We had a fantastic time at the part yesterday. We went over to Pedro's house in the morning to help prepare the pig - they had killed him already and I helped scrape the hair off. They roasted it over a bed of coals, hand turning the spit foe about 7 hours!

We got side tracked a little in the afternoon - The boat beside us is from Switzerland and they blew out their main on the way here from Jamaica. It is an in-mast roller furling and the sail was now stuck inside. The lady went up the mast first to try to pull it out, but she could not pull it out, so I offered to go up. I was up there for about 1 1/2 hours pulling and yanking on the sail to get it out. We finally had to cut the top third of the sail by the luff to be able to drop the main down. I now have these huge blister on the ends of my fingers from pulling on the sail.

The pig roast was fantastic - the other cruisers there were all from Switzerland or France, so communication was interesting to say the least. The food was fantastic with rice & beans, salad, plantains and of course the pork, which was delicious. After the meal Pedro gave a speech and talked about what their life is like in Cuba. All though they have all of the basics, he talked about how they have no choices. Given the chance they would like to leave. It was very sad and moving. His daughter sang us a couple of songs and she was very entertaining - you could just Pedro and Rosa beaming with pride.

All of the other boats here are from Europe - France, Swtzerland, England and Denmark.

I have to shrink the picture so that i can upload in a reasonable time, but because I can't check the blog, I have no idea how it looks.

We are still planning to leave on tomorrow for Chivrico, which is about 35 miles (7 hours) west up the coast. We can not get off the boat there, so we will keep heading west until we get to a place where we can.