December 6 – December 21, 2024; 17170 nm and 2102 days after departure from La Rochelle

Yesss, in only 8 days we made it to beautiful Cuba. It was so incredibly nice to be back in warm climates! Getting rid of all the layers of clothes was fantastic! It made us finally mobile again and felt just soooo good. No more freezing and back to enjoying being outside!
The first 48 hours of our trip were quite intense. Crossing the golf stream with its strong current and sometimes the winds against it challenged my well-being quite a bit. Ugly short waves made Altimate rock in unpredictable and very uncomfortable movements. Not the best start for my gut to get used to proper sailing again. But hey, the good part was we were sailing fast and I think thanks to our new stay sail my body was adapted already after about 36 hours to these unfriendly conditions. (Just to make sure that I didn’t make my dear readers worried. It’s not that I get seasick. Just that in the beginning of a passage I can’t read or watch for a longer time the plotter. I just need to be careful and allow time to adapt my body to the movement.) Also, I’m always happy as well as jealous that El Capitanos equilibrium sense almost never seem to mind uncomfortable movements. On the other hand the passage actually was a real treat. Every single mile we sailed it got warmer and warmer. Even though the first 200nm we sailed east southeast and not directly south to gain east ground to later catch the trade winds. After only two days we were back to t-shirt temperatures!!! Yeahhhh. All the wrapping up was in the past!!! No gloves, no boots, no scarfs, no wooly, no socks, no…, just a shirt for sun protection! Life and getting dressed was so easy again.

The rest of the reach was a mixture of all kinds of weather conditions. A calm forced us to motor for about 24 hours to make sure to escape a following nasty depression. Very boring but there was nothing we could do about it. Fortunately soon after the trade winds started to blow and provided perfect sailing conditions. We were almost flying. Sometimes when the wind changed direction we had a close haul reach and had to beat against the waves. That was of course the time when the fishes liked to catch our lure. They never seem to bite when we were on a comfortable beam reach. Nooo, getting the fish aboard, cleaning and filleting would have been much to easy. Evil mean fish! Well, hell, despite the uncomfortable reach obstacles we still managed to get aboard a beautiful mahi mahi as well as a huge and very difficult to catch wahoo. We were super proud as well as excited and had more than enough food for the next days. What can I say, all in all it was a very pleasant and entertaining trip. Successful regarding fishing, warm after only two days and faster than we had hoped.

Saturday morning the 14th of December, after 8 days and 1067 nm we docked Altimate at Marina Marlin Santiago de Cuba. Friendly smiling people welcomed us to Cuba. As simple and rather run-down the small marina was as pleasant and smooth was the entry procedure. The marina staff was so incredible helpful and kind as well were all the officials. Oh and the absolute best part was that they didn’t care at all about Starlink. A huge relief for us, we could stay connected! From the very first minute we felt like family. It was as if we came back home and everyone was happy to see us. I really can’t remember feeling so welcomed in any other country we have been so far. The officials were not only kind but also very respectful. And that for sure is not very common for officials! They arranged all the necessary papers as fast as they could. Their problem was the unpredictable recurring power outages. The poor immigration officer for example had just typed in all our information to his computer when the power broke down again. It is really unbelievable how often the Cuban people do not have power. It is more the question of when they have power at all. Instead of being annoyed, the Officer apologised for the power outage. He even offered to bring us the “despacho”, the important paper which is necessary to move around Cuba with a boat, as soon as they have power again. Which official does that??? Unbelievable nice!

Having no power is really a nightmare. It’s really hard to imagine, well at least it was for me. I thought of having no lights, the food in the fridge, no radio and things like that. For sure annoying but somehow managable. In reality nothing works anymore, just nada. Imagine every day to struggle with no mobile network, no internet, no money transfer, no ATM, no cooking, at night you can’t see anything as no-one has lights, it is pitch dark unless full moon (only hotels seem to have generators), therefore its very hard to clean, tidy up, read, play a game or … to name a few things.
It is impressive how the people cope with all that. I mean in Europe or elsewhere we would probably get solar panels or generators to bridge the power outages. Here in Cuba the people can’t buy that. Not primarily because they can’t effort it but because they just can’t get it. No supplies whatsoever. And yet the people manage their lives and are still in an astonishing good mood.

