The Windward Islands
Normally, arriving into a new nation, we read, study and ready ourselves, spend time imagining what it might be like. This time, Mary Constance had taken all our attention. So St Lucia, first stop in the Caribbean, seems to materialise suddenly before our eyes, as though we had ended up here accidentally. As I start to take in our surroundings, I feel like Alice in Wonderland, as though we have passed unexpectedly into another, profoundly different world.
And it is too. Strikingly different. After so many deserts and comparatively arid lands in our recent travels – from Oman, all the way up the Red Sea, to Turkey, Tunisia, the Canaries – I find it at first perplexing then exhilarating. The land is rich and wet here – lush undergrowth, leaves and plants exploding out of the ground, and those clichés for the tropics – palm trees – leaning romantically from every shore. The ramshackle lives alongside the opulent – broken-down shacks, splendid mansions, rusting cars among high grass, orderly gardens and smart gravel entries.
And the weather is a model for paradise, with bright sunshine, and fleeting clouds that dump a sudden burst of water eight or nine times a day. The breeze is always cooling, always around fifteen knots – clearing any dust, smoothing any sweaty brow.
The people, in many shades of shining mahogany skin, talk loudly, laugh easily. Their clothes are imaginative and brightly coloured. Gold jewellery gleams. They sing as they walk, joke rowdily. There’s wisdom in their smiles – don’t take life too seriously, these smiles say. In the offices and shops they calm uptight Europeans with gentle patience, never getting angry. They twinkle back, and seem understanding but amused at the hysteria of folks who want everything organised, measured and timed exactly.
New friends lead us to our first ‘jump-up’ in a nearby suburb. ‘It’s a kind of local street party,’ we’re told. We’re warned that we must stay in the main street – no side streets in the dark, and do not, under any circumstances, walk back to our boats in the marina – take a taxi! There are dangers in this paradise. Lock your boat, hide your sandals, keep hold of your wallet. After two years in Turkey it comes as a sadness that these precautions are necessary.
The jump-up is what you get when the locals turn out every Friday in the local main street to eat, walk and promenade. The streets are lined with stalls, a smorgasbord selling every kind of hot food, and clothes, shoes, paintings, homemade baskets and hats. Ninety-nine per cent of the crowd is of African origin, and they are a loud and happy bunch. Soon a few start to gyrate, and crowds gather to watch – then more and more join in to dance until it truly is a street party. We don’t really understand this culture, but it’s a rich visual experience, with the colourful clothes, children and old people, teenagers with romance – or maybe just sex – on their minds, all in a grand melee. The noise of the music is loud and rapping and from many different directions, the hot smells of the street food fill the air. We melt into the crowd for a while – as much as we can, with our different clothes and pale skins.
It’s good to pause after a long sail and enjoy the comparative ease of life by the shore, dinners with friends, sleeping as long as you like. There’s always plenty of boat maintenance to be done, but after a couple of weeks we can’t wait to be gone from the cloying marina atmosphere and head south. Blackwattle, too, hates being tied fore and aft to the wharf, like a racehorse cooped up in a small stable.
It is the end of December and, as there won’t be south-easterly trade winds in the Pacific until April, we have three months to enjoy the Caribbean. Three months of hedonism! After the trauma of the Atlantic, it sounds like heaven. We will day-sail the Windward Islands, be in Trinidad for Carnival, cross the southerly Venezuelan islands, sail the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao), the San Blas, then on to Panama and its famous canal. We make these plans very matter-of-factly, only laughing occasionally at the sheer wonder of it.
So when, in high spirits, we reach the first anchorage in Rodney Bay and the anchor winch is frozen and we can’t get the anchor down, it’s back to earth with a crash.
‘I’m sick of it!’ skipper/maintenance engineer Ted grumps. ‘It’s always something!’
We motor disconsolately back to the marina to find a spare berth and an electrician. ‘Oh no,’ says the skipper as we slide towards a berth. ‘It’s Saturday afternoon – bet we can’t get any work done until Monday!’
‘Cheer up,’ I say. ‘Everything has gone wrong today that could possibly go wrong. Closer, Ted, you’re too far from the wharf. Closer – get closer!’ I step onto the finger wharf, lines in hands, push off from the boat, and then cause a loud splash as I hit the water and go under.
