A Profile of Leicester Les Hemingway and His New Atlantis Micronation miaminewtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miaminewtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The story of this new boat is almost as intriguing. Actor Andy Garcia and Hemingway’s niece, Hilary Hemingway, were working on a film project about her uncle and how he befriended a boat captain, Gregorio Fuentes, who inspired him to write
The Old Man and The Sea.
To make it as authentic as possible, they asked the grandson of Howard Wheeler, who built the original
Pilar, to create a smaller replica for the film. Wes Wheeler recalls flying over to Cuba to view the original: “
Pilar was on Hemingway’s tennis court with a roof over it. We took detailed measurements of the entire boat, came back to North Carolina, compared all the measurements to my family’s catalogue from 1934 and they matched exactly.”