T&T: Cuba

[Milt Baker]

For those who dream of cruising to Cuba, veteran cruiser and writer Peter Swanson has useful board on Cuba cruising at: http://www.cubacruising.net/  Peter seems to have his finger on the pulse of cruising in Cuba.

I've taken my trawler to Cuba twice, but the last time was more than a decade ago--before the Bush administration essentially closed the Cuban cruising loopholes for Americans.  From all I can see, Americans are still taking cruising yachts to Cuba but not in the same numbers as in the 1990s.  As in the 1990s, most seem to go by way of Mexico or the Bahamas and they often return to those countries rather than coming straight back to the USA and having to answer lots of official questions.

By far the best cartography of Cuba is from the Cuban Hydrographic Office and is based on hydrograpic surveys done by Russian and Cuban crews mostly in the 1980s.  In the 1990s Bluewater Books & Charts carried a series of seven paper chart kits based on the Cuban Hydrographic charts, but these are out of print and no longer available. Bluewater has a stock of old Cuban charts dating from 1979 to 1991 and sells black and white Xerox copies of these.

A Canadian company known as NDI received rights from the Cuban Hydrographic Office to publish raster chart versions of the Cuban Hydrographic Charts and did so in 1999.  Bluewater Books & Charts still carries this set of raster charts but they have not been updated since the original version was published. 

There were two cruising guides to Cuba, one by Simon Charles (now out of print and no longer available) and one by Nigel Calder (still in print).  Calder has not visited Cuba nor updated his cruising guide since 1999.

Personally, I'm hoping we can look forward to cruising in Cuba again.  Even with all the hassles (and they are considerable), cruising there is very rewarding.  

Full disclosure: I owned Bluewater Books and Charts from 1986 to 2000 but no longer have any financial interest in the company.  Bluewater was the first U.S. chart agent to import Cuban charts, and one of my passages to Cuba was licensed by the U.S. government to go down and pick up charts and deliver them back to the USA.  The former head of the Cuban Hydrographic Office remains a good friend of both Nigel Calder and myself, but he is no longer with the Hydrographic Office.

--Milt Baker, Nordhavn 47 Bluewater, Fort Lauderdale