Cuba 3 Cienfuegos (Miles to date 7543)

Anyone for fish? I depart Casilda eventually – I had tried to leave on Wednesday at 8 a.m. I had told the young Guarda who cleared me in on Sunday - the one who had wished me a happy birthday on reading my passport. He had said ok and so I arrived at the dock at 7:45a.m and asked the security guard to phone the Guarda at 8:30 and again at 9:30. They arrive just before 11 and clear me out in minutes – but it is too late to depart now as I want to arrive in daylight (12 hours 7 to 7 in these parts). I go back to the boat and do some jobs and rise at 6:30 the next morning to be away by 7a.m

Casilda is the port for Trindidad de Cuba. I am left thinking Trindidad is a rather old town. Quaint, full of tourists, some hotels that serve food, some restaurants and a few shops – most selling tourist knickknacks although I do manage to buy some Cuban coffee. Casilda is a fishing port and off limits for yachties – the marina and hotel complex across the bay were interesting. Being in the hotel with the “free” drink and food must make it easy not to travel the 5 miles to the city. Bit like a cruise ship I suppose. Anyway I depart the sheltered bay at Casilda. The channel is tight, but well buoyed, 5 doglegs later I emerge in the open sea and settle down for 30 miles to get to Cienfuegos.

some nice mountains

The weather starts off light – an hour of motoring, then the number 2 genoa (#2) gives me 5.5 knots in 20-23 knots of apparent wind. Beam reach. An hour later the wind goes down a bit and I switch to the #1. Thirty minutes later the wind goes down a bit and I raise the main as well. By 13:00 I am under engine but keep the main up. With 10 miles to go the wind comes up to force 6 and I motorsail to the mouth of the Cienfuegos bay – a large inland bowl accessed through a narrow channel.

Of course when I arrive to go through the channel there is a large ship waiting for a pilot – I radio them asking their intentions, no reply, I say I will proceed through the channel looking behind me and start to head on. The pilot boat emerges from the channel, rushes to the ship and I have to slow down to let it get ahead of me. All in a day’s work I suppose

Ferry boats go back and forwards across the channel just to make the journey more sport. Yah, it missed.

Nice houses, nice views too. The other side has a big hotel and dive centre

And then across the broad water to the town, I see not one, not two but a proliferation of Pelicans (I know a song about that)

The marina is pretty full of charter boats and there are a dozen boats on anchor so I join them and make my lunch – I had made “bread” by diluting my flour 50% with porridge oats and using baking powder instead of yeast – not entirely of my own invention or as daft as it sounds  - I quote three sources here. Jane’s yellow book – Jane Adamson of Cockle Island Boat club has published a cook book designed for yachtspeople – called Cook Aboard. I had previously cooked an amalgam of her pizza base recipe and a recipe for beer bread from Peter’s pilot book “The gentleman’s guide to Passages South” (Which I will use for my passage North!). Jane's recipe called for self raising flour which I did not have and Bruce Van Sant’s book called for warm beer that I did not have. (or cold beer for that matter <sigh> ).

My  bread of a few days ago  – adhering to the engineers desire for the KISS principle.

3 cups of flour (mine wasn’t strong flour, I used what I had)

2 tablespoons of baking powder (most recipes say teaspoons with selfraising flour)

1 tablespoon of sugar (I have used 2 as well – which is ok but a bit sweet)

1 teaspoon of salt.

Mix in a bowl with a little milk until the texture of dry-ish cement. Leave for an hour and then dollop in into a bread tin (mine is silicon rubber – so dollop into a bread rubber…) Give it 20 minutes at mark 5, skewer it to make sure it has a dry centre, turn out, cool and eat.

My Oaten bread is similar but borrows from a wee book Shirley had bought me ten years ago called “Irish Baking Book” by Ruth Isabel Ross – her recipe for “Oaten Bread” was a bit tedious – 8 ingredients including 50:50 oatmeal and pinhead oatmeal, bran, baking powder, baking soda, brown sugar, salt and buttermilk so I improvised.

A cup and a half of flour and a cup and a half of oats (I wish I had ground them up)

2 tablespoons of baking powder (most recipes say teaspoons with selfraising flour)

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt.

And make as above.

It made a very dense bread that was a really good chew (in a good way) slightly nutty, hint of sweetness but not too much, lovely with Jam or lovely with cheese and Branston. – fit for purpose.

