Trawler & Factory Ship JOSE MARTI

Back from a wonderful week of sun, fun and an earthquake in Varadero, Cuba which even though it's situated along the Florida Straits, I only saw two salties pass by our resort. Unbelievable!!

Both were tankers, and too far away to zoom-in a name, but looked a lot like the LIA C. which I snapped a year ago near Havana (Carlz Boats: 20.02.13). All I had to do then was sit up from under a palapa on the beach and there would be a passing bulker, container ship, a car carrier like the 656' MORNING CONDUCTOR   (http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2013/02/car-carrier-morning-conductor.html).

Another surprise sail by was the 394' fishing trawler and factory ship, JOSE MARTI. Built in 1988 in Stralsund, Germany, the MARTI is owned by Pesquera Industries of Venezuela but flies the flag of Cuba. When I first saw her coming over the horizon, I thought, 'Holy Mackeral, a Canadian icebreaker!!'. Obviously one too many mojitos that day and a little too far south for one of our multi-task icebreakers to be motoring along though one did make it into the Gulf of Mexico to help out after the BP drilling rig disaster in 2006. Mackeral though, is the fish that gets hauled in and canned for market on the JOSE MARTI. A coincidence, or NOT? c);-b