Baracoa’s harbor as seen from a hilltop fort that has had a hotel built onto it.

A bite of forbidden fruit: The North Coast will make for superb cruising

Too big, too beautiful to ruin quickly

By PETER SWANSON
Cuba Cruising Net

While Cuba Cruising Net’s first visit to Cuba failed in many of its goals, it proved to be immensely reassuring in one sense. Experts and armchair Cuba cruisers alike worry that once relations between the U.S. and the island nation are normalized, developers will turn the place into a mirror image of South Florida with all its wretched excess. Relax, friends, we dare say this scenario is not possible in your lifetimes. The cruising grounds are simply too big and too heretofore unexploited to be ruined quickly. Plus, we would guess that future development would continue in the current track, which is to create mega-beach resorts. Let them pound their sand and circle it with concrete. Leave the harbors and pocket bays to us.

This is the story of how we reached this conclusion.

Knowing we would likely fail to obtain U.S. government permission to explore the North Coast of Cuba by one of the vessels available to us, Ken Fickett and I decided we would settle for half a loaf. Our journalistic flesh had received a license to visit Cuba from the U.S. Treasury Department, so even if we had to leave our fiberglass back in Florida, we decided to conduct our research by flying in to Havana and going on the road. In fact, we received our formal denial to go by boat—this from the U.S. Commerce Department—only a couple days before our scheduled departure. At that point, the denial came as a relief because we had made all our plans around a roadtrip and had not prepared a vessel and lined up crew, etc.

Children play in the harbor as El Yunque “The Anvil” looms behind.

Our plans called for a thorough examination of Baracoa, the easternmost port on the North Coast and the oldest surviving European settlement in the Western Hemisphere. Though the village turned out to be as shopworn as many Cuban cities, its location beneath mountains and amid

Harbor detail courtesy of Nobeltec.

lush forest was stunning, as if living up to the descriptions in the “magical reality” books of Latin authors. Bathed in such inspiration, it was no wonder that Baracoa has acquired a reputation as an art capital whose talent is disproportionate to the population of this isolated region.

To reach Baracoa from Havana, we took an overnight bus to Santiago on the Cuba’s southeastern shore, we checked out the city’s modest recreational boating facility and rented a car and readied for our journey to Baracoa the next day. The road to Baracoa followed the coast eastward, passing the headwaters of the now notorious U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, before turning northward into the mountains.

By mid-afternoon we had arrived in Baracoa and drove immediately to the mouth of the harbor, which is on the southwestern shore of a bay, called Bay of Honey. The bay itself offered more protection from prevailing easterlies than one would

This commercial wharf would form an excellent basis for a marina . This hulk is being used as a breakwater against the northeast swells of winter. El Yunque is a landmark easily distinquishable from offshore. From Baracoa Harbor’s northern shore you can see the headland that forms Honey Bay, offering an added measure of protection from prevailing easterlies.

suppose from examining the charts,

 which should be expected since headlands always seem more dramatic when observed from sea level as opposed to an aerial view. You could also see how Northeasterly conditions, as commonly occur in winter, would let swells into much of the harbor. We presume the hulk of the ship near the entrance was purposely sunk there in the shallows to serve as a breakwater.

There was a commercial dock in the southeastern and most protected nook of the harbor with only a Guarda patrol boat alongside. For most of its history, no roads led to Baracoa, so all commerce and travel began or ended alongside that quay. In other research, I noted that one of the ships sunk by German submarines operating in Cuban waters in 1942 was carrying cargo between U.S. ports and Baracoa.

In Cuba: A Cruising Guide by Nigel Calder, the author describes the port authorities in Baracoa as being unfamiliar with the needs of cruising boats and therefore problematic. It’s worse now. Baracoa is no longer even a port of entry. That, in effect, puts the port off limits. Otherwise, Baracoa would be a very practical place to put in if you were making passage from the Lesser Antilles back to Florida via the North Coast of the Dominican Republic and the Old Bahama Channel.

Now, in theory, one must proceed westward along the North Coast of Cuba for about 80 nautical miles until the first port of entry at Vita Bay. Once cleared in, you would have to obtain destination papers allowing you to backtrack to Baracoa, this time against the trade winds, which blow Force 5 or higher in the afternoon, against wave and current. Because of this, you would want your despacho to include not only your final destination of Baracoa but puertos intermedios, thus allowing you to put in to the many sheltered anchorages en route. Unfortunately, policy might well make that impossible, too. Even Nigel Calder, who was under the supervision of the Cuban authorities by the time he got to these parts, was forbidden from entering several of these bays. Author Simon Charles, however, was able to visit and incorporate these same places into his Cruising Guide to Cuba because of his more low-key cruising/research style.

