Vanessa Bauza

HAVANA · Only hours before climbing into a flimsy, homemade rowboat, Barbaro Antonio Vela let his wife and daughter in on his
clandestine plan to build a new life across the Florida Straits and assured them he'd make a safe passage despite the choppy seas and
whipping winds.

With eight men taking turns at the oars, Vela, a dissident, pushed off from the shores of Havana just after midnight on Dec. 9, expecting to
reach land in only 14 hours.

"But the sea is full of surprises," said Vela's wife of 25 years, Maria del Carmen Calzada.

Apparently it is also full of miracles.

After drifting for four days in their wooden boat, with only dry cake and sugar for food, Vela and his group were picked up by a "Good
Samaritan" 20 miles northeast of Islamorada on Dec. 13, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council.

They spent almost a week aboard a Coast Guard cutter before being flown to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station Friday afternoon.

It was only then that news of their rescue started to trickle down. The Cuban Liberty Council called an independent journalist in Havana who
delivered the news to Calzada and the other relatives.

"I had faith he would not die at sea," said Calzada, who held out hope despite 10 days with no news of the men. "I told my daughter: `Your
father is alive. I'm sure God will not give him that terrible death.' He didn't deserve it."

Before hearing news of Vela's rescue, Calzada had checked two of Havana's detention centers where dissidents are sometimes held for
questioning, but officials there said they had no record of him. She hoped maybe a passing freighter had picked up the group up or perhaps
they were stranded on a deserted key.

"If he died at sea, at least he got the freedom he desired," she said.

A former television and radio repairman, Vela headed one of Cuba's small dissident groups known as the January 6th Civic Movement.
Though he was not well known, state security agents kept an eye on him and recently warned that he too could share the fates of the 75
dissidents jailed this spring, Calzada said.

"They told him there were 25 [dissidents] yet to be detained and he was at the top of the list," Calzada, 62, said. "He couldn't take it anymore. Barbaro told me he
preferred to die in the mouth of a shark than in Castro's prisons."

Vela had tried and failed to immigrate to the United States legally by applying for refugee status with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. An American diplomat at
the mission confirmed that his applications were twice rejected, but could not explain why because of privacy laws.

Caught between state security intimidations and repeated rejections from the American mission, Vela took matters into his own hands.

At 48, he was the oldest man on the boat and was joined by seven others in their early 20s and 30s who had also chafed against the Cuban government.

They are Daniel Cartaya, Juan Tamayo Muñoz, Rudy Lopez, Maikel Gonzalez, Claudio Garcia, Eugenio Labastida and Juan Carlos Nuñez.

At their apartment, Nuñez's parents lit a candle to their cherished statuette of St. Lazarus to celebrate their son's safety. He had wanted to leave Cuba during the
1994 rafter exodus, but they persuaded him he was too young to go. Now 30, Nuñez could not be talked out of sailing away from his homeland even with all the
risks involved.

"When he left he told us, `The only way I can help you is by working in the United States and sending you money,'" his father Antonio Nuñez, 76, said.

Nuñez's parents had almost given up hope. But the men beat the odds by surviving to be taken to Guantanamo, from where they are taken to a third country --
which often offers easier access to the United States.

This year the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted about 1,370 Cuban migrants -- 48 percent more than last year. The vast majority were repatriated under the U.S.-Cuba
migration accords.

Untold numbers have been lost at sea.

At their dilapidated Havana home where the green painted walls are cracked and plaster falls from the ceilings, Calzada and her daughter, Yeny, 20, rejoiced in the
news of Vela's safety.

Yeny said she did not fault her father for taking the risky trip, but she wished their goodbyes hadn't been so rushed.

"All I told him was good luck," she said.

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