UPDATE : Sailing Season Begins for Desperate Cuban Rafters

With luck, a raft that leaves the north coast of Cuba on a Monday will wash up in the Florida Keys by Friday morning. “But five days,” says oceanographer Christopher Mooers, “is often too long. The people either starve, die of thirst, go berserk or get gobbled up by sharks.”

Nonetheless, sailing season for the desperate, the brave and the hopeful has begun. As the west-blowing trade winds grow stronger and summer calms the waters of the Florida Straits, Cubans in increasing numbers are taking their chances in homemade rafts and small boats.

Officials of the U.S. State Department say there is no indication that an exodus anything like last year’s--when an estimated 40,000 Cubans fled--is under way. Under an agreement last fall, Cuban President Fidel Castro promised to turn off the flow of rafters in exchange for an increase in the number of visas for Cubans who wish to immigrate to the United States legally.

But the balseros , or rafters, continue to flee. In April alone, 218 Cubans were picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to refugee camps at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on Cuba’s southeastern shore, where about 20,000 of last year’s sailors remain. So far this year, 376 Cubans have been intercepted.

Another 126 Cubans have managed to avoid Coast Guard patrols, land in Florida and be paroled into the community.

More Haitians also are attempting to sail to the United States. Recently, 116 Haitians were discovered packed into a secret compartment above the engine room of a 65-foot freighter docked in Miami.

Smaller groups of Haitians, totaling 124 people, were intercepted by the Coast Guard last month.

The reasons for the surge in Cuban balseros and Haitian migrants include politics and economics--and weather.

“We are moving into that season when the trade winds are most favorable,” says Mooers, a researcher with the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “The west winds have to be strong enough to push the rafters across the strong current of the Gulf Stream.”

Those rafts and boats that do not get across the Gulf Stream are often swept northeastward, toward the Bahamas and the Sargasso Sea. Powerful coastal currents off Cuba also can carry rudderless craft into the Gulf of Mexico.

By some estimates, about half of all rafters who get into the Gulf Stream die at sea.

With grants from the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Mooers has developed a computer model of the waters in the Florida Straits that draws on currents and winds to predict the course a floating object will take. The research was designed to predict the path of oil spills.

But the model also can be accurate in predicting the course of rafts, Mooers says. The forecasts are used by the Coast Guard and Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based group of Cuban exiles who fly small plane patrols over the straits to look for balseros .

Theoretically, Mooers’ research could be invaluable to Cubans plotting to leave the island by raft. “We could forecast the optimal time to depart,” he says. “But we would not want to encourage rafters. That would be politically sensitive.”

Indeed, most Cuban exile groups counsel against the raft journey because of the danger.