Ward’s Journal – First Leg (2)

1/15/03

It’s humbling to be out on the open water. We were motor sailing for a while, but the sea is so calm now and the wind so light that we’ve been simply motoring toward St. Martin for the last few hours. Night feathered down gently enough to be unnoticed, but I took some photos of the sunset off our stern just to be sure it really happened. Now, there are faint traces of light off to the southwest coloring the indigo clouds pink on the edges. The boat rocks randomly but plunges faithfully onward, creaking and grumbling a bit, the motor making a steady growl below me as I rest in the cockpit.

My captain, Dave, is extraordinary knowledgeable. Not only have I learned how to tie a bowline knot (finally in my life) but he started me on basic line management, reefing, how to heave-to properly, tying off on cleats, docking tricks, map reading, navigation, using the GPS to plot headings and such, and a bunch of other tricks. Just to add spice, I worked on peeling his life story off him: born and raised in Vancouver, B.C., worked as a construction manager until the market dried up when he was 36. He took a job as a tutor to a plumber’s 15 and 17-year old children during a sailing trip to the South Seas 5 years in the planning. It was a great experience but he dropped ship in Hawaii after half a year in the Marquesas Islands and thereabouts, picked up another one heading to California, and ultimately acted on someone’s suggestion to settle in the Virgin Islands. He worked as a captain for Moorings, a huge charter company, for the next 18 years, ultimately living on his own boat and picking up a variety of sailing jobs. He charters his boat out, acts as a captain for “sailors-in-training” like myself, and does high-end odd jobs where needed.

This morning, I motored the Liana-Jane over to his bay and tied on a mooring ball. It was hard to say goodbye to the family; they’d been so helpful and supportive, but it was time, and my parents are off to a legal training in St. Croix. Dave and I walked around the boat a bit before I took his passport and dinghy to customs to check us out. Afterwards, we set off up the St. Francis Drake Passage, him showing me how to really effectively trim a sail as we made sharp tacks back and forth toward Virgin Gorda. There, we took her into the dock to top off the water and grab a burger. Back on the northeastern tip of Virgin Gorda, just before the passage, we tied off on a mooring ball to haul the tender up on the forward deck and strap it down. It was heavy but possible with two men. Alone, I’ll need to use the spare halyard to winch it up in the air and swing it into place, but perhaps that won’t even be necessary. Then we took a dip. The water was a balmy 87 degrees, big cute fish checking us out, although the real purpose was to check the condition of the propeller for the crossing. Captain Dave stripped down to his birthday suit and demonstrated the great advantage of that household cleaner Joy, which suds in salt water, heavens to Betsy.

Once under way, we passed around privately-owned Necker Island (you can rent it for $28,600 per day, according to Dave) and maneuvered through a bunch of floating fish trap balls. Dave showed me how to use them to measure current speed and direction. We talked about the nuances of sailing and good yachtsmanship to pass the time. I spent some energy familiarizing myself with the new instrumentation, which is really amazing stuff once you get the hang of it. By then, dusk was settling, and now it’s completely night.

Rolling along in the dark, I can make out the cotton candy billows of big fat cumulus clouds, mostly to the north and east, and high streaky cirrus clouds stretching in long arcs to the north and west, trailing back from the stern like vapor trails from engine jets. The moon reflects across the sea in a long watery streak, kind of friendly up there, almost full now. I tried to take a photo earlier but the effect didn’t come out right – unlike the juicy, streaky sunset, which looked better on a digital camera than in real life and will make a great screensaver for someone who’s interested.

There are no other ships out there in the night, save one bright cruise ship, a fabricated living room with the artificial reality of a TV sit-com. I know the passengers inside that hulking behemoth – which would crush us into fiberglass splinters on a bow designed to smash through 30-ton rollers – are supping at long buffets, playing slot machines, drinking cocktails with little umbrellas, and getting dressed for a night of dancing and merriness. It sounds tempting, in a way, but it’s not for me, not tonight. Don Henley just replaced Dave Matthews on the laptop, who replaced Natalie Merchant. It’s a cool 75 degrees or so now, steady wind off the bow. I’m wearing comfortable sweats and a wool sweater and couldn’t be cozier. We’re plowing toward the little St. Martin city of Marigot – this is exactly the kind of moment I’ve been planning for so long. It’s really wonderful.

1/20/03

Well, the last few days have been completely marvelous.

