Friday, August 7, 2015

Cuba Plans Boating Boom as US Luxury Ships Head to Havana

Cuba Plans Boating Boom as US Luxury Ships Head to Havana
HAVANA — Aug 7, 2015, 12:47 AM ET
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN Associated Press

A $3 million yacht left Key West this week with two barbeque grills, 250
channels of satellite TV and a just-in-case plan for rescuing stranded
Cuban rafters encountered in the Florida Straits.

After four hours smooth sailing, the Still Water tied up at Havana's
Hemingway Marina. The well-heeled passengers breakfasted on smoked
salmon and pastries, then boarded an air-conditioned Cuban government
bus for a day of touring the city.

The Cold War made the Florida Straits into a stage for nuclear showdown
and a graveyard for thousands of Cuban rafters seeking better lives in
the United States. Now, normalization of the long-tortured U.S.-Cuba
relationship is transforming the 90 miles between the U.S. and Cuba back
into a playground for hulking cruise ships and sleek luxury yachts,

For the first time in decades, the U.S. government is authorizing a wide
range of large-scale sea travel to Cuba. Since declaring detente in
December, the Obama administration has issued permits to dozens of
sailboats, at least five ferry companies, four cruise lines and the Palm
Beach-based yacht broker that chartered out the Still Water. The 78-foot
yacht features satellite Internet, four staterooms and a wet bar.

"It's a little bubble. You can have the comforts of home in Havana,"
said Jim Friedlander, president of Academic Arrangements Abroad, which
helped organize the trip.

Cuban tourism officials and U.S. boating aficionados and entrepreneurs
are salivating about a possible return to the go-go days before Cuba's
communist revolution, when thousands of well-heeled Americans a year
sailed to Havana for long weekends of tropical leisure.

"What's the natural market for nautical tourism in Cuba? The United
States of America — the No. 1 country in the international yachting
market," said Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, commodore of the International
Hemingway Nautical Club of Cuba. "We're talking about tens of thousands
of yachts that might come."

Fidel Castro in 2005 called cruise ships "floating hotels" that "leave
their trash, their empty cans and papers for a few miserable cents." But
under his brother and successor as president, Raul Castro, the
government appears to have no such reservations. Cuba has been rapidly
approving port calls by U.S. cruise ships and planning new marinas with
thousands of slips for yachts in the polluted Bay of Havana and at the
white-sand resort of Varadero, about a 90-minute drive away.

Even the first stirrings of a boating boom are giving rise to surreal,
startling contrasts as increasing numbers of expensive pleasure boats
ply waters where Cuban fishermen bob on taped-together chunks of packing
foam and a rising flood of emigrants head north on rickety rafts.

Tourism per se remains illegal under the embargo. Yacht broker Paul
Madden received Obama administration permission last month to operate
yacht charters for "people-to-people" trips with U.S. and Cuban
government guides jointly shepherding groups through daylong activities
on shore meant to foster interaction between U.S. citizens and Cubans.
Newly licensed cruise ships will operate under the same model.

The rise in leisure boat trips is a sign of the two countries' eagerness
to make normalization irreversible by future U.S. administrations,
experts say.

"For a long time the atmospherics weren't right. Cocktail hour on the
poop deck and cruising were redolent of tourism. (But) the Obama
administration as it goes into overdrive in its legacy building on Cuba
doesn't appear to me to have a lot of time to worry about that sort of
thing," said Robert Muse, a specialist in U.S. law on Cuba who
represents a newly licensed U.S. ferry company.

Muse said he thinks boat travel to Cuba will remain limited because of
mutual sensitivities about the Florida Straits, the scene of high sea
dramas such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Mariel boatlift.

Still, Cuban tourism experts seem confident about an imminent end to
restrictions on boat travel to Cuba, which have been loosened and
tightened in cycles since President Jimmy Carter briefly legalized
travel to the island in 1977. Many U.S. yachters, including several
docked at the Hemingway Marina on Thursday, have quietly stopped in
Havana for years on their way to or from other ports, the same way U.S.
air travelers head to Cuba from Canada or Mexico in defiance of rarely
enforced American laws.

The hottest point of discussion among such Cuba specialists now is
whether the island can swiftly meet what they expect will eventually be
strong demand for high-end boating facilities.

"The elimination of restrictions on nautical tourism by the U.S.
government appears as if it will happen over the short term," said Jose
Luis Perello, a tourism professor at the University of Havana. "That
won't just open the doors to U.S. yachters and other tourists, but
(also) to many from other countries and yacht clubs."

———

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

Source: Cuba Plans Boating Boom as US Luxury Ships Head to Havana - ABC
News -
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/cuba-plans-boating-boom-us-luxury-ships-head-32937988

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