By John Fitzgerald
The wind had been a vigorous and friendly companion during the time we’d sailed “Rose”.
For 10 days, the sleek French-made mono hull had taken our group of nine on a voyage of discovery through the vivid, sun-splashed waters of The Grenadines.
Situated 40 kilometers to the south of St. Lucia, St. Vincent is the largest of the more than 30 islands that, spread out like a kite’s tail, make up the Caribbean nation. Once part of the British Windward chain, the islands are an enticing and popular sailing destination for anyone eager to leave their cares behind and savour the sweet surroundings.
More timid than when we were at sea, the wind’s mild exertions nevertheless carried a canopy of smoke into the bay where we were moored on the west coast of this lush, mountainous Eastern Caribbean island.
During a walk that morning to a nearby waterfall, past bread, avocado and mango trees, and with flourishes of bougainvillea dangling above our heads, we’d seen farmers burning off surface vegetation up in the hills.
Back on the boat, we could feel and smell the smoke rather than see it which made its presence somehow sinister.
Ignoring the pall, youngsters of perhaps four or five years of age dressed in soaking underpants or bathing trunks raced from the sandy beach that volcanic deposits had coloured ebony, into the water.
The older ones swung from our mooring lines that, tied together, extended about 70 meters from the bow to a large tree with knarled, unsettling looking branches. It reminded me of the kind of tree I might have tripped on years ago when I dabbled in the demon weed.
Tiny cinders, like dark stars, sprinkled themselves mischievously across Rose’s usually gleaming, sheet white deck.
My left foot was still smarting after having stepped on a sea urchin earlier in the trip — a fellow passenger had peed on it to disinfect, and worked a good hour extracting the spines — and so I decided to escape below deck. Soon, I drifted off, lulled by the heat and the gentle rolling beneath me.
I don’t remember how long I dozed but suddenly, a great gush of salt water walloped me in the face. Spilling through the porthole I had left slightly ajar directly above my head, it continued its assault as I shot up, stupefied, and then snarling with rage.
Oblivious to my swearing, the water drenched T-shirts, pareos, magazines, books, CDs, bottles of sunscreen and bleached green beach rocks — one the size of a small wheel of Camembert — I’d insisted on collecting. All of it was now scattered messily on the side shelf and sheets.
It turned out that while most of others had gone sightseeing ashore, Carole, a cool, seamless-looking Parisian whom I imagined constantly gliding in and out of a shoot for a L’Oréal commercial, had taken it upon herself to clean the specks from the deck.
Swabbing and swishing and splashing away, she’d forgotten about the gaping porthole until I indignantly emerged hauling sopping linen.
The day’s mini-drama (briefly) became the talk of the boat at sunset when the squad had returned and we were indulging in one or two of the pre-dinner Ti’ punch drinks (pronounced tee ponch) Laurent, our “Capitaine” was particularly adept at concocting.
Made with 1/5 part sugarcane syrup, 4/5 parts white rum and a wedge of lemon or lime, the punch has long been a favourite sipper in the Windward Islands, two being reckoned sufficiently potent to lubricate you merrily in any gathering.
With six compact cabins and three toilets (a malfunctioning faucet rendered the fourth unusable for washing on the third day out), “Rose” was a 15 meter long Dufour Atoll 50. Laurent, a Beirut-based architect and committed part-time sailor had chartered her in the Martinique capital of Pointe-à-Pitre.
While there, he and his French wife, Camille, had stocked the craft’s freezers and cupboards with an array of Gallic cheeses, jams and biscuits as well as French wines, cans of cassoulet, smoked chickens, sausissons, fruit, rum and at least a dozen other products. Stéphane, one of our boat mates who came from the southern French city of Montpelier brought a large tin of foie gras that was devoured as well as our two bottles of Niagara ice wine during our first feast on board.
A friend of my friends Francis (former provisoir of a Lycée Français) and his teacher wife, Michelle, Laurent had put together the itinerary for our 12-day journey, one of several he informally offers in the Caribbean and Mediterranean each year.
With the music of Llasa coming from the tape deck at the front of the galley, we had cast off under drizzling skies from the Rodney Bay Marina in Saint Lucia. Our course took us briefly to the inlet of Maginot Bay and on to Soufrere beneath the dramatically steep, 2,461 foot high Petit Piton where we anchored for two days.
From there, we sailed to Bequia, Mustique, Mayreau, Tobago Cays, Union Island, Petit St. Vincent, Canouan and St. Vincent before heading back under magnificently clear skies and muscular winds at our tail to Saint Lucia.
Most everyone on board had at least fair to middling experience of the sea prior to setting out. Some of the others had previously sailed with Laurent in the Mediterranean but I was more or less a nautical neophyte.