As I surface I hear, ‘Shit, Nance, what the hell are you doing?’ He is telling the world at large, ‘Now I’m in trouble, I’ve lost my whole f&%@ing crew!’
He’s reversing out of the harbour now, and I know that as I fell the lines I was holding fell with me. A line in the water might wrap around the propeller.
‘The beam line’s in the water!’ I splutter, swimming under the wharf to get away from the hull. ‘The beam line’s in the water!’ I’m drowning myself shouting this over and over.
I see a head of red curls peering over the edge of the wharf above me. The curls bounce as she talks.
‘Are you okay?’
I could kill for those curls. ‘The beam line’s in the water!’ I gasp. ‘Tell him the beam line’s in the water!’
He’s backing out of the berth again, and now the red-curl girl is shouting, ‘The beam line’s in the water!’ We can’t hear Ted any more, and that’s probably a good thing. I swim under the wharf and clamber up via a berthed catamaran. I am dripping but dignified in my wet sandals, sunglasses and sailing gloves all still in place.
Ted aims for the berth again (having pulled the beam line from the water), and with the help of beautiful red-curls, we berth the boat rather more successfully. I drip onto the deck and flop onto an aft deck seat to dry out enough to go below and get some clean clothes. Ted’s stopped swearing and sits beside me staring into the distance.
‘I’ve never done that before,’ I giggle.
There’s no answer.
‘Well, say something.’
‘Okay, I’m saying something. You’d better go for another swim, Nance.’
‘What? Don’t be silly.’
He points. ‘There’s your new red sun visor.’
He’s right – there it is about twenty metres away, still bobbing. So I slip with as much dignity as I can muster back into the brown water and have my second fully-clothed swim of the afternoon.
Anchor winch repaired, we start sailing down the Windwards. No wonder many people call this heaven for sailors. A wonderful steady wind is always roughly from the east, and the long chain of islands spreads almost north/south. This means you can zip along on a flat sea in the wind shadow to the west of the islands. To add to the pleasure, whether you sail north or south, the breeze is always coming from the side – a beam reach – and is very pleasant. It reminds me of the glorious sailing we experienced north of Cairns on our way to Cape York.
It’s a few nights later and I’m in one of those dead slumbers from a day of swimming, snorkelling and much winch-winding. The shouting reaches into my sleep, causing semi-conscious thought flashes. It’s dark. I’m in the cabin. Where’s Ted? Marigot Bay – I remember we’re in Marigot Bay . . . What time is it? It’s Ted’s voice.
‘Nance, get up on deck, quickly! Now!’ It’s the quiet, urgent voice that Ted rarely uses.
I leap out of the bunk in my green silk nightie and hurry to the darkened deck. My mind is racing. What could possibly be wrong in this safe little anchorage?
We had come in the day before, finding one of the most charming small hidden bays we’d ever seen. Sloping palm trees lined up on a spit of sand guard the narrow entrance. Inside, the shore, choked with mangroves, banana and climbing vines, rises from leafy restaurants at the shoreline like green cliffs all around us. At the waterline, there are outdoor restaurants. We had read stories of how the British fooled the French, whom they didn’t want to fight, by hiding in Marigot Bay and covering their masts and spreaders in palm fronds, hiding the ships so effectively that the French passed right by!
It’s also deep, this anchorage, so taken up mostly with moorings. There are no lines on the moorings though, so it would be a challenge to pick one up yourself. An entrepreneur/owner arrived with brilliant timing, and we happily paid EC $60 (about US $25), for him to take our bowline and fasten it through the buoy loop. Thus secured, we lazed and swam in the clear water, and spent a happy afternoon just breathing in the beauty of the place.
What could possibly be the matter now? No anchor, so we couldn’t have dragged. What then? What?
As I arrive on deck it takes me a moment to adjust to the night scene, but Ted is shouting, ‘Get the motor started! Get the motor started! We’ve been set adrift.’
Sure enough, we are right across the bay from where we were moored. We have missed a couple of boats as we drifted backwards, and are now about to collide with the edge of a restaurant and some mangrove bushes, just metres away. We start the motor and I go to examine the bow with a torch. The line is hanging in the water on one side. There’s a stiff breeze running now, and we suddenly realise how difficult it will be to reattach to the mooring again; there’s no line on the buoy to pick up!
We try a couple of passes, with Ted pulling the whole buoy out of the water by brute strength with the boat hook, trying to reach the small loop on the buoy with our bow line. It’s hard even to see it in the dark.
