Cuban refugee boat washes up on County Sligo beach

Cuban refugee boat washes up on County Sligo beach
By Julian Fowler
BBC News NI

On a sandy beach on the west coast of Ireland lies the remains of a
strange looking boat.
The improvised vessel washed up on Cliffoney beach in County Sligo.

It is made from a metal frame partly covered in yellow tarpaulin, with
expanded foam and water bottles used for buoyancy.
A closer inspection beneath the overturned hull, now covered in
barnacles, reveals a car engine connected to a broken propeller.
The boat caught the interest of Gordon Fallis, who saw it as he was
walking his dogs along the beach.

"I didn't really know what it was to be honest, so I took a few
photographs of it and when I got home I posted it on a Facebook page
called Lost at Sea which tracks marine debris and cargo spills and
things that get washed up on beaches," he said.

He was contacted by a man from Florida who recognised the design as
being similar to Cuban refugee boats.
"He advised me to have a look at the bottles again to see where they
came from so I came back down and looked at the labels and indeed they
were from Cuba, exactly the same brand that he had predicted, so it
seems that it is actually a boat that the refugees have used to try and
get to America from Cuba," he said.

Since 1995, under a policy known as "wet foot, dry foot", if Cubans are
picked up at sea they are returned home or taken to a third country, but
if they make it to American soil they get the opportunity to stay and
become legal residents.
Between November 2015 and October 2016 the US Coast Guard apprehended
5,263 Cubans at sea.

It is thought that hundreds of thousands of Cubans attempted the journey
before the policy was ended last month just before President Obama left
office.
American photographer Bill Klipp has seen many similar boats that have
been abandoned on small remote islands around the Florida Keys.

He is sure the boat washed up in Ireland is what is known as a Cuban
"chug" - named after the sound of the crude motors as they make the slow
journey across the sea.
"They're surely not moving very fast and I think it just comes from that
notion that they're just barely making it, they're chugging as best as
they can to get across the ocean," he said.

"Key West, where I live, is only 90 miles for Havana so it's a
relatively short distance to landfall although the Florida Straits can
be a pretty treacherous body of water to cross."
While it is possible that the occupants of this vessel were picked up at
sea and the boat was left to drift, Bill Klipp believes it is more
likely that the weather and ocean currents took it off course.

"If that boat could tell its story it would tell a story of real despair
and desperation, that's for sure," he said.
"Obviously the occupants didn't make it and that's kind of a sad story
there but that's unfortunately a story that's happened too much over the
last couple of decades."

It is the first time such a vessel has been recorded being washed up in
Europe according to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer based in
Seattle who tracks ocean debris.
He said it could take months or years for it to make the journey of more
than 4,000 miles across the Atlantic.

"The drift rate depends on how much the vessel is sticking out of the
water and the rate could be a matter of six months or it could be a
matter of years depending on whether the vessel drifted around some of
the garbage patches in the Atlantic or made a straight journey across,"
he said.
Mr Ebbesmeyer said the vessels "symbolise what price people are willing
to pay to gain their freedom in the United States".

"I would reflect on questions. Did the people make it? Are they in the
United States? Did they die? Did they perish a terrible death out in the
middle of the Atlantic?"
"They're really worth moments of reflection as you walk by," he said.
Standing on Cliffoney beach as the waves of the north Atlantic break
beneath a grey sky, Gordon Fallis said he is glad he discovered more
about the boat.

"It's just great to be able to contact people who are able to identify
it for me otherwise I would have just walked on past it thinking "that's
a strange boat on the beach" and that would have been the last I would
have heard of it," he said.
While the fate of those on board may never be known, the discovery has
helped to bring the story of the Cuban refugees to people thousands of
miles away.

Source: Cuban refugee boat washes up on County Sligo beach - BBC News -
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-38795032