Cruising World - June 2018

june/july 2018

cruisingworld.com

42

SO,

what do you guys want to listen to?” asked our new

friend, Cuban artist Solé.

“I don’t know, maybe something local?” replied Mark.

“How about Simply Red?” was Solé’s reply. “Do you guys like

Simply Red?”

This might be the last thing I expected him to say, but at this

point, nothing really could surprise me. And so he popped in a

Simply Red CD while the group of us sat around the living room,

sipping strong Cuban coffee in the tiny Havana apartment he

shared with his wife, Mary, and her family. All I could do was look

around me and smile at the unexpectedness of it all. We were mid-

way through our time in the island nation during the 2017 Cruising

World Expedition and Rally to Cuba, sponsored by Fountaine

Pajot, and from the very beginning, this country had surprised me

in so many ways.

The brainchild of my friend and colleague David Gillespie, the

rally came to fruition in late March 2017 after a year of legwork

and planning. In all, 49 private sailboats and 10 chartered sailboats

met up at Stock Island Marina in Key West, Florida, to begin the

adventure. Our home for the week was Quince Amor, a chartered

Fountaine Pajot Saba 50 catamaran, and our cast of characters in-

cluded myself and my husband, Green; David and his wife, Sandy;

and photographer and troublemaker Jon Whittle. Also aboard the

fi ve-cabin cat were two brokers from Atlantic Cruising Yachts,

the largest North American dealer for Fountaine Pajot catama-

rans: Frank McCarthy and his wife, Janet, and Joe Buxton and

his wife, Mary. Editor-in-chief Mark Pillsbury rounded out team

Cruising World aboard Tranquility Base, a beautiful Fountaine Pajot

Ipanema 58 also participating in the rally.

While sailing to Cuba and traveling in the country certainly was

something I wanted to experience as part of my role as a Cruising

World editor, visiting the island held a strong personal note as well.

With both Green and me growing up in South Florida and around

so much Cuban culture, we have been intrigued by Cuba for a

very long time. Politics and regulations being what they are, the

island nation has always been just out of our reach, merely adding

to the mystique. When David started putting the plans in mo-

tion to work with a charter company and make this rally a reality,

I jumped at the chance to participate. Although things had been

getting easier for cruisers to take their own boats to Cuba, there

was still plenty of red tape, which made going with a rally — and

letting someone else deal with the paperwork — seem like an ide-

al way to fi nally do the trip. For the latest Cuba visitor regulations

see “Cuba Rules,” page 80.

Green, David, Sandy and I headed to Key West on Tuesday,

March 28, to arrive well ahead of the planned March 30 departure,

and to have time to provision, attend the captains’ briefi ng and

meet some of the other crews. Although we work for the same

company, albeit in different states, I had never met Jon, the pho-

tographer who was joining us for the trip. When he sent me an

email asking if it would be OK if he arrived on Wednesday with

a bottle of good rum to share, I knew that we would all get along

famously.

ON

a chart, the route to Havana looks pretty straight-

forward: Sail south from Key West for about 90 miles,

and presto. While this is more or less technically true, in reali-

ty, there is the Gulf Stream and plenty of shipping traffi c to keep

those at the helm on their toes. In order to not completely inun-

date the customs offi cials on the other end with nearly 60 boats

arriving in short order, the rally fl eet departed Stock Island Marina