Hemingway, Castro and the Boat Brand They Loved

A Rant About Wheelers, Replicas and Righteous Thinking

At top, Hull No. 1 of the new Wheeler 38, a replica of the model owned by author Ernest Hemingway. At bottom is a training vessel built for the U.S. Navy in 1943 and converted into a yacht. Fidel Castro packed 82 fighters on board and undertook a seaborne “invasion” of Cuba in 1956.

Recently, as I was finishing up a story for a history magazine about the…