a huge genoa, we made good speed and way.

Later we replaced it by the main with reef 2, but this turned out to be too conservative; we changed to reef 1 and made great progress.

We just sat in the cockpit watching MaRe making here way through the still a bit bumpy sea. A relaxed sailing and a relaxed day. It felt good.

We discussed about trying to catch another fish, thus got the lure out in the very late afternoon hours. Within 30 min the alarm off the fishing rod sounded. Pulling in a bit I felt there is a fighter on the hook. Did we get a tuna, known for strong fighting? To make it short, we got a tuna. But the downside was, it was too small, thus we set it free. Although the rod is still in the holder ready for getting the lure out again, I think we will not try it again, because we reach Marina Hemingway by tomorrow and still have wahoo filets.

As the wind turned out to be pretty stable, for the night, we put one reef more in the main.

It worked well until the morning hours. Then the wind has changed. AWA from 80 deg to 150 – 170. The genoa was in Lee of the main. As a first countermeasure we put a reef in the genoa; it helped. We could have tried a butterfly with main and genoa but did not do it. With hindsight we should have tried it.

Later, it still was dark, we put the main down and only used the genoa. As a nightly minimum and safe activity. This was fine.

At 0600, when I started my 2nd watch, I crawled out of my bed like a dead piece of meat. To little sleep during the last days. A few hours later I went back to bed and slept for another 2 h. That felt good. Now, while I’m writing these lines, Sh takes was man.

When we saw that the wind was pretty stable from E, we set up again the genoa-20m2-jib-butterfly. It increased speed a knot or maybe a little bit more. We don’t do precision measurements recording every minute the AWS and STW and correlate the data including error calculations. We just want to enjoy sailing. (Although the physicist in me would like to do it.)

After breakfast, we sat for a long time in the cockpit watching the sea and talking. I love to see the swell – it became in the meantime a nice swell from E – rolling with up to 2 m behind MaRe and then feel how she lifts her two bumps (some might call it her sterns) and let the swell just passing under her. And then there are the white crests of the breaking waves on top of the dark blue waves. With winds of 5 – 6 Bft, there are quite some to be seen.

The blue of this water is my favorite blue. Additionally, according to the Chinese Feng Shoi which is the origin of the Japanese Fu Sui, I always should have blue around me for a healthy and happy life. (Neither Feng Shoi nor Fu Sui understood that I also need my OBM!).I have now a lot of blue around me. A big circle, with MaRe in the center and a radius until the horizon. Somehow I’m attempted to calculate distance until the horizon but I’m too relaxed to take a sheet of paper and a pen. Don’t hesitate to calculate it and send me the result.

If we are lucky, and the weather follows it’s forecast, we will be able to run with this butterfly directly to the outer marker for the Marina Hemingway.

Writing about this marina, I see a huuuuuge difference to the countryside marina in Puerto de Vita. There I got immediate a reply. Marina Hemingway seems to be so busy that I haven’t gotten a reply to more than a handful requests for a berth. Let’s see what happens when we can call over phone or VHF.

Since a few hours we have winds changing quickly from abeam to fully on the nose in direction. Additionally, AWS changes also quickly from 7 to almost 20 on. The most “perfect” situation! According to 4 weather models this will continue until tomorrow morning. Wonderful!

I would like that we have the time and head south for a few miles and go somewhere around one of the many islands or cays, drop the hook and wait for better weather…

We wanted to leave at 0900 but many things caused a delay of an hour.

There were first the need to send a few emails but the marina, the place where the boats are in the water, is in the signal shade of the hill on which top the marina buildings are located. Thus, I crabbed my PC and mobile phone and went up the hill. There I easily could send an receive and also answer immediately a few of my mails.

With the harbor master we were lucky. He came pretty quickly. Maybe the 4-color-pen, which I gave him, when we cleared in, helped. He completed the departure document, which also includes the cruising permit, and recognized he forgot a stamp. So he needed to go back and get it.

We then got 25 l (we could have enough to fill our tank) of potable water but I did not want to fill it into my tank. Is one of my principles to avoid filling in water from an external source. So I needed to get my well stored jerry can out of center storage room at bow.

Nex, a good bye to especially Yaney who helped us a lot and finally we could cast off the lines.

Outside we wanted to make water but we can’t run the engines and the genset the same time, and the engines’ alternator can never produce the power we need for the water maker. We planned to drift for an hour to make 180 l of fresh water. But there was a little bit of wind coming up and turning slowly from NNW to E, we put up the genoa to keep the boat in direction. Finally we even sailed with 2.5 kn, and it turned out that the wind increased that we even sailed with up to 3.5 kn, thus kept us busy with the ongoing tuning the sails a bit to the wind changes.

As we saw small fishing boats several times far away from the coast and these little boats are not to be seen on the radar screen, I decided to move farther away from the coastline and to check every 15 min if there is something ahead of us.

Once the water maker ran for 2 h producing 360 l of fresh water, I started to clean the cockpit with a brush and plenty of water. The water needed to be taken with the “bucket-on-the-rope”. Scrubbing the cockpit floor with a brush and getting around 30 buckets of sea water by pulling it up about 2.5 m was quite a physical exercise.

Next, we the wind direction improved, we hoisted the main to get a bit more speed. Not to much effect because the wind got a bit tired.

