File this under the category of all the ways that OFAC helps me sleep better at night. The Sarasota Yacht Club, which was probably founded by Che Guevara, cooked up a scheme to threaten U.S. national security by having a bunch of wealthy yacht owners sail some boats in May to Cuba, something that had wisely not been permitted since 1994. As proof of their devious intentions, the yacht club asked the Office of Foreign Assets Control for permission to conduct this revolutionary regatta. Well, you will be pleased to know that OFAC bravely acted on this request by sitting on it until the deadline for organizing the regatta expired. You can breathe that sigh of relief now.

The club had signed up 184 boats and had hoped that the regatta would provide a little boost to the Sarasota economy. Now they’re going to Miami instead.

Interestingly the previously-linked article on OFAC’s refusal to permit the regatta to proceed, made no mention of any request by the boat owners to get approval from the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) for the exports of the 184 boats to Cuba. (Sailing a U.S. vessel into Cuban waters, even if only temporarily, is considered an export of that boat to Cuba.) OFAC licenses travel to Cuba and BIS licenses exports of U.S. goods to Cuba. As this blog reported a few years back, BIS fined one boat owner for exporting his boat to Cuba in connection with the ill-fated Conch Republic Regatta from Key West to Havana. So not only did OFAC’s inaction protect the U.S. from the Cuban threat to our national security, but also it may have protected boat owners who thought they could blithely sale to Cuba just because OFAC had said so, if it had in fact said so.

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