Captain Dave and I motored all night, sighting St. Martin around dawn, taking turns on watch in the cockpit. When she seemed about 2 miles off, she was really about 10, and we just kept creeping closer and closer until hotels, houses of various shades, and a multitude of yachts appeared in the outer harbor. At the top of the Guadalupe Archipelago, this island is called St. Martin on the French side and Sint Maarten on the Dutch side. It’s a good place to shop or have parts shipped to your boat, as there are no duties on imports. The whole island was devastated by Hurricane Luis several years back, but the rebuilding, apparently, has been in earnest.

We motored amongst and between several dozen anchored sailboats and cruising yachts to a brand new dock system, not even a month old. The walking platform was a comfortable kind of drip-through system, the cleats enormous fancy piped things, and fire suppression systems right out of the catalogue were spaced protocol-length apart. As I walked the length of it, my legs wobbled with land-sickness, and the event of making a goal (on the second attempt) seemed an insignificant triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.

Immigration was a simple one-storied blue-roofed affair that took only a moment. I had a chance to practice my 3 or 4 words of French with some enthusiasm and everyone was friendly, including the marina workers who pointed out a few important details about the town and directed us to the lagoon entrance. For the next few hours before I shuttled Dave to the airport, he continued to teach me useful sailing goodies: cleating techniques, fender spacing and tying off, navigation techniques, maneuvering protocols around other boats, and so on – a continuation of his tutelage from the voyage over. We hauled down the dinghy and motored toward the drawbridge. A fuel dock, on the way in, provided an opportunity to top off the diesel tank and practice motoring techniques in a strong 3 knot current. Once the bridge opened and half a dozen boats of varying expense shuttled out, we joined another half dozen heading into the lagoon.

Dave directed me to cut a corner where the channel wasn’t so well marked inside and we promptly ran aground. The bottom was soft sand – no damage done to the keel – but it still took 45 minutes to get unstuck. This moment, however, was a great learning experience as we tried out every “ungrounding” technique that we’d been discussing earlier. These included sending the boom way out with me clinging to it like a monkey in a bathing suit, using the dinghy as a tugboat, backing off, gunning the engine when wake waves approached, and ultimately towing the heaviest anchor 30 meters off the bow. I got to do this, dropping it mightily then rowing back to use the windlass – combined with the engine – to drag us forward. It was an exciting experience that, apparently, I enjoyed more than Captain Dave, judging by his seeming lack of pleasure throughout.

We anchored in the most crowded harbor area I’ve ever seen. There were at least five major marinas, with twice as many dock systems. The shoreline held the longest, grandest yachts I’d seen in my life, huge white behemoths standing proudly with bows 15 or 20 feet in the air, the sailboats mostly sloop-rigged or ketches, but gigantic nonetheless next to the Liana-Jane. The local police came by to explain that we had anchored right in a major channel and had to move further toward the center. At that point, I felt I’d had a solid workout pulling up and taking down chain, which was satisfying for both of us as Captain Dave seemed to prefer watching me run about.

I accompanied him to the local airport, just down the perimeter road a couple of jogs, and purchased a one-way ticket back to Tortola. After he was gone, I was alone for the first time since my arrival, on a new, unknown island in a foreign land with a tricky mission of finding crew as soon as possible or continue on alone.

Needless to say, I sought out that one great solace that’s helped me through hard times in the past: sushi.

There were several decent dives selling the stuff, so I grabbed the cheapest, read a Miami paper (interesting byline: a nudist travel agency chartering a 747 to St. Lucia), and prepared to set off on a crew quest. There were two bars, apparently, that catered to transitory boaters, the Soggy Dollar (where do they get these names?) and Mr. C’s. I spread the word in the most obvious way by walking from table to table letting everyone know I was looking for crew. No luck, but everyone there was friendly and wanted to help. Some e-mail at an internet café later, it was back to the boat and goodnight alone. All dinghy work was accomplished with unusual slowness, under “oar power” only, as the engine had finally given out. Apparently, the new spark plugs I’d installed were like fresh oxygen in an Alzheimer's ward – they only delayed the inevitable. I needed to find a new motor.

The next day was all about shopping, first for boat equipment, second for groceries, third for a 25-pound workout weight, and fourth for crew. The first three were successful; still no crew by the end of the day, despite some possibilities. I pushed my cool little folding metal cart around the island happily and even found myself a place to get a haircut. As mentioned, St. Martin is known for it’s tax-free, duty-free opportunities, including the famous chandlery Budget Marine, where I helped myself to a new VHF, various line management equipment, a waterproof bag for my camera, and much more. I also stumbled luckily on a Yamaha outboard motor dealership and made plans to grab a new 5 horse two-stroke engine the following morning before passing back out of the lagoon.

