Tropical island with white beaches and electric-blue water.
Bareboat charter firms in Cuba (Cienfuegos) yachtcharter.com platten-sailing.de Cuba Cruising Guide, Vol. 1, Western Cuba, A Cruising Guide to Cuba. freecruisingguides.com/cuba York Times, of-cubas-coral-reefs.html
cayolargo.net boat heads out to sea. ended below the soaring red-and-white lighthouse on desolate Cayo Guano del Este, marking the start of the Canarreos chain.
Cayo Guano is low and shallow, offering little or no protection from wind and waves — typical here. That night our master chef and musician, Mike Frizell, served up a delicious dinner of chicken and rice, followed by a guitar concert. Conversations among our six crewmembers curved through history, literature, science and other wellinformed tangents. The warmly lit cabin became a cozy and congenial refuge from the black, windy and lonely sea outside.
The next day included the annual “Tucket Bucket” race (the prize being a yellow beach bucket from Nantucket) of about 50 miles down to the marina at Cayo Largo. As the last of our boats tied up that evening, Pire, the harbormaster, came aboard to expedite the Guarda Frontera clearances. This attractive government-owned marina was the only support base outside Cienfuegos that we saw in 10 days of sailing. (For more on Pire and Cayo Largo, visit
The following day included the lunch at Cayo Rico and snorkeling at the reef. Our next-to-last day was spent motorsailing into the wind back east along the long shore of Cayo Largo and anchoring again below the lighthouse at Cayo Guano to stage for the final leg.
The next day we were guided back to Cienfuegos Bay by a unique coastal navigational aid: the hulking concrete ruins of the Juragua nuclear power plant. This $1 billion project was abandoned near completion in 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed and suspended its economic aid to Cuba.
By midafternoon we re-entered the protection of Cienfuegos Bay and before long were safely tied up again at the marina dock, our Cuban cruise successfully and safely over. Our final day involved a land-yacht trip to the UNESCO World Heritage city of Trinidad, a perfectly preserved Spanish colonial settlement an hour’s drive down the coast to the southeast. It was a great way to see more of the main island and its residents, including, unfortunately, local street hustlers known as
As our trip ended, my sense was that Cuba is already being changed by the ever-growing presence of American visitors. Cienfuegos is the gateway to Cuba’s Caribbean coast and has a clearly growing tourist sector, as seen by the many (private restaurants), casas particulares (private rental rooms or hostels), the pirated American shows that play on some restaurant televisions and other signs. The bareboat firms there are pushing to expand, and it’s inevitable their American customer base will grow.
In many ways, Cuba is still a nation “encased in the amber of the 1950s” by a dictatorial government and still-potent U.S. embargo. But as our little voyage and new friends demonstrate, the amber is starting to crack.