We just sat down to eat a bit, when fishing rod alarm sounded. I felt that there was something bigger on the hook. So I let line out, slowed it down until it stopped. This, I repeated several times, to make the fish tired. Slowly I could feel the fish for tired and I could haul it in line bit by bit. At the end, I could haul in the last 50 m of line without a special effort. The fish was tired. When the fish was close by, we saw immediately that it’s was not a barracuda, but a wahoo. Lucky us! We got fresh fish for a few days. Sh than took it on board where he eviscerated it at the teak grid of the entrance to the salon. The best place to do safely on board. Once he was done I cleaned up the grid with a brush and plenty of seawater while Sh continued with the fish to get the filets ready for the frypan.

Menu of the night: Sauteed wahoo and potato salad, Sh prepared already in advance. Delicious. I was too tired for Sh’s yoghurt dessert with bananas, rum raisins, and a shot of Caribbean rum additionally. I went to sleep for 3 hours to start my watch at midnight. Now I’m in my watch from 0600 to 0900.

Currently we have fully overcast sky, squalls are pouring water in the sea; fortunately in sufficient distance to us.

What will this day bring us?

The Cubans are poorer then we are in terms of money but the are richer then we are in terms of time taking for each other and caring for each other.

Victor, our caretaker of the whole day picked us up as agreed at 0900 and drove us to Santa Lucia. On our way we saw, coming from rich countries, shocking things and also very positive things. I had problems to take pictures because I was too occupied with absorbing all the things I saw out of the car window.

Victor, bought a SIM card for me. Thus, now I have a Cuban phone number. It took Victor about 2 hours during which we walked and looked around at the little marketplace and also in the side streets.

What we saw, is currently a bit difficult for me to write about. I need time to deal with all the impressions of the day. It was a time shift back into our childhood in Japan and Germany, when people did not need money to talk and have a good time with each other. There is no treadmill like in our countries.

I’ll write again on Cuba because I’ll be here for almost a month. Tomorrow we set sails for Havana.

Since about 1030 we are docked in the Marina Gaviota, Puerto de Vita, Cuba.

I feel it is not easy for me to describe the positive experiences we had today. I’ll try to sketch it a little bit.

It started while carefully following the well indicate waterway in the long and narrow bay, where the marina is located in a side arm, completely framed in mangroves. I suddenly recognized that there is no garbage to be seen at all. No plastic floats in the water or got stuck at the mangroves trees or drifted by the wind to the many small sandy beaches.

When we called the marina on Ch 16, we got an immediate response. Additionally a guy came in a motorboat to us and ask us to drop the anchor just outside the marina and please wait until the doctor comes on board to check our health situation. (It needs to be said that there is neither an antigen test nor a PCR test needed to enter Cuba. Only three vaccinations must be proofed.) Waiting in such a position for a health check is nothing special because we are international sailors arriving from another country and want and need to make inbound clearance. Puerto de Vita is the Port of Entry in the NE.

About 5 min later we were called on the VHF and asked to come into the marina; we will be advised on where to dock. We followed the request and a gentleman in a white doctor’s coat indicated us where to dock and gave us a hand with the lines. We docked with our PRT side.

The gentleman introduced himself as the doctor, who will do the health related clearance. We all took place in the cockpit and he did what needed to be done. This included a check of our vaccination certificates etc, etc. The most important thing for us was the very friendly atmosphere in which he did his job. We all had an interesting conversation even on personal matters.

When he left, he took our passports with him to give them to the harbor master. Later we understood that a few document were already filled in with information from the passports.

Next came a full crew. Harbor master, border control, customs, and a dog. As Cuba lies on one of the highways for drugs to the USA – the US citizen are simply in so much need of drugs to stand their daily lives – a dog to sniff drugs did but surprised me. The dog was the first guest on board. Looking at him, he gave me the impression, he is already bored as he knows there are no drugs on our boat. A quick bored walk through all the rooms and we were “drug cleared”. Then 2 officers had a look through our boat, opened her and there a door of a cabinet. After 3 min the first one greeted us again friendly and wished us a good time in Cuba. The other one, from border control/immigration helped us to fill in a 4 page document. Very friendly and very helpful when we explained the situation and what to fill in.

I needed to smile when he looked at my 4-color FMB pen. I got the feeling that he would like to have it. So I put it into the pocket of his shirt and he smiled very happy.

OBM, I need some more FMB 4-color pens!!!

He did a good job, was friendly, like we were, thus we all had a pleasant time.

Stressless inbound clearance without not really functioning special apps or homepage to be filled and getting wrongly analyzed by poorly working AI in situations, where we don’t have good internet or no internet connection at all.

We got our visa for 30 days and the permission to sail in Cuban waters. What else do we need?!

Next we know we need to go to the marina office. We established already via email a good contact with Yaney, the lady in the office. She came to our boat shortly after the doctor left and introduce herself. It is just pleasant, to meet and talked with this lady. When we walked up to her office at the top of the little hill, she was in the restaurant to stand some things there. As the wind flows through the 2 1/2 sides open construction, it feels cool sitting there under the reed covered roof. She took the document she already filled in with all the information I sent by email. Explanations for all things we wanted or needed to know mixed with a lot of stories and jokes. We learned we need to go by car Santa Lucia to buy food and get a SIM card for Cuba. Then she introduced us the driver, who will bring us there and back to the marina. Assuming that we are interested about his car he invited us to have look at Today only so much that I was shocked about what car he has. He even opened the engines bay lid and I was even shocked more. This part of today’s experience tomorrow, after we had a ride in this incredible vehicle.