In this video, Let's SAIL to CUBA! All the Details for Cruisers, we talk about all the details of our trip planning to sail to the Republic of Cuba TODAY! We cover provisioning, travel requirements, our sail plan, and bringing Zeus along with us.
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Closed Captions (CC):
in this video we talk about the

requirements and preparations

for provisioning in our sale plan for

traveling to the republic of cuba

last time on sailing bellachandra we

sailed to dutch saint martin

then to french saint martin and we were

blasted by a jet airplane

[Music]

hi if you're new to the channel i'm

noelle and i'm dan and we're sailing

bella chandra

we sailed all the way from nova scotia

canada to the caribbean

that's right we're sailing all around

the caribbean now and if you haven't

subscribed to our channel just go below

this video

look for the big red subscribe button

and press that button

hey everyone if you watched our live

stream that we did back in antigua

you would know that we were planning to

go to cuba

cuba is our next destination after st

martin

we are currently in french st martin we

were just in dutch st martin if you

watch our last video

we give a little tour of the island and

show some of the things that we've done

here

but now we are planning to leave here

and go to

cuba cuba is not close by

it's going to take us about five days to

get there i think

if you look at the map st martin and

cuba are not very close together we have

quite a

distance to cover to get there and there

are places we could stop and check in

along the way but we've already been to

the usvi's

we've been to the dominican republic and

because of increased coveted numbers in

other countries we're going to skip

right through and go to cuba where we

know we can get in

we'll be leaving from st martin we'll be

passing the british virgin islands and

the us virgin islands will be passing

puerto rico

we'll be passing dominican republic

haiti

and then we'll be in cuba it's a long

stretch the dr and 80 are very large the

cuba itself is quite large

but downwind with wind and current on

our side we should

get there a lot faster than we expect

most of our friends who have been doing

any downwind sailing in the caribbean

typically arrive like a day early

to where they're planning on going cuba

is open

we're canadian so we're allowed to go

there our government

allows it and cuba welcomes us our

canadian dollar is actually usable there

they take canadian currency in cuba

after hearing that cuba was open it was

really important for us to check and see

if we could take zeus there

because a lot of countries are very

strict about dogs for instance a lot of

the british countries turks and caicos

and the british virgin islands

the paperwork is intense they may take

him away in quarantine him

during our stay they're much more strict

the cayman islands is especially strict

and we were worried that maybe cuba

might fall into those categories so we

checked it out but

it's not it should be as easy to take

zeus to cuba as it has been to go to

most of the caribbean islands they

follow the same protocols we need an

up-to-date vet certificate he has to

have all his rabies vaccines up to date

and his tighter test but we keep all

that current with zeus because

those are pretty standard travel

requirements when you're taking a dog

with you

from island to island we're pretty

excited about sailing down wind

we haven't done a lot of sailing down

wind to be honest and sailing down wind

is probably the most favorable wind

angle for most sailors

our boat actually sails so well upwind

that

sailing downwind is strange to us it

feels different

and if you watched our last video you'd

see that we had a bit of a struggle with

our autopilot trying to keep her

you know on track going downwind but

i've done some research and talked to a

few people and i think i figured out a

way to have our autopilot work better

for us

going downwind and we should have less

trouble with it

when you're visiting cuba from east to

west you have your choice of going north

of cuba or south of cuba

there's places to check in in both

locations

if you go north of cuba there's

limitations to where you can go

the rules are that you have to stop in

bays where there's a marina and you'll

have to check in to each marina

as you go across the north coast of cuba

and you're not allowed to anchor or stop

anywhere else

but if you go to the south of cuba

you can cruise the island chains down

there the garden of the queen

you can stop in some of these cities but

we're allowed to anchor at most of the

cruising spots and any deserted island

that we see

there's no restrictions like there are

on the north coast and there are also a

few cities where we can stop and

hopefully

get some supplies along the way or if we

have an emergency

and there's a lot of history and it's a

beautiful place to cruise and relatively

deserted because there will be no

american boats there maybe a few

canadian boats some international boats

but from what i've been told

it's it's pretty secluded along most of

the south coast of cuba but we're

looking forward to that

if you're planning to arrive in cuba

there's only certain ports where you can

do a customs clearance

on the north there's porto de vita but

we'll be traveling along the south coast

we plan to do our customs clearance in

santiago to cuba

we plan to clear out in havana having

done the entire south coast of cuba