What I found most remarkable about St. Martin was the genuine friendliness of the locals. They joked around happily with me in the barber shop, asked if they could help in the chandlery, were concerned about my quest for crew, directed me to the best stores, and otherwise struck me as the best part about, in my mind, small-town America. It was particularly ridiculous to spend so much effort tracking down a 25-pound weight for my exercises, and even more hilarious to be scooting around dirt and broken asphalt streets with a basket full of tinned biscuits, boat parts, ginger ale, and a dumbbell. I guess that’s what makes journeys like this interesting.

In the evening of that day, after numerous attempts to find someone to join me for the next leg, I had given up and was heading back to the Soggy Dollar in anticipation of a pleasant row out to the Liana-Jane. One last check with the South African bartender there produced an unexpected answer. Apparently, there was a Dutch guy looking for a ride toward Martinique. He had been trying to find me as well. What wonderful news!

So I took John, a 28-year-old former accountant looking to switch into boat captaincy, out to the Liana-Jane for a look around. Apparently he liked what he saw and decided to join up, noting that if we can’t make it all the way south to Martinique he could just pick up a small plane from another island and still make it to the Netherlands. He had sold his house near The Hague and needed to go there to close the deal.

John is a sprightly, bronzed chap with a good attitude and wavy blondish hair. He wears glasses, spends a lot of time employing their services by looking for hours over the ocean, and strikes me as a “small footprint” kind of wanderer, leaving little dust wherever he settles and moving to new places with a fresh outlook. We arranged to meet at Marigot immigration the following morning, and that we did. He was earlier than me, in fact, as I tried to row through intricate channels branching off the lagoon in an effort to find the Yamaha dealership from the water, ultimately hitching a tow from a kindly stranger going the same way. It was easy to catch one of the numerous $1 vans that ply the main traffic routes of St. Martin, irrespective of all Dutch and French boundaries, which are nonexistent anyway. In our walk back to one such van route, John and I found an internet café nestled deep within an artificial grotto sporting psychedelic painted seats in an Alice in Wonderland theme. It seemed both curious and out-of-place. The small-town atmosphere was especially rich on the van ride back, further crowded with Jon’s waterproof backpack and all our things. The locals generously made way for us, helped each other in and out through circuitous seating arrangements, smiled graciously, and offered suggestions on French translations we were struggling to read. All that for only $1 dollar! Before heading toward the sailboat, I bought the new outboard for $800 (no tax, no duty fees) which we attached to the dinghy and used to motor back in style. The whole while I exclaimed that the engine, by god, was actually working. John thought me rather odd, I’m sure, but got into the humor of it all.

We next tackled the project of getting the boat out of the lagoon. This involved timing the bridge’s opening with some degree of accuracy despite neither of us having a watch (on the principle of it alone, of course), circling with a few other sailboats until the green light popped on. Once through, we opened up throttle and made for a bay toward the south side of the island, just before the little city of Phillipsburg on the Dutch side. It was a beautiful little sandy bay where we anchored, ringed with mid-range motels and condominiums. Feeling adventurous, I donned my mask and swam ashore, past a curious little swimming float with 5 neatly-arranged dead fish drying quietly in the middle, and onto a dark-rocked beach. I climbed up an embankment right into the poolside lounge of a condo. Remembering the practice of fitting in simply by looking like I belonged there, I strolled purposefully into a couple of dead ends, ultimately heading down to the beach and walking the length of it. It was your standard tourist beach, chock-a-block with jet ski rental and lounge chairs, couples arguing about things, reading the paper, some kids making a sandcastle in the black sand. Peaceful, but not really my style right then.

John and I decided that the rollers were too heavy, so we fired up the diesel and moved one bay down to Phillipsburg, where we then took the dinghy (it works, it works!) and treated ourselves to bacon cheeseburgers at The Greenhouse Café. Everything about the harbor was flavored with cruise ship, including a monstrosity called The Galaxy on a giant concrete dock across from us. The prices were geared toward that crowd, it seemed, and English was spoken everywhere. The Dutch history of the town seemed diluted, squeezed out by shops selling luxury items, cheap electronics, and more American fast food joints than you could sneeze at. Still, John and I took every advantage we could there, stocking up for the lesser-traveled islands to the south. That night, which we made early on purpose for the next day’s plans, was restless with intermittent rollers from abeam, keeping me awake at odd times and Jon, apparently, somewhat injured.