‘Hold it, Nance!’ he shouts, running back to control the helm.
‘I can’t, Ted, it’s too strong!’
I’m being dragged along the deck in my silk nightie, holding the buoy with a boat hook.
Ted leaves the wheel again.
‘Here, give it to me! I can’t see it – give it to me.’
‘I can’t hold it!’
‘Stop the boat again – now I’ve lost the f&%@ing boat hook!’ The boat hook has come apart and goes floating away . . . we must be waking up the whole anchorage with our noise.
‘Where’s the other boat hook?!’
‘Here, help me hold it!’
Now we’re both being dragged along the deck, me in my green silk nightie, Ted in, er, not very much. Ted’s still shouting confused instructions.
I realise there’s nothing for it. ‘I’m going to have to go in,’ I say, stepping over the lifeline and jumping. I hear, ‘Nance! No!’ behind me as I splash. As I surface, I hear him shouting, ‘Nance? Nance, where are you?’
‘Here, Ted. Give me the line!’
After that, of course, it’s easy. Down in the water it’s not a big task to thread the line through the loop and hand it back to Ted. While Ted secures the lines properly on deck (hopefully keeping inappropriate parts of his anatomy out of the way), I go swimming in search of the lost boat hook, finally finding it in the half-darkness of the anchorage behind another boat.
I climb out of the water onto Blackwattle’s swim board. The emergency is all over suddenly, but I’m wide awake.
I giggle. ‘The water’s warm, Ted – what about a swim?’
There’s only a slight pause, while Ted composes himself. ‘It’s 4.40 am,’ says he, ‘and you can have another swim, but I’m going back to bed.’
I am wide awake though, and sit for a minute dangling my legs in the warm dark water. It seems that I am destined to have lots of unintentional swims in the strangest of gear at the moment.
No, we never found the devil who untied the boat, but much later a cruiser tells us: ‘Oh, you fell for the old “untie-the-mooring” trick, did you?’
‘What?’ we ask together.
‘Well, you must have foiled their plan by waking up and discovering it yourself. Usually, they wait until you are just about to hit something and then they knock on the hull and “rescue” you – then they want a tip for their trouble.’
If the Marigot Bay heaven had a devil or two in it, a couple of days later we think we really are in heaven. We’re only seven miles south of Marigot Bay, anchored below some looming volcano cores called the Pitons.
Along the beach the kids play, taking for granted the Eden in which they live. They shake coconuts from the palm trees, and papaya are there for the taking. Older men swim from the shore to try to sell us coconuts for a dollar or take us for a tour. On the ocean side, monstrous superyachts tie up a few hundred metres away, the crew zipping about in tenders more expensive than Blackwattle, and their owners coming and going by helicopter. One can’t help ruminating on the injustice of the world, but watching the serene faces of the simple coastal people, I am not sure whether it might be the super yachties that I should feel sorry for.
It rains, then the sun shines, then there’s another thunderstorm and sunshine again. The air is crisp and fresh – we swim several times a day. These are the moments when it’s easy to remember why we are cruising.
We dine in the family restaurant of Benny, respected citizen. His family has owned, for four generations, a hundred acres of rainforest right under the Pitons. His booming voice rings out from his airy verandah, shouting orders at the various helpers in his restaurant and small guesthouse. He’s barefoot and king of his domain. His tall, fine-boned wife Marcilene does the cooking, his eleven-year-old daughter Jennilyn waits table. Benny Junior, a solemn lad of sixteen or so, drives the runabouts which act as water taxis for the area.
‘The Pitons are changing,’ Benny says, and there’s regret in his voice. ‘The neighbouring beach has been sold to a developer.’
Benny and Ted and I stare out along the pristine beach, alive with kids. They laugh raucously as they splash in the clear sea, their dark faces slippery with salt water.
‘That’s so sad!’ I say. ‘This is heaven for these kids – they probably don’t know how lucky they are now.’
‘They have no idea,’ says Benny, ‘and soon they will be shunted off, not allowed to play there. We have been offered so much money for this place, but there’s no way that I will sell, and I have made it so that my children can’t sell either. We must preserve something for the future.’
Benny and I go into his seaside dining room where dinner will be served. But Ted remains, thoughtful, staring at the wildly beautiful beach and its lush overhanging forest, soon to be destroyed by architects who design houses for rich holidaymakers from America and Europe. I can sense what he is thinking.
