The Hemingway Maid ('16 revision)

or, an Essay on the Folly of Not Drinking Enough Rum

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

- Ernest Hemingway

Long after the 'Cold War' ended, relations between The United States and Fidel Castro's Cuba remained - to put it mildly - strained. Well into the 1990s, when people fled Cuba - usually by boat or makeshift raft across the 90-mile wide Florida Straits - they either died trying to reach America, or were taken into custody by the U.S. Coast Guard - and then awaited a very uncertain fate.

My first encounter, and I should personal encounter, with this terrible exodus occurred in the summer of 1995. I was with my father on Sabrina, an old, though rather large sailboat we'd had in the family for ages, and we had been sailing from Naples, on the southwest coast of Florida, to the Dry Tortugas and Key West, where we resupplied, and then on to the Miami/Ft Lauderdale area, on the southeast coast. There had been, apparently, a recent wave of repression in Cuba and many hundreds of people had decided to make the trip across the Straits - from Cuba to Florida - and these attempts were made in some very unsuitable craft. Soon enough, reports from news services, and the Coast Guard, were filled with unspeakable fates awaiting these refuges on the open ocean.

I suppose this is an old story, as old as civilization, perhaps. People fleeing the ravages of persecution and war, searching for a better life - I think you could rightly say that, whatever your politics - but as with all things human, things are not always as simple as they first appear. You have to scratch the surface to get to the truth of things, ignore the sidelong evasions and look into the heart of the matter. Then, if you're persistent - and lucky - you just might get to the end of the rainbow. Still, both my father and I were 'old school' - and by that I'd not hesitate to say we were both cut from the same 'conservative' cloth, and both found the idea of 'illegals' entering the country troublesome, no matter the circumstance.

So - yes, my father and I, sailing around the ass-end of Florida. We'd left Key West early on a windless Friday morning, but by late afternoon on that otherwise unremarkable May day, we were barreling along under full main and rolled-out headsails, with the freshening wind on our starboard beam and the Gulf Stream giving us a steady push to the east. Dad and I were, as usual, talking about life and women and all the various reasons why Dark Rum is better than sex (and yes, I know, but Dad was approaching 80 years old, so cut us some slack) while I was updating our progress up the keys on a paper chart in my lap. Things like our speed and time, calculating distance over the ground and plotting our position on the chart (excuse me, but this was before GPS so these things took time and - effort). Navigating was a favorite pastime for both of us; he taught me how to fly when I was still in diapers, and how to get lost in a boat when I was still learning how to walk.

As I made some notes on my chart some obscure flash caught my eye, and I looked out over the rolling blue water. The waves were perhaps five feet high, and the wind was fresh enough to be blowing foam off the white-capped rollers that marched alongside. As Sabrina bounded up and over these rolling peaks I could see off into the near distance, and it was on one of these brief ascents that I caught sight of, again, something bright and - very out of place. I alerted Dad and we came about, headed in the direction I had last seen this, well, whatever it was. Soon we were approaching what was obviously a raft, but please keep in mind that calling this collection of oil drums, plywood, sheets, and rags a raft was a very loose approximation of what I was looking at.

The Coast Guard had recently advised mariners against approaching these craft, apparently fearing that starving, half-dead refuges would in desperation take-over or attack any would-be rescuers, but the problem now, as I saw it in those immediate circumstances, was that no one on the raft was moving. I could see several people laying out on the plywood surface - rolling around under the sun, and those bodies not tied-down were being tossed about by the swells, but no one, and I mean not one soul was up and about. Indeed, no one appeared remotely conscious.

As we closed on the little raft my father and I watched in silence as a small body rolled from the raft and dropped into the sea.

Dad altered course to try and reach the child, but we were still well over a hundred feet away and the seas were only growing more more restless. As we entered the approximate area where the little body had hit the water, Dad set up a search pattern. It was during times like these that my now very old father, a retired naval aviator from WWII, would suddenly come screaming back into the full rush of life. Where minutes before he had been grousing about arthritis and how all of his friends had passed away, here he was at the wheel shouting instructions and back in complete command of the world around him.

