KEY WEST -- One group waded ashore in Key West as the boat that dropped them off made a quick getaway. Another showed up in Sunny Isles Beach with a rickety wood boat that authorities believe is a prop. The Border Patrol is investigating, again, whether smugglers are behind the arrival of 33 Cubans in South Florida.

Twenty showed up Sunday morning under the shadow of Key West's oceanside condominiums.

Nancy Amling, who lives along the water on Atlantic Boulevard, said she and her guests were sitting on her balcony Sunday morning looking at fish with binoculars when they noticed something else in the water -- two men aboard an open boat no bigger than 30 feet with a Bimini top and a powerful engine.

``All of a sudden, all these people sit up on the boat,'' she said. ``You could see women and children. They were kinda squealing. They scrambled to shore real fast. Then the boat took off. It was lickety split. It went very, very fast.''

The Cubans waded in waist-deep water and once on shore scrambled into the shrubbery, she said.

``They seemed to be perfectly healthy,'' Amling said. ``They looked fine. I couldn't sleep last night thinking about them.''

Amling called Key West police, who called the Border Patrol.

Border Patrol officers interviewed the refugees. The landing is being investigated. The boat, which hasn't been found, had no visible identification numbers, Ambling said.

Group members told Border Patrol officers that they had paid $10,000 for the trip. It's unclear if each one or all of them together paid that amount, said Dan Geoghegan, a Border Patrol assistant chief.

``They claim they were smuggled by a Cuban in Cuba who dropped them off and went back to Cuba,'' Geoghegan said.

But authorities believe someone in the United States might have been involved.

In the other case, 13 Cubans showed up at about 4 a.m. Monday at 191st Street and Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach. The group -- nine men and four women -- had a 20-foot wood boat with an outboard that Geoghegan described as ``dilapidated.'' They said they made the crossing aboard it. But authorities are doubtful.

``We think they were actually smuggled here in a larger vessel,'' Geoghegan said. ``The vessel doesn't look like it could bring 13 people here from Cuba.''

All of the new arrivals were taken to the Krome detention center, Geoghegan said.

Copyright 1999 Miami Herald