Cuba Ship Movement

Question

Last night I play the board game Cuba for the first time.

One of the rules that we could not quite figure out from the rule book, was how the ships moved down the shipyard.

So, at the beginning of the game, there are two ships, one in position 1 and one in position 2.

At the end of the round, the rules state that the ships must move down one space (and then repeat until all spaces are filled). However, it only mentions a ship leaving the shipyard if a ship becomes full.

So, if a ship is already in position 3 (the final position) and not full, does it stay where it is, or does the move down one position move it off the board.

We played it so that it stays, because it did not explicitly say to remove the ship, but I am not sure if this was the correct or not. I think the two parts of the rule can be interpreted to mean one way or another.

Answer 1

I believe that the ships leave the harbour (i.e. move off the board), due to this rule:

The end of the 2nd to 5th round is different from the end of the 1st round only in one way: there is a ship in the 3rd dock in the harbor; it leaves the harbor, regardless of its load.

In the first round, you have ships only on position 1 and position 2, so there is no way for one of them to leave the harbour. As of the second round, you can have a ship in position 3, at which point this rule kicks in.