Cuba. It gets more complicated.

It’s Monday morning and Thanksgiving has come and gone.  It was great fun but now might be a good time for me to cutting back to part time eating for a while or I risk increasing myself from ultralight to full displacement cruising mode.  It was fun though.

Anyway, time to put up the Christmas decorations, if only for a few weeks.  After that, on to Pandora and a winter of cruising.

Since my last post, I have put some time into finding out more regarding the rules for American’s that wish to spend time in Cuba.  With the “warming”, if you can call it that, of relations with Cuba, American’s can visit Cuba without a permit, for one or more of the 12 reasons (check back to a previous post for those) but to stay longer requires more formal approval and the filing of what is called a SNAP-R form.  It’s a sort of export permit for the boat in order to keep her in Cuba for more than the two week limit.  The same process applies for Pandora as would be needed if I wanted to export a shipload of grain to Cuba so some of the paperwork is a bit hard to understand for mere mortals like me.  Fortunately, I was able to find someone, Mark, in that department, who walked me through the application.  Sound like fun?  Feel inclined to get one yourself?  You can find more information  at this site.

I have applied under the Journalism category and have been told that this process, for which I have been told I have a good possibility of being approved, should take about 6 weeks.   I guess that our final plans for visiting Cuba will have to wait until we hear back.

For now, we continue to consider options and research the possibilities for our visit.  The two major options are.

Option one:  Spend some time in the Bahamas, we particularly want to visit the Berry Islands and spend some time in Great Harbor Cay at the marina there.   After that, we would head south along the Exumas and then on to Georgetown.  From there we would sail the 250 miles south to the Windward Passage between the eastern end of Cuba and Haiti where we would enter the Caribbean and turn west to explore the southern coast.  We would spend about a month exploring the south side of the island, round the western coast and head on to Havana and Marina Hemmingway.  After that, back to the US where I’d rendezvous with crew for my run to CT and home.

Option two:  Spend time in the Bahamas and then head back to Florida.   From there we would continue south through the Keys, make the 90 mile crossing to Havana and spend a month exploring the island using Marina Hemmingway as a base of operations.  That’s surely the easier option if perhaps a little less interesting.   However, we weren’t too happy with our time in the Keys from last winter and spending a few weeks in the Keys again leaves us a little flat.   However, we could also continue beyond Key West and explore the Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson before jumping across to Havana.  That would be fun.

I wrote about the Tortugas last year when we were thinking about visiting.  We opted to skip but there’s always this season.   This link is to the Park Service and gives a good history of the fort. As another thought on all of this is that our friends Dick and Anne on the cat Nati have expressed an interest in going to Cuba too and seem to favor option one.   We buddy-boated with them a few years ago in the Bahamas and had a great time. They have one of those funny boats with two hulls but we try not to hold that against them. Lots to think about, I’d say and However, for now I’d better get cracking on preparing my presentation for the folks at the Essex Yacht Club next week. I’ll be talking about our cruises down the Intra Coastal Waterway and Bahamas.   Perhaps my talk will inspire them to take the plunge and head out cruising.

And as far as my discussions with Uncle Sam are concerned and the quest for my own personal SNAP-R, it’s plenty complicated but I am of the opinion that if it’s simple it’s probably not worth doing anyway.    Not completely confident that Brenda shares that belief but that’s another story.

Yes, life can be complex but it’s sure interesting.   That it is, indeed.