A complete collection of Cuba stories by David Allester and his cruising mate, Eileen Quinn, traveling minstrel of the Caribbean.

Hiding in plain sight:
Why Eastern Cuba’s North Coast will
someday be a popular hurricane refuge

It’s not really obvious it it? Cuba is one of the most hurricane-battered places on the planet, but as this map of recent landfalls suggests, western Cuba bears the brunt of the bad weather. Close examination of the geography of the easternmost part of Cuba’s North Coast suggests a future safe haven.

By PETER SWANSON
Cuba Cruising Net

During my stint in Luperon in the Dominican Republic, I learned that the there was a measure of safety in that harbor during the hurricane months. The harbor itself was as perfect a hurricane hole as ever was, surrounded by hills and with a mangrove tree for every stern line. But the other factor was a mountain range called the Septentrional, which divided the North Coast from the rest of the island nation. Hurricanes evidently dislike crossing mountain ranges, so the majority that hit the D.R. pass along the South Coast before heading east to Cuba or turning northward. Those that go north of the D.R. tend to go well north of it, scurrying up the Bahamas. None of this is meant to suggest that hurricanes never hit Luperon, it just that they do so rarely.

During Cuba Cruising Nets 2005 visit to Cuba’s North Coast, part of which is also backed by a mountain range, we were told that roughly the same dynamics kept many of the Cuban harbors along 250 miles of shoreline equally free from the worst effects of Hurricane season. The map of recent hurricane strikes you may have notice on the home page goes with an excellent explainer about hurricanes in Cuba reprinted on this website with permission from the authors at Cuba News, a superb newsletter on all things Cuban. The map piqued my curiousity so I visited NOAA’s interactive hurricane information site http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/viewer.html, which allowed me display graphically all the hurricanes ever tracked over Cuba or nearby. This is the picture NOAA showed me:

I added the black box to highlight the area that i’m discussing, a couple hundred miles of coastline with a dozen pocket bays--as well protected as Luperon in the D.R.-- as well as several others you would consider wonderful anchorages had you not seen Luperon first.

Note how the black box is nearly empty of tracks compared to the almost anywhere else on the map. Note, too, that of those tracks that do fall within our box, which extends 60 miles out to see from from the shore, few are of darker sort, indicating severity. Historically, then, this part of Cuba, while not hurricane-free, has experienced fewer and less severe hurricane landfalls and what I call brush-passes. Luperon sits at about the midpoint of the North Coast of adjacent Hispaniola, and it is clear that historically the Cuban harbors would be a safer bet for shelter, if only because of the greater number of brush-passes shown over time within close reach of the Dominican North Coast. Below is a similar depiction showing all the Hurricane ever tracked on or near Florida.

Obviously, if we didn’t know it already, this picture shows that the Sunshine State can claim no haven as safe from hurricanes as on Cuba’s eastern North Coast. It would make sense that some of these Cuban harbors, which happen to be beautiful and unspoiled now, should be developed in the future to provide hurricane season dockage for all sorts of vessels. While these places would never be as secure as, say, Trinidad or Venezuela beneath the hurricane belt, they would be a heck of a lot more secure than the Bahamas, the Southeastern United States, or other sections of Cuba for that matter. They would have the added advantage of being just a short hop from Miami as well.

The Cuban map also shows that the last place on earth you might want to sit out Hurricane season is on the western end of the island. Popular marinas at Havana and Varadero would also be unwise. And that island south of mainland cuba, the Isle of Pines, it might as well have a bullseye painted on it.

By the way, don’t those NOAA overlays look like Jackson Pollocks?