and coming up around to the north aside

from the beauty and remoteness of south

cuba we're excited about the fishing

because it's fairly remote and because

it's not heavily overfished so the

chances of catching a fish are much

better so we're excited about that we

were told that

we'll be catching enough fish to fill in

our freezer i guess if you

even just in shallow water you can find

lobsters and just trailing a line in

shallow water you can pull up a decent

snapper

so we're pretty excited about the

fishing aspect as well it's really

important when you're planning to go to

cuba to consider what you'll do for food

and water

it's also a good idea to bring products

that you can barter

because it's a communist country they

don't have the same trade relationships

that the rest of the caribbean has with

other countries and i guess it's

difficult to get certain things for them

so

if you were to bring you know household

products and

use them to barter you can actually

barter for you know maybe fruits and

vegetables and we'll find out

the other thing is water for anyone

that's been on vacation in cuba you'd

know that it's probably not a great idea

to drink the tap water there

and most people don't so you need to

plan ahead so if you're like us and you

don't have a water maker you need to

think in advance about how you're going

to store and carry all the drinking

water you're going to need

while in cuba now you can go to a marina

in cuba and fill up your tanks with the

local cuban water but it's recommended

that you do not drink that water so

if we end up doing that we'll keep our

drinking water and our utility water

separate

hopefully it'll rain and we can collect

some rain water but i mean you never

know

you can't count on that so we've been

busy

here in st martin provisioning the boat

uh buying food picking up stores

where today i was looking into gas

propane and diesel to make sure we're

well stocked up on all of those

recently i added extra insulation to

our freezer and our refrigerator so that

we can keep frozen goods

longer or freeze things that we need to

freeze we had a difficult time before

because the fridge really had inadequate

insulation

the fridge would just run all the time

and we kept thawing out the freezer so i

i added quite a bit more insulation to

the freezer and now we're able to freeze

stuff so that's going to be a really big

help when we're in cuba

especially if we catch a big fish and

need to freeze some for later

we're going to be bringing a lot of

extra water storage we've got

extra cans to fill with small water jugs

and anything we have on board that we

can fill with water we'll fill it

internet can be a concern in cuba if

you've been watching our channel for a

while you'll know that noel and i have

been to cuba we've shot some footage

there

on vacation at that time when we were

there to have internet

with our canadian cell phones meant we

needed to go and purchase local sim

cards and i remember it wasn't great you

paid

like a dollar for maybe 100 megabytes or

something

of data which was really actually quite

terrible if you're thinking

uh internet especially for us if we're

trying to upload videos to youtube

but i checked with our sprint phone

which we've talked about many times on

this channel

and it turns out that cuba does have

some relationship with sprint and

technically our sprint data phone should

work just like it's been working all

along so hopefully

we won't have that issue and we'll still

be able to upload videos on time for you

guys from cuba

[Music]

so we're pretty much ready to go i did a

little bit of food prep last night i

didn't do a whole lot as much as i

wanted

i figured that it'll be calm enough for

me to

do some cooking underway this time

fingers crossed

dan said that our window is like

narrowing a bit this morning so i'm a

little nervous about that but

it's not bad first comes the worst we'll

just tuck in somewheres and anchor for a

bit

and have a little snooze and wait for

the weather to pass if anything does hit

us

but yeah we got our reply back from cuba

we're all set to go

and we're looking forward to filming

this five

day journey and hopefully we capture

some good stuff for you guys so be sure

to stay tuned

there's one little update from cuba when

they accepted us and gave us permission

to come they also mentioned that we

needed to have a pcr test

from st martin before we left so we had

to run and get a pcr test done yesterday

so i mean it's a little change and it

costs a little more for us to go but

they're not too expensive here in st

martin so it's not that big a deal but

if you're going to cuba

expect to have a pcr test before you go

and then you'll have to have another pcr

test when you arrive

so go figure their emails seemed really

excited to have

us they seem very welcoming so yeah

ready to go so yeah we'll catch footage

underway

and you'll be able to hopefully get

our next video on time arrival in cuba

and if you want to track us while we're

underway for the next few days you can

go to our garmin

inreach tracking page it's available if

you go through our posts on facebook we

posted it

a few months ago but you can scroll down

and find it

and it i believe we also posted it on

patreon so you just have to look for

that and there will be a link

you can click and follow us on a map as

we sail from st

martin to cuba for five to six days stay

tuned you guys

all right bye see you thanks for

watching

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