Restored Boat To Star In Film About Ernest Hemingway

[Serious News]

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — A movie, in the works about the life of author Ernest Hemingway, has its new star, and we’re not talking about an actual actor.

Hemingway’s boat played an integral role in his story, and now its sister ship is in South Florida and ready to make her film debut.

Healthcare mogul and philanthropist Mike Fernandez welcomed CBS4’s Lauren Pastrana aboard the “Pilar”, the sister ship of Hemingway’s own boat from the 1930’s of the same name.

“This vessel has been in hiding for 85 years,” Fernandez explained. “It was found in a barn in upstate New York. It was a wreck. The engine had fallen through the bottom of the boat.”

Fernandez made it his mission to restore the vessel, finding original fixtures, from every plank of wood and ribbing, down to the stove and faucet.

The only additions were a new engine and air conditioner for the cabin.

Fernandez said the entire restoration took three years, but he won’t specify the price tag.

“You can’t put a value on it,” he said. “It’s one of those things that if you have to put a price you should not have it.”

Fernandez says he’s felt an “emotional connection” to Hemingway since he was a boy.

“Eighth grade, I read “The Old Man and the Sea” and I’ve probably read that same book every summer ever since I was a kid,” he said.

Out of that passion, an idea was born.

“Andy Garcia and I talked about creating a story about this vessel and the relationship between Hemingway and his boat captain Gregorio Fuentes,” Fernandez explained.

Cuban-American actor and Miami resident Andy Garcia co-wrote the script for “Hemingway and Fuentes”, which is slated to star John Voight as the famous author and Garcia as his beloved captain.

“No one had a better or closer relationship to Hemingway than his boat captain. Actually, he outlasted all of his wives,” Fernandez recalled.

While Hemingway’s version is on display in Cuba, this Pilar is in Fernandez’s backyard for now, and in his heart forever.

“I’ve had boats from 24 feet to 200 feet and this one is the most special,” he said.

Fernandez said Pilar will likely be on display at the Miami International Boat Show in February.

He said filming of the movie “Hemingway and Fuentes” is scheduled to get underway next summer in either Puerto Rico or the Domincan Republic.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/07/10/restored-boat-to-star-in-film-about-ernest-hemingway/

 

[Serious News]

Nice Article

For these Hemingways, a crossing of the Florida Straits conjures Old Cuba

IN THE STRAITS OF FLORIDA —The waters off the coast of Havana were remarkably deserted for a city of 2.2 million. A lone fisherman was bobbing on a piece of foam. Two more waved from a battered skiff.

The ocean floor drops off less than a mile out, and the water turned an electric shade of blue. This is where Ernest Hemingway came to hunt his “monsters.”

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Kurt Winters, pointing his boat at Key West, Fla., 97 miles north. During nine days in Cuba, his crew caught only one marlin. He pushed the throttle.

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Aboard the boat were five crew members and seven passengers, among them two Hemingways, John and Patrick, grandsons of Ernest.

Winters’s gleaming 50-foot Hatteras sport fishing model, Therapy 2, had come to Cuba for the 65th annual Ernest Hemingway International Billfishing Tournament, May 25 to 30. It was one of eight U.S.-flagged boats to make the trip, navigating an ocean of bureaucracy to get there.

Their visit seemed like one more sign of a new era in U.S.-Cuba relations, or maybe a return to an older one, at least for the deep channel of water between the two countries, the Straits of Florida. Hemingway likened its powerful Gulf Stream current to a river in the ocean. It is still a restless, wild place.

The straits were a symbol of U.S.-Cuba intimacy back then, easily crisscrossed by weekend boaters and car ferries. After Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, the busy river became a separation barrier, a 90-mile moat, then a watery graveyard for Cubans desperate to cross it.

Those rafters are some of the few Cubans who have glimpsed their capital from this vantage: the hazy outline of the old Spanish fortifications at the mouth of Havana Bay, the domed Capitolio, the 1950s-era mafia hotels of the Vedado district, and farther west, the blockish Russian Embassy tower, once teeming with Soviet agents.

Now the Obama administration is moving to restore relations with Cuba after 54 years. It has authorized passenger ferries to run again whenever the Castro government is ready to receive them. American pleasure boats like Therapy 2 may soon be making this trip more and more. This is the view of Havana they will see.

Winters barreled in the opposite direction, rolling with the swell and racing toward the 12-mile boundary where it would exit Cuban waters.

Entire Article, worth the read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...a78354-058d-11e5-93f4-f24d4af7f97d_story.html