• Submitted by: manso
• United States
• Politics and Government
• 08 / 07 / 2010

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Maybe there is something amiss with the electronic navigation systems on Jeff Greene's mega-yacht.

That may be considered as the next explanation as the billionaire candidate for U.S. Senate tries and tries again to explain what the heck he was doing docking in Cuba for five days in 2007.

He was vacationing there with his fiancee, is my strongly favored guess, if only because that is the usual reason American yacht owners dock at Marina Hemingway near Havana.

But there is also the fact that when questioned about it on the campaign trail, Greene told two contradictory stories about that trip. And, thanks to a ban on vacation trips to Cuba, Americans taking yachting trips there typically require a few fibs, usually either in log books or to U.S. immigration officials.

In the first version Greene gave voters, he passed off his 5-day Cuba stay as a humanitarian mission. That wasn't floating too well, maybe because the Jewish organization supposedly involved knew nothing about it or because you have to report that sort of thing to do it lawfully.

Greene has since changed the story to one of an unplanned stop for yacht repairs, and waiting for parts that never arrived.

The stories clash with each other, and don't jibe with the account of a deckhand who says it was a planned trip.

I wouldn't much care where a billionaire takes his 146-foot yacht. Havana with your fiancee? Sounds like fun. I was there once, as a journalist, and I met many people with nice boats, albeit far more humble than Greene's floating palace.

By Tom Lyons

Source: www.heraldtribune.com/