We dine on local fish, plantain, breadfruit and yams. Benny gives all his dinner guests a small ceramic sculpture, made by the local villagers. ‘I never sell these,’ he says, ‘but I pay the villagers a little and it keeps their traditional crafts alive.’
His words stay with us long after we leave to sail south.
———
We continue southwards in a never-ending beam reach. The showers come in small passing squalls to freshen days that are full of sunshine; the anchorages are all westward-facing so there are no lee shores; the water is clear aqua with plenty of firm sand for anchoring . . . The sailing is so good that we bypass the island of St Vincent and enter the large bay at Bequia (strangely pronounced ‘bekway’).
It doesn’t take long to figure out why this is one of the favourite anchorages in the Caribbean for sailors – large, easy anchorage, no high-rise apartments, small seaside cottages now used as shops and restaurants straggling along the shore. The main road is a footpath alongside the beach, and if it’s high tide you just may get your feet wet.
The bay is full of cruising yachts but further out, in the deeper water, the megayachts congregate – some are five-spreader sloops, sleek and silky, some ugly many-storeyed motoryachts. Some are covered in toys – jet skis, tenders, windsurfers, helicopters. Yet others are tall ships, with three or four masts, elegant lines. We watch their comings and goings with never-flagging interest during sundowners.
In the fresh markets the competing stall holders – dressed to a man in splashes of vibrant colour and with long, long dreadlocked hair – are vicious in their competition and miserable in their chatter. They hassle, abuse, shove their faces in between my face and the fruit in my hand. The fruit is full of juice and taste though – the freshest mangos, huge avocados, blood grapefruit, fresh limes, mighty passionfruit, bananas straight from the tree. We dine richly, and suffer the aggressiveness of the market stall holders.
The sun feels warm on my back as I float face down, breathing through a snorkel. The long, waving grass beneath me glows yellow and green in the sunlight. Tiny fish appear and disappear. An old turtle is oblivious to my sprawling body hanging motionless above him, and munches with great concentration on his grassy lunch. Then he paddles energetically to the surface, takes a breath, curves down in an arc to continue his lunch, then back for another breath, another arc, another breath. I don’t move a single muscle. Luckily there’s no current to take me away. We coexist happily for what seems a long time until, after one of his slow meanders to the surface, he turns – oops – towards me. I start backing out of the way, as delicately as I can, but swimming backwards was not one of the skills taught in my childhood swimming lessons. He regards me quizzically for a moment or two, then lazily veers just enough to miss me by a hair as he arcs back to his busy grazing on the grasses below.
We’re in the Tobago Cays, one of our most memorable experiences of the Caribbean.
It’s crowded, but why wouldn’t it be?
So close to the other Windward Islands that it’s accessible by plane for day trips, Tobago Cays is an iconic portrayal of all the best in tropical cruising. The waving palm trees, white sands, clear water and amazing sea life attract tourists by the boatload. Trying to imagine we are the only ones here, we roam in our dinghy, finding the best spots to swim and snorkel. We wander the nearby islands – all uninhabited and chaotic with palm trees and windblown plants. We climb the hills, loiter on the clean white sands. At night, the reef and the palm trees fade with the sunset, and inhabited islands twinkle in the distance.
We gradually make our way down the Grenadines, each village sleepier than the last, and then on to Grenada until we reach Prickly Bay, shallow and pleasant, where most Caribbean cruisers turn around to go north again. But we will not – our path is onward, onward, forever a strange anchorage and a new experience.
It is when we are away into the ocean heading southwards for Trinidad, with Blackwattle leaping and cantering over the undulating waters, that the Windwards offer their parting gift.
I am sitting thinking about not very much, staring dreamily at the orange globe of a sun, reddening as it sinks serenely behind the horizon, becoming a semicircle, an arc, a small glimmer. Then, wondrously, at its last sinking moment, it’s there, the green flash – that rare, tiny, but brilliant blaze of green light that appears with the last glimmer of the sun. I startle as I see it, unmistakably. Now I am alert and screaming out for Ted. Too late, Ted, you missed it. The flash disappears, then the boat rises on a wave, and the green flash reappears, just for an instant before the horizon is dark, as though the flash had never been.
I had seen the green flash twice in one sunset.