Or so I hoped.

I caught a momentary flash of weathered brown skin bobbing on the surface as we passed by the raft, and pointed it out to Dad; he swung the boat wildly around again, giving no thought to the sails, and we were on the body in an instant. I hopped down the boarding ladder as the body hove into the lee of the boat and just managed to grab the young boy by the arm, and in one smooth motion pulled him up onto Sabrina's deck.

It took but an instant to determine that the little guy was gone, that he had probably been dead for hours. His sun-scorched skin felt like hot leather in my hands, even after it's brief rest in the relatively cool waters of the Gulf Stream, and I will never forget that boy's face as long as I live. I'll spare you the details, but when I looked at Dad with the helplessness I felt in my heart, I saw his face streaked with helplessness.

I got on the radio and called the Coast Guard, gave them our position as well as the situation on board. Within a half hour an orange-striped white helicopter came screaming in overhead, and an orange-suited rescue-diver jumped down into the churning water next to the raft. The helicopter moved off and went into a hover, the visored pilots looking down on us while I helped the diver aboard. He looked at the little boy and shook his head, then jumped over to the raft when dad swung the stern close enough for a well timed leap.

Soon we heard the diver on the radio. All those poor souls on the raft were gone, too.

The helicopter pilot asked us to stay on station with the rescue diver, as they had just received another rescue call, so we had to wait for a Cutter to come out from Key West and take over operations. The 'rotorheads' thanked us and were gone, and we motored as close to the diver on the raft as we dared, and he grabbed the snubber we tossed over and made it fast; we closed the distance a little bit more, tried to lend whatever assistance the guy needed - but there was little to do now but wait.

The diver told us this was his sixth such rescue that week, and that almost all refugees he'd found so far had been dead. The kid seemed hollow and care-worn, too numb by this point to even cry, and he tossed down the orange juice we gave him with the dull ache in his soul apparent in his every move and gesture. An hour later the Cutter arrived, and we helped with the transfer of bodies to the ship and gave them the information needed for their reports, and then they bid us a safe journey.

You just got to love the Coasties. Tough job. Real heroes, those guys.

Dad and I finished our trip to the east coast in almost total silence, and we eventually tied-off along the dock in front of his house shortly after midnight. Up until the day he passed away just a few months ago, the events of that afternoon tied us together in unexpected ways. I think his heart softened a bit; the reality of those desperate people and their hopeless flight really tore him up like nothing I could remember, and the change in us both became a new, common ground.

For as unsuccessful as we'd been trying to rescue those people, the effort to do something, anything, to help those poor souls resounded with us both in much the same way. He watched the bland-faced response of TV journalists - like all the other second-handers he'd run into during his life - talk about these people and he turned away from the sensationalist, ratings driven lingo. I guess from that day forward apathy was a perverse luxury he felt humanity could no longer afford, not if we were to cling to the notion of civilization, anyway.

Yeah, I miss him, but that day changed me too. Forever, and in unexpected ways.

+++++

A little over a year later I decided to visit Cuba, see firsthand the world these people tried to flee, with, apparently, so much despair in their hearts.

And I decided to make the trip on Sabrina.

Several Canadian sailors had told me of their warm welcome in Cuba, and voiced the opinion that my reception in Cuba would be no less hospitable. U.S. policy at the time appeared to be in a state of flux, or at least mild ambivalence, as repeated requests for information - about making such a trip by boat - to both the Coast Guard and State Department went unanswered.

I left Ft Lauderdale one February morning and wound down the ICW, the infamous Intra-Coastal Waterway, to Miami, then went out Government Cut and into the heaving swells of the Gulf Stream off Biscayne Bay. Sabrina took me through the teeth of the stream, straining to the southwest against both current and prevailing wind for clear water, toward the Florida Straits and those deep blue waters of hope stilled. Looking back on it now, Sabrina took me across a seascape of nightmares and broken dreams, a time-scape of blood-worn, tumultuous history towards the north shore of Cuba. I arrived off the coast of Havana late on the second day out from Miami, wet and cold to the core, beaten up by the trip against the current, and ready to just breathe easy now that the Straits were behind me.

