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Cruising With the Enemy

The Latitude 38 Medal of Freedom — in this case for ignoring the United States government’s preposterous ban on taking a U.S. boat to Cuba — is awarded to . . . well, until we can get confirmation that it’s all right to print their names, we’ll just describe them as Northern California cruisers and vets of the Ha-Ha. To our knowledge — and we may be entirely wrong about this — they are the first U.S. yachties to visit Cuba since Obama took office.

Commodore José Escrich will happily ‘host’ American cruisers at Marina Hemingway.

© 2010 Marina Hemingway

It’s been illegal to travel to Cuba for like 50 years because, according to the Treasury Department, it’s necessarily "trading with the enemy" — even if our friend, Commodore José Escrich of the Hemingway International YC (which shares a site with Marina Hemingway at www.cubaseas.com), will be happy to give you a document saying that you were fully hosted while in Cuba.

Enforcement of this wacky law has depended with who has been president. During the Clinton years, which is when we took Latitude‘s Big O to Cuba for a couple of wonderful weeks, the Coast Guard "advised" us not to go, but didn’t try to stop us. And there were plenty of Americans on their boats in the Cuban marinas at that time.

When George W. Bush was President, he made it clear that Americans taking boats to Cuba would be in deep poop. So to our knowledge, all the American boats that were there cleared out of Cuba and no new ones replaced them.

During the Obama administration, lots of folks have gone to Cuba via air from other countries — and taunted the U.S. government to fine or arrest them. The Treasury Department responded by saying they had bigger fish to fry. After all, it would go completely counter to the vibe of the current administration. Does this mean that all kinds of U.S. boats will start setting sail to Cuba? We sure hope so. In fact, if we had the time, we’d glady take our Caribbean-based charter cat to Cuba and flaunt the fact that we were ‘trading with enemy’, too. (It’s that UC Berkeley education, you know.) Would you take your boat there?

Would you ‘trade with the enemy’?

© 2010 Marina Hemingway

The only downside is that cruising visits to Cuba are unlikely to exceed expectations in several respects. For example, despite something of an  ignorance-based love affair that many people have with Cuba, it’s still a totalitarian state, so there are many things you’re not free to do and places you’re not free to visit. Indeed, in the U.S. we’re pretty much allowed to do all we want except what is specifically against the law. In Cuba, on the other hand, you’re pretty much only allowed to do what the government specifically says you can do and where you can go. Big, big, big difference.

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