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Finding Cuban
refugees at sea barely rocks the boat
Steve Rubenstein, San
Francisco Chronicle, CA. Sunday, January
11, 2004.
The bellyflop contest had ended and the
jackpot snowball bingo game had yet to begin
when someone spotted a gray speck, off to
starboard, in the middle of the Caribbean
Sea.
"Maybe it's a dolphin,'' said a woman
in a rhinestone-studded T-shirt. We were
standing by the rail on deck 11, give or
take a deck.
There wasn't much else going on. The mini-golf
tournament on deck 13 was over, and the
ice skating rink on deck 3 was getting resurfaced.
There was a line for the stair-stepping
machine in the gym on deck 12. The art auctioneer
on deck 5 had sold all the Thomas Kinkade
cottages he was going to sell.
Nothing else to do but look at the sea
and try to figure out what the gray speck
was.
We gazed some more. At least gazing at
an unidentified gray speck is something
to do that isn't on the ship's program.
It was the first event in a week that had
not been planned in advance, written up
on the ship's schedule and slipped beneath
the stateroom door. It was an anomaly. The
Royal Caribbean Line does not have too many
of those.
It can't be a dolphin, another passenger
said. Dolphins don't have oars.
Finally, the gray speck grew closer and
it turned out that the gray speck was a
tiny dinghy with four people in it.
We were between Florida and Cuba, returning
to Miami after a week of frequenting the
souvenir stalls of several small island
nations. The vessel known as the Voyager
of the Seas -- at the time, largest cruise
ship on planet Earth -- can pass for an
island nation itself. It is 1,020 feet long
-- half a football field longer than that
ship that hit the iceberg in the movie.
It weighs 138,000 tons, much of it in the
form of overfed passengers.
The people on the dinghy began waving their
arms for help.
"Agua! Agua!'' they shouted, and their
cry for water was heard by hundreds of passengers
who were drinking more potent beverages,
the kind with swizzle sticks in them.
The resplendent Voyager of the Seas slowed
to a halt, a few hundred yards from the
dinghy, and there the two vessels -- one
mighty, one trifling -- sat.
The four people on the dinghy, it turned
out, were Cubans trying to make it to Florida.
Their voyage, the kind without bingo, was
the real thing.
A pool attendant walked past, his arms
full of soggy towels, and the rhinestone
woman asked if this sort of thing happens
much. Every so often, he replied, shrugging.
You have to stop and render aid. Law of
the sea.
Passengers began gathering along the rail,
shouting and waving at the dinghy. The captain
came on the loudspeaker.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have stopped
for some fellow seafarers,'' he said, in
a bored voice. "We have radioed our
position to the Coast Guard, who are on
their way.''
A small launch was sent from the cruise
ship to the dinghy, and water bottles were
tossed to the occupants of the dinghy, but
the people on the dinghy were not taken
aboard the launch and brought back to the
cruise ship. Were that to happen, the four
occupants would have to be turned over to
the Coast Guard before the Voyager of the
Seas returned to Miami the next morning.
That would require another stop. That would
be inconvenient.
A few minutes stretched to half an hour,
then to an hour. The novelty was no longer
a novelty. People by the rail began heading
back to the golf simulator on deck 13, or
to one of the 286 slot machines on deck
4, to the health spa on deck 11, where you
could get wrapped in a warm seaweed body
mask for $100.
The calypso band by the pool kept playing
"Yellow Bird." Nothing on a Caribbean
cruise ship can make a swimming pool band
stop playing "Yellow Bird. ''
And still the mighty Voyager of the Seas
sat and waited. The dinghy bobbed, like
a cherry in the rum punches they were serving
on deck 11. By now, some of the passengers
began to ponder.
If the cruise ship continued to wait for
the Coast Guard, it would be delayed getting
back to Miami in the morning. And that might
mean the passengers would miss their connecting
flights home. That would be inconvenient.
"Come on,'' said one fellow holding
a fizzy drink with pineapple chunks in it.
"Let's go! The Coast Guard knows where
they are! They'll be OK! What are we waiting
for?''
The skies began to darken and a drizzle
began to fall. It turned into a light rain,
then a heavy one. Nothing to worry about,
unless you had hung your laundry outside
on your veranda, or unless you were in a
dinghy on the open sea.
The people in the dinghy began waving their
arms some more.
After a while, the captain dispatched the
launch once again, and this time the four
occupants of the dinghy were taken aboard
and brought back to the giant ship. The
rubberneckers returned to the rail to watch.
"Hey!'' yelled a passenger in an aloha
shirt, as the launch approached. "Viva
Cuba libre!''
One of the fellows on the dinghy looked
up, and his eyes met those of the passenger
in the aloha shirt. They were maybe 50 feet
apart, maybe a lot farther than that.
The people on the dinghy were taken to
a room in the bottom of the ship. It did
not have a veranda. One of the bartenders
said it was a holding cell, like a brig.
Nobody knew the Voyager of the Seas had
one of those, but if it could have a climbing
wall, a mini-golf course, an ice skating
rink and a seaweed-wrap spa, there's no
reason it couldn't have a brig.
The passengers went to their staterooms
and dressed for dinner. It was lobster night.
The captain came back on the loudspeaker
and said that the Voyager would rendezvous
with a Coast Guard boat. The people on the
boat would be handed over before they reached
U.S. soil.
The pool attendant explained that if the
word got out that all a Cuban emigre needed
to do was hail a cruise ship, there would
be a lot more dinghies hailing cruise ships,
and that would be inconvenient.
That night, after the farewell dinner,
the dinghy was all but forgotten, although
in the evening show on deck 3 it merited
a few one-liners from the standup comedian,
a fellow named John Wing.
He stood on the showroom stage with the
captain, and the two did a comedy routine
about it.
"Hey!'' the comedian said to the captain.
"I wasn't supposed to be here. I was
floating in a little raft this afternoon!''
And when the announcement about the distressed
boat was made, the comedian added, "You
never saw the bingo game clear out so fast!''
The captain stood alongside, mugging with
the comedian while he told the joke about
the dinghy. The drummer in the band did
a rim shot, to indicate a joke had been
told.
That night, about the time that cognac
was being served in the cigar lounge on
deck 5, the ship met a Coast Guard cutter
in the middle of the glassy Caribbean and
the four people in the holding cell were
quietly turned over. Hardly any of the passengers
noticed. A Coast Guard spokeswoman said
later that the four men were interviewed
at sea by immigration officers and then
taken back to Cuba.
In the morning, the noble Voyager of the
Seas eased up to the berth in Miami, right
on time. Three thousand passengers got off.
No one missed a connecting flight.
Steve Rubenstein is a Chronicle staff
writer. E-mail him at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.
©2004 San Francisco
Chronicle
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