Anyway, I am about to tuck into my lunch/tea and a speedboat arrives with the dockmaster and the Guarda who board me and clear me in – fairly painless. I also have to call at the dockmaster’s office in an hour. Where he informs me that the tender must be raised onto the deck every night and the outboard kept locked at all times. Hard to see how a local could make a run for Mexico or Key west in a 10 foot inflatable and a 4hp outboard but rules is rules. I must photograph how I manage to get a rather heavy 3.1m tender onto my foredeck and a 4hp onto Shadowmere’s pulpit when I am singlehanded. I can do it – just about – but taking photographs whilst I do it is beyond even me.

And then I walk into town

The marina is on a narrow isthmus of land that has some nice buildings and a dual lane carriageway that runs straight as a die

And near the Marina is a service station that sells food! Provisions at last. Well, it has some stuff – margarine and cheese (disappointingly it is Dutch cheese, but cheese is cheese!) and maybe a dozen other things,

I walk on and come to a Mercado! Unfortunately it only has 20-30 products –but again fills some of my needs – I get a slab of Cuban beer! And some fruit juice. I also come across a packet of magic dust – add it to water to get 8 litres of melon flavoured water. I buy two packets as it will make it easier for me to drink my 2 litres of water a day that I have been religiously adhering to

I still do not know where to get vegetables or bread. I do pass a wee man in the street who is cycling with a large crate of cake and sweet stuff. I stop him and buy some. On the Saturday I see a crowd of locals up a side street and find an impromptu farmers market – near some local shops – one shop has eggs in it. Only, although to be fair it has a lot of eggs.

Unfortunately the vegetables do not have a lot to recommend them, Melons and poor tomatoes green and pockmarked, plus very large queue

Still I do have cake. I also buy some brown stuff on spec – it is apple jelly nice on cake. The piston expanding gadget is not used anatomically but is my coffee press. You can also see the plastic lemon that I has been flavouring my water with (I added sugar and salt to avoid dehydration) and the purple packet of magic dust.

I continue my walk into town (20-30 minutes) despite being hailed by taxis of various types

Most houses are reasonably big so the city has a more affluent feel to it. The centre is actually full of big old buildings, lots of shops (though with limited stock) and lots of restaurants and Cafes as well as lots of people about – I stop and have a coffee in a pub/café and walk down a pedestrian areas full of shops – also knickknack stalls – I deduce cruise ships call here and I am right

A radio station – lots of these in Cuba

lovely cool walkways

Queues for icecream – the pilot book sings the praises of Cuban Icecream although Doros and I had had a bad experience in Trinidad de Cuba – this place looks much better (and popular)

A lot of art – I also saw two or three “proper” art galleries

Cruise ship knick knack stalls

I come to the town square/park. It has Wifi (using the vouchers I had bought earlier worked – 1 CUC/hour)

I also came a ham radio club and went in and introduced myself (my Northern Ireland Callsign is MI5AFL which can sound a bit sinister) All the hams introduce themselves and give me their callsigns although surprisingly they don’t have English – they must only use the radios for local communications. I promise to listen for CO8FAA when I get back home. Not much sign of radios here either. They mainly seemed to playing with old PCs.

I had not seen too many churches in Cuba but this one is lovely

I found a mercada that had some tinned food. I now have about 20 “meals” on board – I have large stores of rice and pasta. My spuds are only powdered though. I have tins of vegetables but I do hope to find decent fresh veg and maybe some fruit soon.

I get a taxi back to the marina as I am carrying provisions. Mine looks like this

Three on a bike anyone?

What about seven?

That is not a very powerful engine either, still it is better than the Dominican Republic where they just put 3 or 4 on an ordinary motorbike

Then there is always the "train"

Actually there are conventional taxis and buses of course, the taxis are mainly modern – the odd very old car – Cuban style but 90% modern. In fact the whole town has a modern feel to it – well maybe scores of years old but the city is laid out with totally straight roads and city blocks, people bussle about and the housing stock I saw was in good condition and houses were large.

I return to the boat, make more bread – using yeast this time, I double the yeast content and it rises -  perhaps my yeast is tired after travelling so far

And I get the boat ready to go into the fuel dock at 7am for water and fuel. Then it’s off towards the cays again. 40 miles to a tentative anchorage, 65 miles to a possible night time entry to Cay Largo the Cuban one, not the Floridian one…