Holy Sh#t we made it to Cuba! We pulled into the marina yesterday at around 9:30am. It was a 28 hour passage traveling 180 miles and I would say a pretty comfortable trip. The wind started blowing hard sunday evening - 25 kts, gusting to 30kts. But we had a following sea and the wind was off our SB stern at about 150 degrees. The waves built to around 7 - 8 ft with a larger ones every now and then. Five Islands handled it with ease. We put in a double reef at around 5:00pm to slow us down but even with just the double reefed main we were still doing 6 - 7 kts and would surf down waves with the top speed being 15kts. Karen and I did 2 hour shifts through the night and I managed to sleep on both of my off-shifts.

Pulling into Cuba was beautiful with the mountains and a huge fort at the entrance along with some dolphins that came to greet us.

The check-in procedures here are notorious and we had a whole string of different officials come on to the boat to do the paperwork and check everything out. We had prepared well and it went smoothly. First we had a doctor and a insect inspector, followed by a fruit inspector, meat inspector. The came the customs agents along with two dogs sniffing for drugs and explosives. The dogs were both Springer Spaniels - just like our dog Holly back home - except alot skinner. We were cleared in before noon and went into the cafe here at the marina for lunch. After lunch we got a taxi to take us to the center of Santiago and we were pleasantly surprised at how clean and neat the city was. We saw lots of old american made cars from the 50's that are still in mint condition. There were lots of people out in the streets, with kids playing everywhere and people just sitting out and visiting. Very few tourists and the people were very friendly. We soon had our own tour guide and he showed us his favorite places in the city. Miguel works at the front desk of a big hotel and makes around 10 cucs per month - that is about $12 cdn. He arranged for us to have dinner this evening at a private resaurant for which he will receive a bottle of cooking oil and a bag of rice - which would cost him about 6 cucs to purchase.

We are all really excited to be here and will spend the next few days getting comfortable and checking out our surrounding and then decide when we will move on to the next anchorage in Cuba.