Dealing with Cuban officialdom can be frustrating in the sense that there seems always to be an internal logic to their decision-making hidden to you. This section of the North Coast used to house Cold War facilities to monitor American space launches, but in today’s hostile atmosphere it might well be that any one of the deep-water pocket bays could support and shelter an ship-borne invasion force. That inference is, I hope, nonsense. The truth is that Cuban officials have zero understanding of cruising. State planners have gone to great lengths to concentrate and isolate tourist hotels as much as possible from ordinary Cubans. The idea of small groups of foreigners going wherever they please in small boats threatens officialdom’s sense of state security, which is based on an ideal of strict control over every person on the island.

Mata Bay is being considered as a port of entry. Campesinos tell us about conditions in the bay. Mata Bay supports a modest fishing industry.

The one man who sees it differently is Commodore Jose Miguel Escrich of the Hemingway International Yacht Club in Havana, and I hope I am not getting him in trouble by saying so. The retired naval officer has made a second career out of understanding the needs of foreign boaters, whether they come to Cuba for sportfishing or to cruise the coast. He has argued for the restoration of Baracoa’s status as a port of entry as well as the construction of recreational marine facilities in the harbor. Problem is: There is a rival plan.

Ken Fickett and I drove about five miles east from Baracoa to lovely Mata Bay, a gem of a pocket bay surrounded by hillsides of palms. A French film company was there during our visit to film the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mata Bay was playing the part of 19^th Century Samoa. Dignified and hospitable, the local fishermen told us the deepwater anchorage had recently been visited by a Cuban warship. When I said that the land on which their modest palm-clapboarded homes sat would be worth a million U.S. dollars in the U.S., they looked at me like I had arrived by spaceship rather than a rented Peugeot.

The Cuban enterprise that runs most of the country’s marinas is called Gaviota, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Cuban military. Escrich’s vision for Baracoa has run right up against the military’s plan to develop Mata Bay as a hotel and marina complex and make that the port of entry. From the military’s point of view, you can appreciate the beauty of it. It allows for cruisers to enter easternmost Cuba; it keeps them essentially isolated from ordinary folks and concentrates any spending within state controlled enterprises. I suspect the marina portion of the plan is just an afterthought since hotels are seen as generating more income for the state.

From our point of view, both notions have merit. But an old saying applies: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Mata Bay would require a huge infusion of capital to be developed, whereas Baracoa just needs modest improvements of existing facilities and some clean up. The cruisers could take a short walk up the hill from the docks and be in the heart of the oldest city of the New World, browse the art galleries and listen to great local musicians in the Casa de Trova. Baracoa could become a cruising destination immediately, were it not for a perverse intersection of interests against cruisers by both Cuban and U.S. officialdom. The one won’t let us go where we want, the other won’t let us go at all. Commodore Escrich asked me to write him a letter outlining Cuba Cruising Net’s position in the question of Mata versus Baracoa, and I will post it when I do.

Although the fishermen did not say so, Mata Bay is probably a bad place to be in the winter months when the trade winds back and blow from the northeast. The bay’s entrance opens to the northeast, and Caulder has noted that “running swells run right into the bay, making it a rolly and uncomfortable anchorage.” That may be only the half of it. I would say there is some chance this harbor becomes a death trap when the occasional “norther” drives down from the United States accentuating the northeast conditions. The local fishermen may be unbothered by this because their vessels are beachable and can be dragged beyond the surf’s reach. My guess is that some kind of breakwater would be needed to make this a tenable winter harbor.

Taco Bay has become part of a national park and is now off limits to cruisers, though it provides refuge during hurricanes.

German hitchhikers pose with their late countryman.

My traveling partner and I explored postcard-perfect Yumuri Canyon, a river still further to the east of Mata Bay, then failed in an attempt to go up in one of the big Soviet era radial engine propeller planes that fly in and out of Baracoa. We were hoping to get some aerial photos of Baracoa, Mata and other coastal features. Foreigners were not allowed. The next day we were back on the road, heading west along the coast. We passed Ensenada Maravi, a small but navigable river mouth, like Mata open to the northeast, but probably fine for stopover in the months of spring, fall and summer.

We learned that the wonderful bay called Ensenada Taco, so praised by Calder, is not legal for anchoring since its shores have become a national park dedicated to the memory of the German author and scientist Alexader Humboldt, whose visit to Cuba in the early 19^th Century was the basis of his groundbreaking book Island of Cuba. We were traveling with a couple of hitchhiking German girls so we thought it apropos to photograph them alongside a bust of their countryman at the park.

