Interesting story from The Citrus County Chronicle about an Ozello, FL couple that sails from Jamica to Key West and bumps into Cuba along the way. Didn’t think it was possible to sail that close to Cuba without risking getting blown out of the water – much less hit a reef.
Here’s the full story, link to Chronicle at bottom.
Local couple spends Christmas in Cuba
By Nancy Kennedy
After spending Christmas in a Cuban jail, Crystal River never looked so good to Rob Vassallo and his girlfriend A.J. Smith.
Vassallo, 40, and Smith, 29, left their home in Ozello in October to sail from Key West to Jamaica. As they approached the west coast of Cuba, 20-foot waves crashed Vassallo’s 38-foot Morgan sailboat into a sharp reef, shipwrecking the couple.
They spent the night sleeping on a beach and were awakened by Cuban soldiers who led them to a holding cell in a jail in Havana.
No toilet seats or toilet paper, ice-cold showers, no toothbrushes or toothpaste and chicken-skin soup for their meals.
They didn’t set foot on U.S. soil until New Year’s Eve.
“I got a call Christmas morning,” said Vassallo’s mother, Susan Vassallo. “I thought it was a telemarketer. ‘It’s Christmas — no thank you,’ I said and hung up.”
Immediately the phone rang again and a voice on the other end said, “This is a call from Havana, Cuba. Don’t hang up.”
Two days earlier her son and his girlfriend had run into rough water. “I was up for two days straight, sailing,” Vassallo said.
“It was fun,” Smith said. “We were just tired.”
As Vassallo set out to maneuver the boat around the south side of Cuba, hoping to find calmer weather, the waves whipped up and pushed the boat into the reef.
That’s when they spotted the lighthouse at Cabo de San Antonio, a military camp, and went ashore. By then it was about 2:30 a.m.
“We were yelling, ‘Hola! Hola!’ but no one woke up,” Vassallo said.
Exhausted, they set up a camp on the beach and slept, waking the next morning to seven or eight Cuban soldiers ordering them to get up.
“We followed them to the lighthouse, where we waited for higher officials and an interpreter,” Vassallo said.
Allowed to go back to the boat to gather their belongings, Vassallo and Smith discovered the Cuban soldiers taking the boat apart.
“That made me mad — and cry,” Smith said. “I didn’t cry through the whole thing until then.”
Next, the couple was taken to Havana and put in jail with others facing immigration problems, including two women and two men from Ecuador, a man from Australia and one from England.
“The men were actually treated better than the women at the jail,” Vassallo said. “Only the men could use the phone, and the food was horrible. The fried chicken had feathers in it.”
Because the United States does not have an embassy in Cuba, Americans go through the Swiss embassy via the U.S. Interests Section. It was a representative from that office who had called Mrs. Vassallo Christmas morning.
With the boat confiscated by the Cubans, Vassallo needed money wired to the Interests Section for plane fare to Miami and bus fare to Crystal River for himself and Smith.
“We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in jail,” Vassallo said.
They were released Dec. 26 and sent to stay in a private house, which belonged to a university professor.
Vassallo said although the home they stayed in was nice, they also saw a lot of poverty. Groceries are purchased by using rationing cards, and people dump sewage out their windows onto the city streets.
“Everything’s decaying,” he said.
While they waited for the Cuban government to approve their leaving, they were taken back to the jail and also stayed at another private home. Every time they were promised, “Tomorrow you can go,” something happened to keep them yet another day.
“We didn’t hear anything for three days, and that was tough,” Mrs. Vassallo said. “I didn’t know if they wanted more money, like a ransom. People were telling me horror stories about Cuba and then people told me how great Cuba is, so I didn’t know what to believe.”
Finally, Vassallo and Smith got on a noisy twin-engine plane to Miami on New Year’s Eve, landed in Miami at 9 and were headed to Crystal River by 10:20.
“We rang in the New Year on a Greyhound bus,” Vassallo said. “I was exhausted.”
Now they’re back working at The Other Place in Ozello and planning for their next sailing trip.
“What I’m doing next is making another boat out of Kevlar,” Vassallo said. “I’m going to use hydrogen motors and solar panels — no gas, no diesel.”
And no Cuba.
“I’ll put a little more distance between me and Cuba,” he said.
http://www.chronicleonline.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?071+article+News+20090107213601071326
{ 0 comments }