Quickly, though, I settled into an informal regimen that saw me at dawn each day hurling myself off “Rose”s stern. The water’s current was usually strong enough to give me a little exercise before chow. Depending upon what there was in stock, breakfast consisted of fruit we’ve bought, including pineapples and mangoes, slices of molasses loaf or baguettes, jams, cheese or crepes on special days when Francis was inspired to perform.
At dinner, there would be vegetable curry, perhaps, potato omelet or fresh tuna and crayfish we’ve bought at decent prices from the fishers (“boat boys” we heard them referred to) who invariably presented themselves aboard their small fabulously painted wooden launches whenever and wherever we moored.
For the first few days, I envied the rest of my crewmates their adroitness, the way they cooked smartly, managed expertly with French cheeses and banana jams and attended studiously to the ropes and rigging. I, on the other hand, felt the clod, having forgotten to wipe sand from my feet when getting back on the boat and taken infinitely longer than the rest at mastering the repetitive yanking and pulling required to flush the toilet.
Eventually though I was pleased with my strong swimming, my fearlessness in a way, my lack of anything resembling mal de mer.
It was the evenings, always fantastically clear, that I relished the most when one or the other of us gathered on deck. Some nights, the main sail was lit by a generous moon and I’d gaze above it, dreamily mesmerized by the legions of stars.
We took a water taxi one day from our boat to Soufrere in Saint Lucia and became part of the early morning atmosphere of the town. Uniformed school girls giggled together as they headed off to their classrooms while in a narrow ramshackle street, townspeople queued for treatment at an overcrowded health clinic that looked undernourished of supplies. In the Soufrere’s Our Lady of the Assumption Church overlooking the village square, we found the statues dressed for Lent with purple batik.
For two days during the 12, we sailed for 10 hours. Pulling up anchor off Soufrere in Saint Lucia at 4 a.m., we proceeded the 60 nautical miles to the island of Bequia. Throughout the day, our experience of the sea was thrilling, “Rose”, dipping and soaring with the rhythm of the waves, her sails fiercely fluttering. Roped to the stern, but with enough lead that it seems propelled forward by its own will, the dinghy by which we got from boat to shore tossed eagerly into the spray.
By late afternoon, we approached Bequia with its hills rising above Admiralty Bay and the main town called Port Elizabeth. Dotted with gaily coloured houses that seem to cascade down the hills, Bequia had been a major whaling and whaleboat building centre for more than a century. Once harpooned, Caribbean humpbacks were processed on nearby Petit Nevis where islanders purchased the meat and blubber.
We toured Mustique the following day, the pampered five and a half square kilometer island made famous by the late Princess Margaret. Once owned by the irrepressible Colin Tennant, 3rd Lord Glenconner who now resides on the Beau estate in Saint Lucia, the island’s part-time residents include Tommy Hilfinger, Mick Jagger and Shania Twain.
With “Cute Eyes”, the guide we hired for the morning, we explored the sprawling and luxurious Cotton House Hotel just because it was there and passed by some of the rental villas.
Its terrace overlooking the water, the famous Basil’s bar is owned by Princess Margaret’s former butler when she spent time on Mustique but there’s only a spotty crowd the day we stopped by. Designed by Oliver Messel, Margaret’s neo-Georgian seven-bedroom “cottage” called Les Jolies Eaux is located on the island’s southernmost tip and has views of Canouan and Union Island. With rich new owners, it’s been extensively renovated since the princess’s death.
We found Mustique too pristine for our liking. There were few people about except surly-looking gardeners primping overly manicured lawns. But we had fun diving into the aggressive waves off Mustique’s Macaroni Beach and found a bakery that sold perfectly crusty baguettes and some of the best pains au chocolat I’d ever tasted.
Another day, we anchored “Rose” off the coast of Mayreau that is home to only a few hundred islanders. One of the ubiquitous “boat boys” motored up in a battered blue painted craft offering to do bring ice or do our laundry. He told us he’ll cook langoustine for dinner over a beach fire and what time would we like delivery?
We saw a number of enormous yachts — like small liners, really — that make Hamilton, Bermuda their home port and felt quite superior to them in their smooth, sleek containment. We have nothing to do with the luxuries of smooth rides and proper showers, exotic flower arrangements and uniformed staff.
Sometimes, we missed our privacy. In exchange though, there’s was the rough and tumble business of the ocean that invigorated us, the bobbing and weaving and being tossed about. It was the noises I treasured too, wonderful and varied, of doors banging and pots clanging, of the glorious grunts and moans of the hull. And it was the furious sound the ropes made as they bashed the galley windows when, under splendid sunshine, we were under sail.
End