When I finally wiggled out of bed ready to make for St. Bart’s, John was incapacitated in his bunk. Somewhere in the night his leg cramped up so severely he couldn’t even walk. This did not bode well for our sailing plans, but tied in appropriately with much of my crew luck thus far. I assessed his functioning with some medical perspective and took a history, all indicators pointing toward a significant leg cramp but nothing more. I stoked him full of Ibuprofen and suggested he try to move it somewhat between rests, massaging whenever he could. Throughout the day, then, John mostly stood up (which relieved the ache a good bit) and was able to help quite a bit. Still, I evened things by smashing myself in the nose with flying reef rigging, bleeding in big red drops on the sail and around the mast pulpit before staunching the flow with some paper towels. I felt like a complete idiot, mustache and beard notwithstanding, and together John and I made for a pretty unlucky crew on our first big leg together. I made a point, however, of dashing some of the journey’s “first blood” on my Liana-Jane crew cap to properly break it in.

Once under sail, it was spectacular. The seas were calm and gentle, the winds steady, the sky bright and blue. We set a double-reef in the main (just to be safe) and were, thus, under-canvassed for the first couple of hours, after which we figured it out and made great time, averaging a good 5.5 knots SOG (speed over ground, calculated through the GPS rather than by the ship’s meter) in 12 to 16 knot winds. We were being blown toward Saba island in the south before tacking for St. Bart’s in the early afternoon.

The sailing was exactly as I envisioned in my months of planning for this trip. The boat crested gracefully over the 3-foot high waves, tipped comfortably, the wind cooling us from the blazing sun blocked only by the bimini top (covering the aft cockpit) and fat wandering cumulus clouds. We were very much at peace in the world. I read my circumnavigation book and John mostly stood, looking out over the water, still having pain except in certain positions – but he was already healing rapidly. The sun reflected everywhere and occasionally some spray would arc gracefully over the bow. This went on for hours and hours as we gradually ate up the distance to this Dutch island, a reminder of how important patience is to the sailor, with hours of time on our hands and nothing but leisure to fill it with.

Even Jon’s keen lookout didn’t give us much warning of a sudden squall, however, that slammed into the sailboat when all her canvas was up. I was caught napping quietly on the leeward side of the boat when we started an abrupt heeling. This became our first exciting learning experience at water – other than getting crippled and smashed in the nose that morning – and we reacted well enough, releasing the sheet to reef the main in, roller-reefing the jib, and buckling into the weather like a couple of true sailor dudes. The ocean got excited as well. We were bucking through a stampede of white-crested stallions, floundering first then plunging bow-first into the thick of it, unstoppable it seemed. The squall passed in fifteen minutes or so, the rain dying away as impulsively as it started, and we handed (raised) the mainsail again, making a delightful anchorage in a little natural harbor on the tip of St. Bart’s, just around 4 PM. Called Colombier Bay on the charts, there were about a dozen yachts of varying make and size anchored. It was a special pleasure to dive in and swim around them, splashing around and guessing who was who – one catamaran next door stocked three young French couples in skimpy little European bathing suites (male and female, those crazy guys), another little motorboat boasted an arguing Italian couple complete with hand waving and stiff moments of silence.

John mixed us up some tuna fish and tomato sauce, with Greek olives no less, to be gobbled up with handfuls of the sea crackers I carted around so laboriously in St. Martin’s. It was delicious. As the sun dropped below the horizon, I captured another great batch of screensavers on my digital camera, festooned with pink and orange, that great luscious burning left over in the sky after the yellow orb melts into the sea. Also, I continued my lengthy and fruitless project of fixing the bow light, before celebrating a luxurious day by pulling the bimini top back and drifting underneath the perfect stars. Really, I hadn’t a complaint in the world.

This morning, we got up early to make the next hop-step to St. Eustatius, often called Statia, which is 5 miles long and 2 miles wide with a population of 2,700. It’s the last of the Dutch Caribbean islands (along with Sint Maarten and Saba), discovered by Columbus in 1493. According to locals, it changed hands 22 times before settling on Dutch occupation in 1636, and was the first nation to recognize the newly-formed United States in November of 1776 when the American Brig-of-War “Andrew Doria” sailed into the harbor, fired a 13-gun salute, and was replied by an 11-gun salute.

As, in Jon’s eyes, I am another “damn patriotic American,” it was especially meaningful to sail there.