We spent only one week in Santiago de Cuba but in retrospect it somehow felt much longer. Even though we thought we didn’t do anything but tidying up Altimate and adopting to the new country the first couple of days, we already had a lot of fun and were inhaling the new impressions. After all the official entry procedure including a health inspection (we were asked if we had a rash, fever or a headache) were done, we figured out where and how to change money. Through word of mouth from other sailors it was easy to get in touch with the local who was in charge for that. Pochito was a nice guy who invited us to his home and his mother even invited us for dinner. Such sweet people! As we were just arrived, tired and a bit overwhelmed we thankfully asked for a rain check. Yet we already changed money and Pochitos mother let me know that she could do our laundry. She also immediately told me that she didn’t want any money for that. She’d be happy with whatever I could give her. That was the first time we realised how difficult it was for the locals to get anything.
The second day was as exciting as the first one. Elizabeth the sweet marina manager often passed by just to check if we are doing ok and if we would need anything. Another boat which wanted to leave had the problem that their credit card was for no apparent reason not accepted. To not let them wait any longer Elizabeth accepted cash even though she was officially not allowed to take it. That again opened another problem for the English boat as they didn’t have enough cash (US $ or Euro). So they asked us if we had enough $ cash to pay their bill. We did. They immediately transferred money from their account to ours, we gave Elizabeth the cash and happily and relieved they could finally leave. Just a normal day in Cuban life. In the evening we had our first sundowner in Cuba with the crew of an Austrian boat which was docked right next to us.

The next days we were finally in exploring mood. We organised a taxi to head to Santiago de Cuba city. We invited a young French girl to join us who was as well a crew member of the Austrian boat. Already the short trip, about 10 km, in a typical old Cuban car was so much fun. To me it felt as if we were transported back in time or starring in a movie. We were sitting in a car from the 50ties or so, with no seat belts, a continuous bench, holes in the floor, the doors not properly closing, cooling vent windows (those little triangular hinged windows on either side of the front passenger seat) and the engine’s ignitions were easily countable. Outside the street was more or less empty. Once in a while we saw another old car but more often simple horse or donkey carriages, bici-taxis or small motorbikes. Remarkable was the fact that everything was so clean. Garbage was hardly seen, not even in the city. Impressive! Santiago was a cool town with its beautiful colonial style buildings. We had no plan what we wanted to do so we just strolled through the city. For sure we were a target for the guides or sellers, but again I was impressed how respectfully they treated us. Of course they tried to talk us into any kind of business but as soon as we made it clear that we just arrived and were not yet ready for business they left us alone. One guy told us about Casa de La Trova a typical cuban cafe/bar, where musician perform traditional cuban music. We managed to find it and again felt transported back in time. Cuba how I had imagined it. An old dirty bar with elderly guys performing cool cuban music. They were proud to tell us who had already been at this bar. All the faded fotos on the walls showed more or less famous people. We loved it there!

The next days we visited the Castillo de la Roca del Morro and little island ” Cayo Grandma” which were both in spitting sight and only a 10 min local ferry ride away from the marina. Normally we would just have taken the dinghy to visit both. Though the cuban regulations do not allow movements with the dinghy. Only very few people are allowed to have boats and to use them. The nice part of that restriction was a pretty quiet anchorage and marina. The ferry was scheduled only 4 times a day and fisher or small water taxis were hardly seen at all. The fort was impressive and the island pretty but more special and interesting to me was the ferry ride. It was the transportation for the locals to get either to get to the bus stop to Santiago city or to the Castillo and the island and I think another stop. This ferry was just a platform with simple handrails around, a few seats and an old engine which was still willing to push the boat slowly forward. I think 2 miles /h was the max speed. But being probably older than my parents it was amazing it was still working. Getting on and off the boat was also fun. The captain pushed the ferry as close as possible to a broken dock and then everybody had to jump on and off. Old people with canes, small kids, people even with motorbikes they didn’t seem to mind, they just jumped on and off. Amazing.

Next to all the exciting new impressions we were able to experience we also met very nice new boat crews. Two Australian flagged boats Anthem and Paseafique, arrived shortly after we had entered Cuba. We knew there were coming as Australian friends which we had met in Deltatville had told us so and vice versa. Immediately we had a great connection. We shared our virgin knowledge about Cuba and enjoyed some nice evenings together. We discovered that we all wanted to explore more or less the same places in Cuba and decided to travel for a while together. That was especially nice as Christmas was only a few days away. On our last day we jumped again in a taxi to Santiago. Made a detour to visit the famous cemetary‎⁨ “Santa Ifigenia”⁩ before stopping at several places to get some veggies and fruits as well as queso blanco. ⁩Our poor driver really tried hard to find a place where they sold queso blanco. A feta-like cheese which is quite common in middle and South America. He drove criss-cross through town until we finally found a shed where we could buy it. Fruits and veggies were not quite as hard to find but very limited. In the end we only got tomatoes, two very small pineapple, green oranges, some cucumbers, sweet potatoes, platanos and an eggplant. We could have bought porc, beef or chicken as it was available but it was cut in such a strange way that we rather did without. And then the next day after exactly one week off we were.