Cuba: Another Shipwreck for Solo Sailor

Solo sailor Jack Van Ommen had previously survived two shipwrecks when he found himself on the wrong side of a reef off the coast of Cuba. This is his tale of being shipwrecked for a third time.

Published 3 years ago

For 12 years and 60,000 ocean miles, Jack van Ommen demonstrated that it’s almost impossible to be too old or too poor to cruise. Photo by Latitude 38.

It was a fine sailing day for Jack Van Ommen, as he was making his way to Rio Dulce, Belize from Marina Hemmingway in Havana, Cuba on February 3rd, 2022. Reaching into a north easterly and just after a beautiful sunset Jack ate dinner, put the dishes away and then apparently fell into a deep sleep, waking three hours later after hitting a reef off the coast of Cuba, just west of Bahia de Honda.

“My laptop screen shattered in the impact, so I could not retrace my inbound track,” he said in a report on his website blog. “It was pitch black. The only orientation I had was the lighthouse on Punta Gobernadora. I managed to break free with the engine for a short distance but then probably ended up closer to shore and got washed further up the shallower coast.

“After setting off the alarm on the Garmin “In Reach”, calling in a May-Day on Channel 16 on the VHF Radio and setting off the alarm on the radio, the boat started listing sharply.  It bounced hard on the reef and I found myself on the shore side of the main reef, somehow, I had passed over it.”

Last photo of “Fleetwood”

It was not until daylight that a fishing boat appeared which anchored nearby in deeper water and the son of the fishing boat captain, another young crew member and a uniformed man from the Guarda Fronteras came to Jack’s rescue. An unsuccessful attempt was made by a second fishing boat to tow “Fleetwood” to deeper water.

“Unfortunately, I saw no other way than to abandon the boat and I told my rescuers that they could have at it. The border patrol man apparently phoned in the details for a release to the Cuban government which I signed when I came ashore later in the day.”

Read the full story of Jack’s Third Shipwreck.

Jack has also posted a You Tube video after the wreck.

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Noonsite has not independently verified this information.

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