I made a steaming breakfast of hot cereal, sultanas (raisins) and squished bananas, prefaced with the morning exercise routine. John manned the ship’s wheel afterwards for our intended smooth exit from the little harbor, but instead we wrapped the dinghy line in the propeller and freaked out. We had anchored only 50 feet from coral and a cliff wall and were drifting precariously close. With sudden newfound energy, I scampered about the boat dropping the anchor (that I’d just hauled up), lowering the mainsail and popping on a diving mask to unravel the underwater mess. Fortunately, it was only wrapped, not melted together as some lines are wont to get, and we were back to our graceful exit within 20 minutes. When my heart finally settled down, several miles away, we were making a delightful beam reach to the south-southwest in winds of 8 – 15 knots. Very comfortable sailing. We averaged about 6 knots the entire way. That’s a leisurely jog for most people, trotting across the blue expanse. It reminded me of running the Utica Boilermaker for several years, a 15 kilometer race in central New York. The imagery for sailing is even more real if you envision a rope over your shoulder the whole way towing a 12 ton sailboat over soft speed bumps.

With the engine off and the bimini top down, the sailing was nothing short of joyous. John took leisurely naps and I read. Who way paying attention the whole time? At one point, with his slowly-healing leg, he talked about a hotel room down-island one time with a Jacuzzi, adding then “I had a little desire to have that Jacuzzi in the sailboat.” I love the way he speaks English. The clouds were a great herd of aimless downy sheep grazing on huge swatches of blue sky. The only sounds, really, were of the dinghy slapping along – our auditory speed gauge – and the creaking of the mainsail where it meets the boom, six pulleys dispersing the force through the main sheet and, thus, the boat.

Around 10 AM we lost the depth, signifying the edge of the continental shelf there, pointing our bow toward Venezuela so many hundreds of miles away. The island of Soba was abeam to the northwest, clouds stuck on its 1,200 meter summit like whip cream on a sundae. Around lunchtime, we snacked on peanut butter crackers with the day’s experimental addition, raisins, and spotted the gentle spires of St. Eustatius. It sported a 1,000 meter hill falling down to a valley, then a 600 meter hill dropping quickly to a point, our target destination about 8 nautical miles off the bow. Throughout the day, John and I reefed in the mainsail and reefed it out, until we could make out the sharp brown cliffs of Boven Mountain on the port side breaking up our otherwise-steady east wind. A fuel pier emerged on the west side of the island as we gradually cruised by, then dozens of giant oil tanks materialized far up the bank. We rolled past a few mooring balls that dwarfed the Liana-Jane, and passed a giant fuel dock. We found out later that this island – called Scotia by everyone but the chart makers – is used as a transit point for fuel from the Dutch ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) going to other islands near us. Traversing this delightful little isle, there wasn’t a sail in sight anywhere, and we eventually moored at the base of a shallow cliff hiding the small town of Oranjestad, where a few other sailboats were similarly tied up. Although the swell was pretty high there, we managed to tuck ourselves into a little corner protected by a jetty and were rather comfortable.

Once the dinghy brought us safely to a partially-collapsed pier, I was delighted to find 110 volt current in the little hotel overlooking the place, and quickly fired up my computer to begin this very writing. The waitress, Marva, was terrifically friendly, and John flirted shamelessly. The heavy rollers crashed into the rock beach below. Sometimes there were so wild the spray arced up and hit the restaurant. We checked the dinghy with worry but our technique of tying off both the bow and stern on the opposite side of the little jetty seemed to protect it. John walked up the hill to explore while I typed. Later that night in the boat, we watched a DVD together, John standing to nurse his leg and me shouting out all the exciting parts.

It was, for all intensive purposes, a perfectly wonderful day.

1/21/03

Today was equally faultless, particularly since it didn’t begin with another injury or possible destruction of the boat. John and I slept late, setting off at 10 AM or so to explore the town up above, find an internet connection, and see if this place was really as friendly as everyone was saying. We strolled up the ancient slave road to the top and were greeted with a gorgeous panorama, the whole turquoise bay broadening into the Caribbean Sea, newer subtle little hotels with broken-down stone foundations and structures interspersed around them, creeping clumps of red and yellow flower bushes, and scattered yachts bobbing on their anchors in the harbor. Once again, it was scenes like that which seem to be filling the days lately, long perfect moments that drew me here in the first place.

Oranjestad truly boasted a small-town feeling in an ancient Dutch settlement, complete with 200-year-old halls of assembly, churches seemingly unchanged with the ages, locals so friendly that every car waved at us, and delightful stone masonry wherever the eye fell. We chatted up some locals in the town museum, then wandered about looking for the library, the one viable internet connection that John had discovered the night before. Meanwhile, he told me about the “paper corner store” and pointed out various Dutch cheeses and candies in the local, “all-purpose” store where “they sell everything but nothing you actually need,” including a special battery we’re looking for to fix the boat’s clock. They said, helpfully, that they’d already ordered that battery and would have it “next Wednesday, maybe Thursday.” Oh well.

