THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140474
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
It was no more than a piece of plywood lined with layers of plastic foam, a thin sheet of metal hammered around its hull.
But for some Cubans, the 12-foot-long raft carried their hopes for a new home, a new country, a new life.
The refugees may have found safe asylum on Florida's sandy shores. Or ended up in the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo base on Cuba. Or perished along the rough, shark-infested, 90-mile crossing to Florida.
But their makeshift boat made it all the way to North Carolina's Outer Banks - a 783-mile drift north along the Gulf Stream.
``It was a quickly fabricated, handmade floating device, something you'd fashion to get off a desert island if you had the barest of materials - and were really desperate,'' said Nags Head charter boat Capt. Mike Clarkin, who spotted the craft about 38 miles southeast of Oregon Inlet on Saturday. ``I can't imagine going out on the ocean in that thing for more than an hour.
``It's almost unreal to me that anyone would want to leave a place so badly that they would actually go into the ocean on something like that.''
Over the past week, commercial and sports fishing boat captains from Hatteras Village to Wanchese have seen more than a dozen small boats, rafts and floats bobbing in the Gulf Stream.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Tom Gillespie said Tuesday that his office in Portsmouth office has received three to five reports of Cuban refugee rafts per day for more than a week. One call came from as far away as Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Since the Gulf Stream flows an average of 3 mph, Coast Guard officials estimate it takes the rafts about 12 days to drift from Cuba to Cape Hatteras.
``There seems to be a lot of Styrofoam, rubber rafts, handmade boats and debris floating around out there, drifting north,'' Gillespie said. ``The Coast Guard does try to destroy such crafts because they become a hazard to navigation. But some of them are just too big. And some of them we just don't find.''
Eager to escape the economically crippled regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro, thousands of refugees began fleeing their island nation last month. No one knows how many people piled into inner tubes, stepped onto lashed-together logs or boarded rotten boats.
U.S. officials estimate that 29,800 Cubans have been rescued since Aug. 1. About 28,200 of them are at Guantanamo.
Thousands of their makeshift rafts remain adrift at sea.
``It makes you realize how bad things can get,'' said Jeff James, a mate aboard the Oregon Inlet charter boat Fintastic. ``I'd fight a war before I'd venture to sea in one of those little rigs floating out there. It's a cruel ocean. Those are not sturdy vessels.''
While fishing for dolphin on Saturday, James and his charter party saw an 18-foot wooden skiff floating upside down in the Gulf Stream. The boat seemed to be equipped with ``a lawn mower motor, rigged with some kind of shaft,'' said James, 26. ``It had an orange stripe around it and the Spanish name Mata Mega, or something like that, painted on the side. It wasn't just thrown together. Someone took time to build that boat.''
On Monday, James pulled in a hand-hewn wooden paddle which he found in the Gulf Stream about 40 miles east of Oregon Inlet. The handle was a smoothed tree branch, notched at one end. The paddle itself was a work of art, carved with what could have been a steak knife, obviously painstakingly crafted.
Other captains and commercial fishermen have found inner tubes strapped together with canvas lashing, broken pieces of plywood nailed across metal construction framing, and 55-gallon drums lashed against each other - with rubber outriggers added for balance.
Clarkin, the captain, recalled what appeared to be another Cuban-crafted raft that was floating off North Carolina's barrier islands.
``I saw one that was rigged to support a small sail, with a little propeller on the outside,'' he said.
``The Gulf Stream is like a river. If you throw something in it, eventually it will come out at the other end,'' he said. ``These things probably will just keep drifting north.''
Tuesday was the last day Cuban officials planned to allow refugees to leave their shores in homemade boats. Coast Guard spokesmen said they plan to continue sinking or picking up the abandoned rafts. But the officials warned watermen to watch out.
``That debris can be a hazard to boat motors, foul propellers up, and worse,'' Gillespie said. ``We're asking military vessels to sink those rafts or pull them aboard when they find them. If private crafts see them, please call the Coast Guard and report the location.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW WILSON/Staff
Jeff James, a mate aboard the Fintastic, pulled from the Gulf Stream
a wooden paddle believed to be from a Cuban vessel.
KEYWORDS: CUBA REFUGEES by CNB