Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Havana, Cuba (eighth day)
Country/sea: Cuba
Place: Havana
Book page no: 224

Havana, Cuba (eighth day)

The starting gun is not quite as impressive as it sounds. It's a small brass cannon, carried from the clubhouse to the shore in the back of a car and set up at a point opposite which the sixteen competing boats are lined up.

With due ceremony, the breech is filled with rifle powder and the barrel stuffed with sheet after sheet of toilet paper, laboriously folded, inserted and rammed home with a plunger.

On the stroke of nine o'clock a match is applied and the rifle powder and the toilet paper combine to raise a respectable thump, which sends the cannon reeling back and the boats gunning their engines and racing off toward the waiting marlin.

This is quite a thrill. To be about to hit what Hemingway called 'the great blue river'. Conditions are good as our wooden-hulled 55-footer slaps and bounces on a lively sea. About three miles out from the shore, perhaps a little less, the colour of the water indeed changes very abruptly, from milky green to a blue, more royal than navy, with lines of wind-spun silver foam slanting through it.

Our hosts are five Americans out of West Palm Beach. I ask them why the majority of boats in the tournament are from the USA when that country forbids trade with Cuba.

They come, they say, because this is the best marlin-fishing in the world, and for this they are prepared to accept certain restrictions. All supplies, right down to bread and water, must be brought with them from the States. They are not allowed to buy anything Cuban, nor are they allowed to accept anything from the Cubans by way of prize money or on-shore hospitality. American customs pay them a lot of attention when they return to Florida.