Satiated with internet needs, we ambled back down the hill for a quick snack before leaving the island. This time I charged my computer why John engaged himself with two Dutch girls reading by the pool. They were university students, apparently, getting degrees in elementary education, together visiting one of the girl’s family and bored out of their minds. Whatever the case, like Velcro I tore him away, and we took the dinghy back to the boat, disconnected from the mooring ball, and headed out to sea.

Today’s sail was fast and exciting. The wind from St. Eustatius to St. Kitts jumped between a substantial 14 knots to a boat-rolling 21 knots, powering us to maximum speeds of 7 knots – that’s a good wind sprint along the water, as fast as those wily Ethiopians that win the Boilermaker race every year. We double-reefed the main and pulled in the jib quite a bit for a lot of the run, experimenting with a variety of sail setups to maximize speed while maintaining safety. John chose to steer most of the way, something he enjoys that’s completely beyond me. When I took my turn, I’d lock the wheel and make tiny adjustments while lounged sideways in the cockpit, watching the autopilot readings instead of the road, as it were. Although we made good time, it was a long haul to St. Kitts. We were surprised by the way land masses figured into the wind direction and speed – everything seemed opposite at times, with some of our heaviest winds coming right under the nose of the mountains. That makes some sense, as high pressure forces roll down the hillside, but it was still weird. Toward the end of the day, our teamwork improved markedly. John would steer the tack and I would zip back and forth pulling lines, eventually having the jib sheet pulled taught before the turn was completed. Well, things were slow and it was something to do. Most of the time I read Caribbean by James Michener and thoroughly enjoyed the stories of sea battles, European economics, the perils of Christopher Columbus, Mayan science, and the sad endings of Caribbean Indian tribes under Spanish domination.

We finally rolled into Basseterre, a shallow bay near the northern part of the island, and anchored right as dark enveloped everything. Poor John thought we were even further behind schedule that we already were because he didn’t take off his dark glasses until the anchor had struck bottom. I served up the last of my father’s delicious kippered salmon for snack and we prepared to bunk down for the night. Tomorrow, John and I head over to the port authorities first thing in the morning for customs and immigration, then our plan is to continue down-island to Nevis – birthplace, I think, of Alexander Hamilton – then to steamy Montserrat the next day, and perhaps a night passage from there to Guadalupe? He’s leaving by plane from Guadalupe to Martinique and I hope to meet up with my parents somewhere in that vicinity.

Things are going swimmingly.

1/22/03

The boat is bobbing in Majors Bay off the very southern tip of St. Kitts, swinging gently on the anchor as the winds whirl around Majors Bluff just above. We are all alone here, except for the two small freighters washed up on the beach just across. Of course, that does not bode well for an anchorage if there are more sunken ships than floating.

John and I had a laugh today in Basseterre, the bustling capitol town off which we anchored last night. Outdoing each other with cheapness, we tracked down a budget sandwich shop for lunch where even the locals – so normally proper and well-groomed – seemed just a bit shady, and the flies that greeted us as we came in said as much about the quality of the food as the wrecks driven ashore here. John ordered for us, and after we left the place he said, “I saw the kitchen. It was better that we did not eat in there.” His accent continues to kill me, that sly smile and quick wit always ready to go.

It was a leisurely morning, push-ups and all, and we finally took the dinghy into a gentle mooring between a freighter dock and the coast guard patrol boat. Customs was a lengthy affair but the officials were gracious enough. I sat in a tiny office filling out forms while John fell in love with one of the secretaries out front. Then we took a cab to town, a good mile away, but the driver swung us by an electronics store in my seemingly-endless quest for a 12 volt converter. I reflect now that, in the years to come, my continued attempts to find this item will seem to be of little importance, and I laugh, as it’s so important now to charge up my stupid computer! In any case, we found an internet café, John made his plane reservations from Guadalupe, and we had a silly time in the Canadian National Bank as he talked a bank teller into translating the French on his reservation ticket.

The town was typical Caribbean island little city, orderly but busy with crowded sidewalks and Dutch-style stone and concrete buildings. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to go. Children bustling around wore endearing school uniforms of blue and pink, the boys with short green ties and the girls with white blouses. I was especially fascinated with a dessert place started three years ago by a St. Kitts-born Canadian gentleman. This man’s industriousness and attention to detail came through in his little café where he served five or six varieties of cheesecakes, two kinds of cream puffs, pizza (for whatever reason), drinks, and nothing more. There was always a customer coming in for some cheesecake to go or a quick cream puff – myself included. While gobbling, a hard rain came up suddenly and I offered to shut the man’s windows in his car, which he happily obliged. One of his doors was a power window and the other had to be rolled – how odd. I jumped in the wrong side – the steering wheel on the left, of course, in this British country – and at one point jerked the whole car forward trying to get the keys back out. I don’t think he was impressed with me, but hopefully appreciated my service.

