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Sailing to Hemingway's CubaBy Dave SchaeferExcerpted from Sailing, January 2002: “…Schaefer shines in telling about chasing Hemingway and experiencing Havana. “His passion for discovering the ‘real’ Hemingway, for separating the ‘Papa’ myth from reality…makes this part of his book a treat. “As he visits the bars Hemingway frequented, like El Floridita and Bodeguita del Medio, he searches for authenticity, for an aura of the man who so fascinates him. He goes to Cojimar, where Hemingway based The Old Man and The Sea, and finds it to be a fishing village no longer. He takes the elevator to Room 511 in the Ambos Mundo Hotel where Hemingway stayed on occasion and finds himself correcting the local guide on details of the famous writer's life. He spends a day at the Finca Vigia, where Hemingway lived on and off from 1939 to 1950, the scene of numerous parties and debaucheries with famous people, the site of much of his writing, and where he fought and loved some of the many women in his life. As the bibliography attests, Schaefer has done his homework on his subject… It is easy to understand why Hemingway, a complex man with a zeal for life and a dark interior, loved Cuba and its people.” Excerpted from Offshore Magazine, May 2001: “In his 32-foot sloop DREAM WEAVER, Schaefer sailed from his home in Vermont down the East Coast to Cuba to explore that forbidden country and walk in the footsteps of his boyhood hero. “Schaefer's cruise down the coast is a trip most boaters can relate to. He misjudges distances, battles fog and runs aground several times. But, it also shows what is great about cruising – exploring new places and meeting different people. “In Havana, Schaefer explores Papa's old haunts, but he also includes interesting stories about Hemingway in the book, providing insight into Hemingway's days in Cuba. “The story isn't just about Hemingway's Cuba, but is also a peek inside Cuban life at the dawn of the 21st century. Shut off from America for 40 years, Cuba is a time capsule where 1950s American cars – using Russian parts – still roam the streets. Despite four decades of poverty, Schaefer finds the Cuban people to be remarkable friendly, generous and still rich in spirit. “Whether you're a Hemingway buff or just a boater who dreams of cruising to exotic places, you'll find Sailing to Hemingway's Cuba to be a thoroughly exciting and enjoyable read.” Excerpted from The ENSIGN, April 2001: “Dave Schaefer visited the sites that had been important in the life of Ernest Hemingway. Schaefer's adventure might be likened to the classic hero's quest of leaving home, crossing the boundary into another world, proving oneself through meeting difficult challenges and crossing back over the boundary to return home, changed forever.” Excerpted from Islands, April 2001: “Though Cuba remains nominally off-limits to Americans, more and more of them are visiting the Caribbean's largest island. Their motives for going are various, but for Dave Schaefer, perhaps the most potent lure was the resident ghost of a memorable writer. Sailing to Hemingway's Cuba turned out to be part pilgrimage, part exploration, and all delightful tale.
“Schaefer began his odyssey in an unlikely place – Lake Champlain – and brought his 32-foot sailboat down the Hudson River and along the coast to an interim stop at the colorful island of Key West, a Hemingway place that has become (as Schaefer notes) ‘tangled in revisionist history.’ But it is in Cuba that the story really takes wing. If Hemingway is a presence in Key West, in Cuba he has become an industry, one that Schaefer wryly observes, while finding himself more and more drawn to the people of Cuba, who have made survival into an art form. Like nearly every American who's been to Castro's island, Schaefer falls in love with its brave, adaptable people and what's left of its physical fabric. You will, too.” Excerpted from Cruising World, March 2001: “After wondering for many years what it would be like to track down Hemingway's haunts in Cuba, award-winning journalist and avid sailor Dave Schaefer cruised to Cuba in 1999 aboard his 32-foot sloop, DREAM WEAVER. There Schaefer discovered a people who are politically repressed but filled with a passion for life despite their lack of material possessions. Sailing to Hemingway's Cuba is an account of this visit.” Excerpted from Boat/U.S. Magazine, November 2000: “As the political barriers slowly break down, Schaefer finds out why Americans are drawn to Cuba as he finds friendship, great music, the world's best cigars, out-standing rum and a great deal of charm in Old Havana.” Excerpted from Living Aboard, November 2000: “Dave Schaefer is a professional writer, so his clean, direct prose comes as no surprise. He did surprise me with the depth of emotion he wrings from this apparently straightforward account of a cruise. It's about 1,600 miles as the crow flies from Schaefer's dock in Lake Champlain to the still-visible ghost of Ernest Hemingway's beloved Cuba, but it's a more complicated route than any chart can show. “Schaefer grew up dreaming of a life like his literary hero, but settled for the life of a journalist, at a considerably lower voltage. One day he found that he had reached the age of 61, the exact age at which Hemingway, burned out by his excessively flamboyant style, put a shotgun to his head and departed. “Struck by this morbid coincidence, Schaefer decided to follow Hemingway's life south to the place the writer stayed longest. He wanted to see Cuba before the end of the Castro era, before America got over her 40 year tantrum, before the inevitable wave of American tourism washed the last genuine traces of Hemingway out of Havana. “Using his writer's credentials, Schaefer obtained permission from the Treasury Department and set out. He spends few words on describing his trip south, because the focus of the book is on Hemingway and Cuba rather than the voyage itself. His first notable port of call was Key West, where parts of the Hemingway legend were born. “But his most important destination lay across the Gulf Stream, and though he ended up spending only a month in Hemingway's old haunts, the experience was a richly rewarding one, for both writer and reader. He describes the beauty of the old city as compellingly as he describes the sad Orwellian lives of the Cubans trapped in the worker's paradise, and it all rings true.” Excerpted from Coastal Cruising, September 2000: “Schaefer [an award-winning newspaper reporter] wasn't going to Cuba just to write another story. His mission was two-fold: to broaden his cruising skills by sailing across open water – across the Gulf Stream – to an exotic port (his boat, DREAM WEAVER, an Endeavor 32, hails from Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain); he also wanted to seek out the heritage of his lifelong hero, Ernest Hemingway, for whom Cuba was both home and inspiration. “Throughout his sailing narrative, Schaefer is entertaining and informative. In Cuba, Schaefer embarks on a more lasting personal passage. He portrays Cubans more clearly and apparently more accurately than any previous reporter I have read or heard. His most telling observation is, not surprisingly, that the U.S. sanctions do not hurt Castro's government; they hurt only the people. He makes a short but impassioned plea that our government end these pointless policies toward Cuba, whose communist regime is affected by them not at all. (Ironically, investment in Cuba is beginning to come from Spain, from whose grasp the U.S. ripped Cuba a century ago and gave it independence.) “If Schaefer does not find the Hemingway he sought, he does find Cuba, and in so doing his reporter's cynicism is undone. As Schaefer set sail from Marina Hemingway for home I realized that Cuba had converted DREAM WEAVER's once cynical skipper into an incurable romantic. Dave Schaefer would like to return to Hemingway's Cuba (if Castro reads this book he may not be welcome), and I'd like to go with him.”
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