 Too bad for the cruising community that this wonderful hurricane hole with its purse-string opening was now off limits. Part of the reason for that, said the park’s ranger, was the presence of the West Indian manatee. He allowed, however, that when hurricanes threaten, the rule is suspended so vessels from Baracoa may shelter here. That would go for you, too, if your boat happened to be in Baracoa when a hurricane was forecast.

Lovely Tomano Bay would make a cruising ground all to itself, it’s all anchorage and studded with islets.

 Later we passed through the city of Moa, a nickel mining center and port. Planted in the heaps of red spoil were signs warning us against taking photographs of what appeared to be an environmental catastrophe. Our ultimate destination was Cayo Saetia to have a look at the biggest “pocket bay” of them all, Nipe Bay. Before that, however, the road took us past the cay-sprinkled waters of lovely Tomano Bay. This is another place of omni-directional protection under beautiful green rolling hills, empty save for grazing cattle. Here was yet another bay “prohibido” to Calder, but which Simon Charles was able to visit unhindered just a few years earlier on his trawler Hobbes.

For the sake of time, we did not get a good lock at Cabonico or Levisa bays, but a quick glance at the chart will reveal two more superb shelters. Nipe Bay is the biggest, however, covering 50 square miles. Cayo Saetia, an exotic wildlife preserve, separates Nipe from the other two bays and helps form the entrance to all three. Saetia had once been a hunting getaway for visiting Communist dignitaries. Now it’s a modest tourist resort and camp for Cuba’s Young Pioneers, as they call their version of the Boy Scouts. We saw ostriches, gazelle, buffalo and a friendly camel.

Nipe Bay is a sprawling place with only a power plant to interrupt her rustic nature. It opens to the sea through this broad channel whose entrance is marked landward by range markers.

The beaches were as good as anywhere on the planet, and empty except for us and the hotel staff. We had the entire island to ourselves. On the other side of Nipe stood a massive power plant, serviced by sea via a broad deepwater channel. Otherwise it was forest and fields of green.

The next morning, a great big Russian helicopter brought more visitors, as we packed to leave. We crossed the narrow, one-car bridge that links Saetia to the mainland, and continued eastward on our tour of the coast. We passed the beach resort of Gibara and took a quick look at Sama and Naranjo bays before stopping for a closer examination of Puerto Vita, which, as I mentioned, is now the easternmost port-of-entry on the North Coast.

Vita reminded me a bit of Luperon on the Dominican Republic’s North Coast, where I had spent time living aboard. Cuban authorities had build a serviceable marina here with concrete docks and med-mooring with a modest restaurant and bar. It was really quite nice but nearly empty of cruisers. We spoke with a German couple and singlehanding Canadian who had been docked there for a couple weeks or more. There seems to have been a third cruising boat there, but the owners were absent. There were some cruising Fountain Pajot catamarans, but they were government property in service as head boats for tourists at the beach resort.

The bar is nightlife and social center of Vita. We interviewed this single-handed Canadian, one of a handful of cruisers at Vita. Vita’s concrete dock construction is typical of Cuba. It’s set snugly amidst mangroves.

The lack of cruisers underscored the effectiveness of the U.S. administration’s ban on travel to Cuba by boat, which has had the intended effect of also discouraging the meeker among the Canadian and European cruising communities, who fear being hassled if they subsequently visit a U.S. port. The Cuban authorities responded to drop off in clientele with splendid logic: They raised the fees for dockage. Now it costs $600 a month for a foreigner to dock at Vita, no bargain. Once again U.S. and Cuban authorities seemed to be conspiring together against our cruising community.

A source pointed out something I found fascinating about Vita. The personable young man tending bar at Vita had unusual credentials. He was a serving general in the Cuban army. Again, Gaviota is a subsidiary of the military and no doubt had appointed an able woman to run the marina (It was her day off when we visited), but the truly lucrative position—a job that earns tips—went to the person with the most clout. Be nice to your bartender, I would say, especially if you want to visit some of those wild pocket bays denied to Calder.

After Vita we left the North Coast to research other facets of Cuba cruising. We had traveled just 110 miles of coast, but in that short ride was the potential for months if not years of cruising. The North Coast of Cuba is like the coast of Maine in that regard. As you can see from this account and its accompanying photographs, this environment will not easily succumb to ruination by success. In fact, modest marina facilities to punctuate the days of splendid isolation at anchor will be welcome when “that day” arrives. Gringo cruisers may profess to cherish wild isolation but their fond of their amenities, too.

Vita’s entrance is at top right around that headland. Here a tourist catamaran returns home in the afternoon.

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COASTAL STATS:
The facts about Cuba’s coast and its waters are proof of its enormous potential as a cruising ground.