New Key West-Havana Motor Boat Race

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 29 (acn) A new race in favor of friendship between the two peoples will be held in November, when a flotilla of motor boats from Key West, United States, will arrive in Cuban coasts.
The boats will arrive in Cuba after participating in the 35th edition of the Offshore Powerboat Racing of the Key West World Racing Championship, to be held on November 8-5 in that city of the US county of Monroe.
According to information from the Hemingway International Yacht Club of Cuba, the Havana Thunder Challenge flotilla could resume the motor boat races that took place in the Straits of Florida in the early twentieth century, and again become a classic.
The news was announced on Thursday, when it was also known that German racer Roger Klüh will try, in August, to set a speed record between Key West and Havana aboard the Apache Star motorboat capable of traveling at 100 mph.
Along with another three crewmembers, the former professional ice hockey player, today a businessman and lover of motorboating will try to beat the record set by Forest Johnson, who led in 1958 the speedboat race between Miami and Havana, performing the crossing in six hours and 23 minutes.
According to 50 year-old Klüh, who describes himself as a man of sports, this project had to wait three and a half years because the U.S. government prevented him to reach Cuban shores, "until December 2014 came and then I saw an open window to make my dream come true," he said.
These two nautical events, which will continue bringing the communities of Cuba and the United States closer, will take place a few months after the Havana Challenge race, the first one in 15 years to receive approval from the U.S. government.
In 2004, the then US President George Bush signed a proclamation, still in force, which prohibits recreational boats sail to Cuba, unless authorized by the Department of Commerce.