And so I was of course greeted almost immediately by a Cuban naval vessel. And I say greeted advisedly, because that was exactly what happened. Very nice, very professional naval officers in a smallish gray patrol boat came alongside and, noting that I was an American, asked if it was my intent to stage an invasion or create some other problem for Fidel Castro. Reassured with my reply that I was indeed the vanguard of a Marine Expeditionary Force and that George Washington and the entire Continental Army were right behind me, they laughed and pointed in the general direction of the Marina Hemingway. I did note that there was an astonishing number of machine guns and larger deck guns on the Soviet-built boat, as well as some very menacing looking missiles and whirling radar arrays. Not exactly representatives of the Peace Corp, I reckon, but nice folks nonetheless, I sailed away on their good wishes.

The Marina Hemingway was named for, well, not for William Faulkner or F Scott Fitzgerald. It seems that, once upon a time, Papa Ernest called Cuba his home away from home for a while, so the marina that bore his name (in honor of his manly exploits on the sea, I reckon) could hardly have been anything more or less than a haven for macho sailors in search of rum, cigars and a right good time. I was not surprised to learn that the Marina Hemingway was also one of the big-time secrets of Yanquis-Yachties looking ever southward for new ways of living -- on the cheap.

And here I have to digress for a moment, perhaps help you come to terms with something odd going on among American retirees - and other assorted roustabouts from around the world. Marinas, of course, are around the world full of boats, and more often than not sailboats. That many of these boats should not be called"yachts" is self evident; they are, rather, homes -- that just happen to float -- and represent a huge, divergently so, group of people with enormous differences in income. With names like Second Wind, or, say, ForRest (and yes, more mundane names like Sabrina), the casual observer easily makes the connection between a group of marina-bound vessels on the one hand and a hard-charging second, much less sedate group. Among this second set, let's call a subset of this group: 'the recently obtained status of divorced-white-guy' group. As many of these divorced-white-guys are also recently retired, and living expenses over time become an ever more relevant issue as age increases, many anxious old guys head south of the border, and they may do so in search of favorable exchange rates or to find a warm, congenial hole in the wall to hang out with their memories. In recent years, Cuba has suddenly popped up on these guy's radars as a great place to live cheaply -- and nicely. And to this group, Cuba may also represent the chance to live outrageously one last time, the chance to make a few more memories to carry along on the big sleep.

So, little did I know I was sailing on into an almost out-of-control Leisure World for divorced white guys, a place where testosterone has aged into a fine old vintage.

But to be fair, I have to relate to you one other key fact about these roving communities, cue you in one of the most important aspects of these "live aboard" communities. A huge percentage of men living alone on board their sailboats are, well, not timid sorts of people. Lots of retired CIA types, pilots, soldiers, and yes, truck drivers, oil patch workers, and even cops, as not many florists and bankers make the leap to cruising distant shores. And while this may not seem readily apparent, and note, this is important, these live-aboard communities are real tight on the loyalty thing. People look after one another, as people in small, intimately small, communities tend to. When these guys turn their back on conventional society and sail away, they do so knowing they won't ever have to be alone -- unless they really want to be, and because this type of community is so protective of it's own, over time it becomes an extended family. By and large, and I dislike generalizations but here goes, a lot of these folks tend to be hard drinking, fast smoking, and there also tends to be more then enough sex going on for people half their age.

Which was why, in the late 1990s, the Marina Hemingway was such a dream come true for these guys. Cuba was a last frontier kind of place, and you could look upon these folks as cowboys (and cowgirls) headed off toward the sunset, looking for one more good time while the getting was good.

When you pull into a marina almost anywhere in the world, nattily dressed dock boys typically direct you to a slip and help while you dock your boat. More often than not, again, in most places, the process of placing a boat in a marina reflects the size of your boat, and more importantly, the apparent cost of the boat as well. To put it more succinctly, the biggest and the best tend to get the spot next to the yacht club or the fancy restaurant, while the run down little cruisers get shuttled over to the nice smelling slips by the tuna-canning factory next door.