All commerce on this island is done in Eastern Caribbean dollars and U.S. dollars, at fair exchange rates. Of course, I left my specially-prepared batch of E.C.’s back on the boat, typical Ward-style, but it didn’t matter.

Once the rain let up and cars passing through the narrow streets just spit up a mist of evaporating rain, John and I bustled our way back to the boat. We got lost, naturally, but combined hitchhiking with patient following of an old train track to return to the dinghy. Back on board the Liana-Jane, we weighed anchor and took off just as another squall screeched in. We must have reefed the mainsail and jib up and down three different times during the following four hours of sailing. Ultimately we averaged a good 4.5 knots in winds that ranged up to 20 knots. During the sunnier stretches John laid out on the “sun deck,” as he calls it, in his skimpy little European bathing suit as I experimented with the wheel brake, acting as my own autopilot. The deserted southern part of the island progressed along on our port side and Nevis, that big round lump to the south, drew closer. This sea is remarkably beautiful.

We tacked a few times and settled on a windy little bay. The Atlantic is stirring things up just around the bluff, I can tell. Tomorrow our plan is to force our way out into that great gusty lake, tack to the northeast to make headway for a couple of miles, then cut south on a beam reach toward the volcanic island of Montserrat. This is a long, 30-mile open water course that puts us in heavy rollers and uncertain winds, but it’s a better plan, we think, than trying the opposite on the Caribbean side. This way, the hardest work is in the beginning of the day, after which we make a straightforward reach toward our destination. If sunset sneaks up on us (as it has already, that devil) we can continue on a straight course to the island without too many complications. Our other backup is the tiny island midway down called Redonda. We can rest there if necessary and continue the trek the following day.

Joking around in the main cabin as the night closes in around the boat, I find out that John hates dancing as much as I do. He says in his stilted English, “every time, the girls dance, guys are sitting at the bar having a drink, and select one of the girls, or two.” Even if John is a Ridiculous Dutch Guy (which I remind him about at every opportunity), he’s got a pretty good handle on the way life works. I like him.

1/24/03

The most extraordinary sight of the trip thus far floats beneath our keel and is gathered around us like a swarm of stars. Dropping the anchor here in Guadalupe, in the dark, the moment it hit the water it lit up with light blue flames! Bioluminescent plankton in numbers I’ve never seen in my life.

I remember my first night scuba dive, off the coast near Seattle, when the instructor gave the sign to extinguish our underwater flashlights at about 50 feet under. We swirled around, stirring up tiny little pinpricks in the inky blackness. Here in the Caribbean, I’ve seen them before off the stern of the boat when scrubbing dishes or, as we guys say, seeing a man about a horse. One time my family was all here and our anchor was dragging late at night. My brother-in-law and I donned tanks to reset it. On the way back, like in Seattle, we turned off the dive lights and swirled around in the glowing plankton. But here, in this extensive bay rich with runoff from the hills and plains, the bioluminescence is so thick it’s overwhelming! I jumped immediately in the lukewarm water, of course, and later talked John into doing it. Thrashing about, my hands and arms trailed thick waves of bright green, and wherever my legs swirled the water became bright flames churning, eddies that circled a few times where disturbed then fading out. Even when I climbed out to rinse, they sparkled on my bathing suit! Without a doubt, this was the most amazing thing I’ve witnessed thus far, despite the last week or so of high adventure, miles and miles of sailing, beautiful vistas, and everything else.

Yesterday, as planned, we awakened right at dawn and weighed anchor from that dark and forbidding bay on St. Kitts, plowing directly into a series of rainstorms that persisted on and off for half the morning. John, in his determination to spend maximum time at the wheel, was kind enough to steer us through the really heavy downpours as I huddled in the companionway. We were double reefed in both the main and the jib for most of the day. The swells out there in the Atlantic rose to 10 or 12 feet in height. We plowed through them, pushed Nevis back to starboard, and used GPS readings to maintain our course for Montserrat, as visibility was only a couple of miles due to thick cloud cover. The day, on the whole, was dark and difficult, but John and I saw it as an electrifying challenge and cheered ourselves on the closer we came to land. In this case, the barren and imposing rock Redonda emerged on the horizon, which we used to point the Liana-Jane toward Montserrat, further determined to make it all the way there before nightfall.

