Waves of Cuban Rafters Make Their Way Toward U.S. : Refugees: Record numbers are undertaking the risky journey. The flow is creating problems for Clinton Administration, Caribbean nations.

They arrive here almost daily now--thin, sun-stricken, in shock from both the voyage and the realization that they have survived. Palms upturned, Sixto de la Riva Linares shows the open blisters he got from two days of rowing. “We felt like it would never end,” he said. “But hope was the last thing we wanted to lose.”

Refugees from Cuba are rafting across the Florida Straits in record numbers. The Coast Guard has picked up or assisted 295 Cubans so far in April, including 52 on Friday, and 1,401 since the first of the year. And the summer sailing season has just begun.

“From now through December, we expect at least 5,000 will come,” said Arturo Cobo, who directs the Transit Home for Cuban Rafters--the first stop for those either picked up by the Coast Guard or washed ashore in the Florida Keys.

Said Cobo: “We get babies, just 28 days old, and we’ve had grandmothers of 82. Wouldn’t you have to be desperate to put them on a raft?”

De la Riva, 44, formerly a baker in Guanabo, Cuba, said he could no longer feed his family in the face of worsening economic conditions on the island. So one night earlier this month he climbed aboard a raft fashioned from four truck tire inner tubes and, with 10 others, entrusted his fate to the ocean currents and the southeast wind.

Thirty hours later, after the balseros (from balsa, or raft) were spotted by a volunteer air patrol, the Coast Guard brought the Cubans into Marathon, Fla. They were just one of three separate groups of rafters to arrive at the Transit Home within the space of two hours.

The quickening rate of defections from Cuba--unequaled since the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when 125,000 refugees came to the United States--has presented the Clinton Administration with a new challenge to its immigration policy. For years, Cubans who sailed directly from the island to the United States have been admitted and immediately released to relatives or resettlement agencies.

But in a surprise move last week, the Administration tried to close an increasingly popular back-door entryway by intercepting at sea a boatload of 19 Cubans headed for Miami from the Bahamas. They all were returned to Nassau.

Although the Bahamian government allowed the return of those Cubans, the next day Prime Minister Robert A. Ingraham said no more would be accepted.

The Bahamas, a country made up of 700 islands, is already home to thousands of Haitians hoping to get to the United States, and officials are clearly worried that more Cubans will begin to use the country as a stepping stone to Miami.

About 75 Cubans are known to be stranded on various Bahamian islands now. Many are being sustained by supplies dropped by small private aircraft flying rescue missions over the Gulf Stream.

A State Department spokesman had no official comment, other than to encourage Cubans to apply for visas through the normal channels in Havana. But he said U.S. and Bahamian officials are continuing to discuss the situation and hope to work out their differences.

Defecting Cubans are also entering the United States by obtaining visas to travel to the Dominican Republic and then making their way to Mona Island, a U.S. territory 50 miles west of Puerto Rico. Last week, U.S. Border Patrol agents complained that they were being used as a “cab service,” ferrying Cubans from Mona Island to Puerto Rico.

In 1993, more than 5,000 Cubans--most former political prisoners--were granted visas to enter the United States and arrived through normal channels, usually by air. But hundreds more came on travel visas and simply never went home. A record 3,656 Cubans entered the United States by raft or boat in 1993, according to the Coast Guard.

Since the United States has no diplomatic relations with the government of Fidel Castro, no Cubans are deported. Under the terms of a special 1966 law, all are eligible for permanent residency after one year.

That knowledge, along with the growing hardship of life in Cuba, fuels the dangerous raft voyages. “Many more want to come, more than in Mariel,” de la Riva. said. “People see no future in Cuba.”

Of 300 Cubans who arrived at the Transit Home between Jan. 15 and March 10, 69% were men, with the largest group being between 21 years old and 30 years old, according to a survey conducted by the Miami Herald. Most arrivals were employed in Cuba, and 64% said they had relatives in the United States, most in Miami.

Joaquin Machin Castillo, 27, is typical. A machine-shop worker, he also recently made the crossing from Guanabo, on his third attempt. He said he spent three years in jail after being caught on a previous try. “I left my whole family,” he said, having showered and wearing a new pair of jeans and a T-shirt but still feeling seasick hours after his arrival. “But from the deepest part of my heart, I just wanted to get here.”

Cobo, 53, a Key West businessman who was jailed in Cuba after being captured during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion 33 years ago, says he thinks that for every four Cubans who attempt the crossing--which can be as short as 90 miles--one perishes at sea. On the walls of his office are hundreds of messages from Cubans in the United States who have telephoned to say that their relatives never arrived.

“I don’t want to see my people coming here in rafts like this,” said Cobo, who devotes most of his time to the Transit Home while his wife runs his armored-car business. “But they are desperate. It’s been 35 years now (since Castro took power in Cuba), and we are still looking for freedom. That motivates me.”

The cost of operating the Transit Home runs about $20,000 a month, Cobo says. Located in a warehouse district on Stock Island, just west of Key West, the refuge is being expanded to provide sleeping quarters for up to 90 people. But few rafters stay here for more than overnight.

“Welcome,” says Cobo to each group of bedraggled, dazed arrivals. “We are Cubans, just like you, and we will help you. Here you can bathe, have something to eat, rest. We will help you get in contact with your family, and tomorrow we’ll take you to Miami.

“It is not important what you did in Cuba, your job, or whether you were a Communist. What is important is your humanity. You are here, and we will not abandon you.”

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this story.