MARINA MARLIN NAUTICA CAYO LARGO SPONSORS THE PANAMA POSSE
21ยฐ 37.3366′ N 081ยฐ 33.9′ W
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Tel.: (53 45) 24 8212 / 24 8221
Email: comercial@marlin.cls.tur.cu
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by Huub van der Mark Jan 2022
Experience sailing Cuba so far..
Arrived in Cayo Largo del Sur. The island was closed due to covid. Only the marina was open. The check in process was super easy, took about 10 minutes. Only my vaccination letter on my phone was enough. They sealed my drone. Wifi I could not find. At the etecsa office after some trouble I managed to get a simcard. They couldn’t register it on my name, so they registered it on someone else’s name. I paid 60 euro with about 7 gigabyte internet. 30 cents per foot in anchorage, 70 cents in marina. Water in marina not potable. Shop in marina only has some can food and drinks. Hotels and restaurants were closed. I was the only foreigner. In the 5 days there, 3 of them on anchorage I did see 2 charter boats. As my boat was half broken, I continued to Cienfuegos. Here most things are open. Restaurants until 4 or 6pm most of them. I had to come into the marina to check in. First they said I could not go on anchor, but after some trouble it was fine. I however staid in the marina as theft happens on anchor and I would be the only boat. Besides that needed to fix my sail and do a fiberglass repair. Epoxy is not available here, thank god I had just enough epoxy to fix it myself. I wish I had more epoxy with me. Next time I take a gallon. I had thickener and fiberglass matting and fiberglass chop enough. There are 2 charter companies and dream charter had a sailmaker who stitched my sail for 60 dollar. A little overprized for the 1 hour that it took him, but I probably found the only sailmaker in the south of Cuba. He did a good job. The charter companies will do anything to help you, however they will not sell you any goods, because everything they have they imported and use for their own boats. Yes, cuba can probably fix anything, but there is nothing available. My 400w inverter broke and I can’t get another one here. I met someone from Sweden, helped him get a simcard. Before that we changed money on the street. at marina you have to pay with creditcard. that’s 24 pesos is 1 dollar. But on the street we changed for 90 pesos. So now suddenly diesel became 4 times cheaper. Some things you can pay for with pesos and others only credit card. Everybody wants your dollars and euros. Apparently with euro’s they can buy stuff in certain shops that they cannot buy with pesos and with dollars they can travel. The simcard he could just get in cienfuegos at Etecsa with his passport and now was only 15 dollar as he could pay here with pesos. He could just register it on his own name. We took a bicycle taxi to town, I asked him how much it would be, he said that anything would be okay because he had nothing to do anyway. After an hour or so we decided to give him 200 pesos. Which would be 2.5 dollar on our exchange rate, but 12 dollar on credit card exchange rate. We got in a huge shouting fight and he called me many named and that I’m a bad person and that he would call the police because he wanted 10 dollars each from us. I am a long term traveler and very tired of being ripped off so I kept shouting back and eventually we gave him 300 pesos. Still he was very angry and said he would remember me, whatever that means. Anyway, I will never get in anymore without knowing a price in advance. Here the water is potable at the marina. Checkin process is a little more inconvenient and the Swedisch guy had to do a pcr test, I think it was free. He also was vaccinated. I read the book of Addison Chan and almost everything I say here, was already described in the book. It is of much help. Today I’ll go explore cienfuegos a bit more. I hope this info helps anyone who wants to come here, cheers!
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