On the way, big rollers would drag the bow under, sending wash almost to the cockpit. Other times spray or broken-up waves would curl over the port side and smash into John and I, one time just as I finished wiping my sunglasses from the previous cleansing. John, of course, thought this was hilarious. He made several efforts to repeat it, but I dodged around too quick for him. I must have changed my clothes three times in an ongoing effort to stay dry, but did manage to continue my Caribbean book another 100 pages or so, regaling John with excerpts about the Dutch traders and their own adventures on the Leeward Isles in the 1600 and 1700’s.

Montserrat was one of the more beautiful islands in the chain until its volcano, its dominant feature, started rumbling in the mid-1990’s. The town of Jamestown was evacuated only two years before the mountain exploded, burying most everything left. By the time we arrived – zipping along at 7 knots, maintaining a course only about 10 degrees off our destination – the whole southern part was emptied. We found several vacant mooring balls off a pleasant little beach on the northwest coach, John discovering a few minutes later that his cabin had been soaked on the crossing over. Fixing ourselves an odd little dinner of random canned items heated up over pasta, it seemed like salt from the sea spray had dried all over the boat and was even getting into our eyes a bit. I watched the mountain some and realized that the ever-present clouds on its summit were not clouds at all, but thick gray volcanic ash, which was settling on the boat and us at a steady rate. We secured the hatches and settled in for a night of rolling in the swells, neither of us sleeping too well.

In the morning, there was an awful, gritty layer of ash on absolutely everything topside, including even the jib sail and throughout the cockpit. The boat was a mess! We released from the mooring without bothering to shower or have breakfast and made our getaway past the mountain, past a cruise ship stopping obviously for pictures, and past the southern tip of the island, bound for Guadalupe. I’ll remember Montserrat most for it’s ugly spews and the today spent washing the boat down, but also for the strange nighttime view. When we approached, that whole section of the island was lined with neat little houses surrounded by neat little English gardens, and there were roads and streetlights, but no people. At dusk, the only lights that came on were the streetlights – every house was deserted, the only visible movement from an observation tower way up the hill. So strange.

Today’s sail was much easier than yesterday’s. There were hardly any rollers on the open ocean and little enough wind that, once we took the reefs out, it was just an easy matter of plugging along toward Guadalupe, John incessantly at the helm. We sailed for about 10 gentle hours, reading and napping (that was my job) and staring out at the sea forever (John’s job). This is his last day sailing before he leaves for The Netherlands.

Guadalupe is shaped like a huge butterfly. The western wing is mountainous and the eastern wing flat. In between, in the northern side, is the largest reef system I’ve ever seen, stretching a good 5 miles from wingtip to wingtip like a big U. It took us three hours just to traverse the reef into this anchorage, but was another highlight of the trip. Since night fell before we even made the well-marked entrance, John and I navigated a tiny circuitous channel through it by dead reckoning, chart plotting, tricky steering, and (ultimately) use of GPS waypoints. We ran aground at one point but it was about as controlled an event as they get, with plenty of warning from the depth meter and time to slow the boat to a crawl. I was getting the anchor ready to drag us off when the current did the job for me, and we continued our steady progress toward the island.

Safe and sound now, the insects buzz and twitter in the scrub and wet woods around. Occasionally a dog barks. There are distant human sounds from Guadalupe: a revving motorcycle, faint hammering somewhere, the occasional drunken shout. This place has a thick and violent history that I’ll be interested in tomorrow, but tonight is the closing of this journey’s second chapter and it’s a good time to reflect.

Since last submitted, I’ve covered some 160 nautical miles down island from the Virgins, perhaps a bit more, with hard sailing almost every day and incredible support from John. Without him, this would not have gone so exceedingly well, and I’m eternally grateful. He’s been a wonderful co-pilot (I say to him “Number One, take the helm”). John is a real sailor, not just skin deep but salty to the core and serious about changing his life to be a boat captain in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, that stud. We’ve had a wonderful time as a little crew of two, and have not failed to remind each other what an adventure it’s been since – only a week ago? – we set off together from St. Martin.

I’m also really happy to be writing. Anyone who’s acquainted with me knows that I haven’t written like this for ten years, on account of complexities arising from a meaningful but poorly-ended relationship, much (but not all) of which was my own doing. Whatever the case, it’s really wonderful to spout on about these ridiculous escapades, my odd opinions and observations, and the occasional long-winded descriptive metaphor (the exact kind I used to warn my English students about).

The next chapter, I am guessing, will be about my wonderful and complicated parents, the islands of Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia, and all the pleasant but unforeseeable events the lie ahead as Ward’s Ridiculous Circumnavigation of the Caribbean continues. Stay tuned, friend, and we’ll see you in a week or so!