By Dana Calvo, Sun-Sentinel Staff Writer
Web-posted: 11:42 p.m. Aug. 5, 1999
Barrie McCune has plied the waters off the Florida Keys for 10 years, hauling in disabled boaters for her company, Poseidon Towboat U.S. in Islamorada.
On Thursday, she hauled in her first boatload of Cuban refugees.
She knew something was strange from the start. The call came at 1:05 a.m. from a man named Mr. Rodriguez on a cell phone. He said his friends were stuck at sea and needed a ride to the ramp at Holiday Isle Resort.
He wanted to prepay.
"That had never happened before," said McCune, 48. "I hadn't helped anyone yet."
"He gave me a phone number of a person on board, but it wouldn't connect. Then he called me back and said they had just called him and gave him coordinates," she said.
Finally, she got in touch with the captain of the boat, who did not speak English well and would only identify himself as "Jose." McCune asked him for more precise coordinates, but he could not understand her.
When she located the 22-foot motorboat, it had dragged its anchor north into water about 400-feet deep.
"As we approached the scene, we saw another vessel hovering nearby," McCune said. "But all I could see was his running lights and a light in the tower. Jose was flashing me his spotlight so I could see him. As we approached the vessel, the second vessel left. So, I never got a
good look at it."
More troubling, McCune said, was the weighted bow of the boat. Jose told her six people were on board, and she told them to go to the stern to more evenly distribute the weight. But the bow continued to hang heavy in the water as she pulled the boat in.
"As we approached the ramp, one of the gentlemen walked on to the bow and closed the forward hatch and sat there so you couldn't see into the bow," McCune said. "When we got to the dock, and the six people got off, the boat was still real heavy in the bow.
"They only had three fishing poles for six people, which is another strange thing. And a 55-gallon gas can on deck."
Idling at the boat ramp was a red and brown van with a trailer. The motorboat was hauled onto the boat ramp, and the driver hurriedly secured it to the trailer. Neither Jose nor the driver of the van bothered to tie down loose objects on the deck. They seemed to be in a rush, McCune said.
With the bow still looking heavy on the trailer, the van sped off onto U.S. 1.
McCune had unwittingly helped 12 Cubans glide onto U.S. soil.
The private tow to land enabled them to avoid being stopped at sea by the Coast Guard. Under a U.S.-Cuba accord, refugees stopped at sea are sent back to Cuba, those who make it to land get to stay.
"This is kind of a freak thing having a smuggling boat get towed in," U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Charles Adkisson said. "Usually, they'll come in on their own boat or come in on a smuggling boat which will drop them off onshore."
It was Adkisson who received McCune's call to the Coast Guard office in Islamorada. She told him the Ana Capri boat seemed suspicious.
"She had noticed a 55-gallon fuel drum and all of a sudden, when they pulled up to the dock, four more people came up from the cabin," Adkisson said.
He alerted the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, which put out a bulletin by 7:30 a.m.
About 9 a.m., Florida Highway Patrol Officer Samuel Johnson stopped the van near a tollbooth on the Don Shula Expressway in Miami.
Inside were two men from Hialeah and 12 refugees, age 17 to 47, authorities said.
"They told the officer they were from Cuba and they were eager to be processed," Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Ernesto Duarte said. "They were hungry. They were tired. A couple of them had some sunburns. But basically they were in good condition."
Late on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office took over the investigation of the Hialeah men as smuggling suspects, said Kelly Spellman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
For her part, McCune said her instincts were right to distrust Mr. Rodriguez's eagerness to prepay for the tow.
It was just before dawn when McCune and her husband dropped off the motorboat and went home to run the credit card number.
It was rejected.
"My husband and son tracked them down," McCune said, still a little angry about it on Thursday afternoon. "They were flashing their lights at them driving on either side of the van."
The bulletin had not been issued at that point.
Finally, the van driver pulled over on U.S. 1. McCune's husband told them the credit card number was a lemon. Pay $635 for the tow or we're calling the police, he said.
"They gave us $700 in $100 bills, and said, 'Keep the change,'" McCune said.
Then the red and brown van sped off, with the motorboat bouncing behind it.
Dana Calvo can be reached at dcalvo@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5004.
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