Not so at Marina Hemingway.

What might have passed for a restaurant or a yacht club in the 90s anywhere else in the marina world - even within the diminished standards of Central American yachting - would not adequately characterize what greeted Sabrina as we swung into the Marina Hemingway. Quaint and charming are two words that come to mind as pertinent overstatements, but, well, at least the place appeared clean, after a fashion. The marina was, after all, a remnant of Yanquis Imperialism from the pre-Castro era, and not a lot of Soviet money had gone into it's upkeep and repair since. Since tourism in Cuba from 1959 through 1989 was in keeping with the Soviet style of travel - let's just call it economy class and be done with it - the marina had become totally irrelevant -- and had been, well, neglected. Everyone knows yachting wasn't a real big deal with the Russians unless an Olympic medal was involved, so Marina Hemingway had devolved into a real trip down memory lane. As I approached the tree-lined slips, I could see the place was filled with all manner of live aboard vessels, but it was immediately clear that Marina Hemingway wasn't gong to give Newport, Rhode Island a run for its money.

Still, the place looked friendly -- in it's ramshackle way.

And so it was on that sunny day I met one Pedro Flores, a thirteen-year-old dock-boy who waved me towards an empty slip near what had once been a swanky - by New Jersey standards, anyway - restaurant, and he took my bow line as I drifted into the slip he had chosen. I jumped down and we tied off Sabrina, and he looked expectantly satisfied with his work.

I found over the course of the next few weeks that Pedro - and the other boys like him - worked hard to get jobs at the marina, and each was assigned his own turf to look after. They helped boats in and out of slips, arranged rides into Havana for 'tenants' needing supplies, and would look after your boat if you needed to be away for a while. More importantly, as these boys made almost no hourly wage they lived on tips, and so depended almost entirely on the goodwill of the marina's transients for their very existence. To say these kids were nice would be a grossly unjust understatement, but they were also smart as hell and worked like crazy to earn - and keep - their positions at the marina.

Pedro also introduced me to my new neighbor. Ron Fuller was living on a pristine Westsail 32 in the slip next to mine, and I'd heard about Ron through the cruisers grapevine for years, for his tale was the stuff of legend. He had been some sort of contract spook in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam fracas, and had been, or so the story went, loosely involved with the U.S. intelligence community ever since. He also had, or so the rumor had it, an endless supply of cash, lived modestly, had no credit cards and no debt, and resolutely refused to return to America because, and again, as per rumor was reputed to do wet-work for any government who would keep him in Gucci enchiladas. If any Cuban official knew who he was or what he'd done over the years, Ron probably wouldn't have hung around Cuba for too long -- but who knows? He, apparently, never worried about such stuff, and I was pretty certain if anyone had tried to turn him in, the poor snitch's body would have turned up in some dark alley with lots of new holes in it. Like I said, a tight community.

When Pedro first introduced me to Ron, he was sitting in the shaded cockpit of his boat, named (fittingly, I think) Blade Runner, sipping some whacked-out 200 octane rum drink under the late afternoon sun. He tipped Pedro for helping bring my boat in, which I thought a bit weird at the time, not yet knowing how these kids made a living. After all these informalities had been seen too, Ron hopped over to Sabrina with two drinks in hand and plopped himself down in the shade of my cockpit awning. He put his feet up while I went about cleaning up the deck and stowing sails and navigation gear, and he never said a word, just stared off toward some distant memory, confronting his demons in well-lubricated silence.

When I was done, which was well before the ice in Ron's drink melted, I sat down opposite this white haired hermit looking creature and we got acquainted over five or six really stiff bombs made from local rum. He filled me in on the Havana scene; mainly Brits and Canadians enjoying the Caribbean on the cheap, with a bunch of hard screwing Parisians and Germans on hand just to keep things interesting. Food was cheap, rum even more so, while hot and cold running hookers were just about everywhere you cared to look - after dark, anyway.