West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

“So, you managed to escape purgatory eh…?” said Joey, smiling wickedly as Rob turned to see who had accosted him in the name of friendship. As exhilarating as its alienness had been to Rob upon arriving, he was quite relieved to see a familiar face. After all, this was Rob’s first venture out of the States and he was still more than a bit tentative about his comfort level alone in a foreign land. Even if it was slightly akin to being in Disneyland, albeit for adults only. So, at that moment when Maya placed a tall, icy rum punch into Rob’s hand, his vacation commenced, sending him on his first true embarkation into adventure.

  Rob and the crew sailed by day, partied by night, and drank rum and cokes, rum punch, and petite punches around the clock. A week passed and Rob was feeling no pain, aside from a little sunburn. He no longer knew or even cared what day it was, or even what year for that matter. All Rob knew at that point, was that he didn’t feel quite so empty anymore. In fact, Rob was in a state of perfect contentment, beauty, satisfaction, happiness and delight – he was, he thought, in Paradise. At least he was until that morning he awoke sporting one hellacious hangover and an empty bank account, and Joey was no where to be found. It was all just a dream right? The check to Joey for a half million dollars to buy half of the boat and the message to his boss suggesting that he invest in pork bellies. Of course it was all a dream – a bad one.

  But let’s back up a little here since Rob’s inevitable demise actually started the moment he had accepted Joey’s offer to join him in Paradise. However, it wasn’t until that final night of race week that Joey’s carefully laid plan had actually been signed, sealed, and delivered.

  The evening had started, as had all other evenings on the quay in Nelson’s dockyard, with happy hour aboard the Island Fever – having already polished off ten cases of Mount Gay Rum for the week. But tonight’s events included far more festivities than seeing who could drink the most R&C’s and still climb the mast. Joey, being the consummate host, was making certain that his guests fully experienced every possible nuance of race week from tormenting the ‘maxi’s’ (90 foot plus – three million dollar, monohull3* sailboats) by blowing past them on a beat to weather as if they were standing still, to joining in on the drunken debauchery which reeked havoc at the dock every evening. Although the Island Fever had not been permitted to enter the Antigua Sailing Week4** race officially, she was permitted however, to enter the closing night raft race which took place in the now grossly polluted harbor – thanks to the fact that with no dumping facilities, hundreds of boats had for the last week simply clear flushed their head’s5*** contents directly into the harbor. But by that evening, everyone was so polluted by the Mount Gay rum it didn’t matter to them how much slime had accumulated in the tiny inlet. Whatever germs they might happen to ingest by jumping into the filthy water of English Harbor at Nelson’s Dockyard would surely be sterilized by the alcohol content in their bloodstream before it had the opportunity to grow into anything more harmful than some sort of tropical toe jam.

  This was Joey’s chance to shine, since the one and only rule for the closing night raft race it seemed, was that the cost of your vessel exceed no more than $100 EC (East Caribbean Currency), equivalent to about forty-eight U.S. dollars. So, to insure that the Island Fever crew would be the center of attention regardless of whether or not they actually made it across the finish line, Joey constructed his raft by lashing together a harem of ‘Annie O’ blow-up dolls, topped off with a rubber ducky or two. The Island Fever’s entry was definitely the hit of the evening, or for that matter the week, even if it had sunk the minute three drunken men and nine inebriated women, dove onto it with oars in hand from the dock at the sound of the starting gun.

  Now to assist him in his plan, as Joey well knew, the end of race week was always polished off, as were most of the sailors, with one last drunken debauchery known as ‘The Admiral’s Ball’ – held at the Admiral’s Inn which was housed in a two hundred year old warehouse from Captain Nelson’s original Dockyard. The ball, requiring shoes, jacket, and tie, however made for an eclectic array of dress from a group of sailors who had brought none of the sort with them. Instead, they resorted to wearing Top Siders, sail ties, and foul weather jackets to accommodate the evening’s dress code. Rob, of course, was one of the many who had brought none of the required dress with him to Paradise. After all who needs anything more than thongs, baggies, and T-shirts in the tropics?

  The week had proven to Rob to be, as Joey had hoped, an endless stream of tanned, beautiful girls in tiny little bikinis, sun, and fun, not to mention an endless flow of libations. By now Rob was convinced he had truly discovered Paradise, as best he could discern through the fog, even though it was one of the clearest nights of the year with the tropical sky displaying thousands of celestial bodies. His focus however, though definitely on bodies, was not on the celestial type in the least – Rob thought he had surely died and gone to heaven as he danced the night away to Jimmy Buffett songs and the undulating beat of the Calypso steel band.

  It was somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, while staggering back to the boat arm in arm, that Joey cast the bait, well disguised of course as a tempting morsel thrown out for the quarry to nibble, only to be skillfully retrieved just before the hook was set. Joey knew well, that to insure successfully landing a fish, one must always offer a tease first and wait for the prey to bite the hook of its own accord, insuring that even if the fish changed its mind once it realized that there was a catch to the tasty morsel offered, it was far too late to get away. This was a lesson learned long ago by Joey who was well versed in the sport of trophy fishing, no matter whether it be the type of trophy with scales or the kind with tanned, bare breasted epidermis.

  “So, Rob, buddy. What a week we’ve had. I mean it’s hard to believe you have to head back to Chicago tomorrow and that relentless job of yours.”

  “Oh… yeah, it’s hard to believe I have to head back to Chicago tomorrow,” Rob repeated parroting Joey, as the thought suddenly dawned on him for the first time.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if you could live like this all the time?” Joey taunted dangling the bait. “I mean if you owned a boat like the Island Fever you could stay here year round, kick back and really live the good life, not just vacation here once every five years. Too bad you can’t stay man, the girls really seem to dig you, I guess it’s cause of all that culture you acquired in the big city,” he said, patting Rob on the back. “I mean, they dig that almost as much as if you owned your own boat. Just imagine what it would be like if you did.”

  “Yeah?” Rob queried, while the remainder of his brain cells attempted to process the thought and sort through the sludge that a weeks worth of drinking had deposited.

  “But I guess you just have too many obligations, I mean that girlfriend of yours is pretty high maintenance. She wouldn’t like it much if you just upped and decided to do what you wanted instead of what society thinks you should do. I mean living life everyday to its fullest is perceived by some as selfish, immature, and indulgent, but you know what I say, ‘You only go around once, in this body at least. So, ya might as well enjoy it while everything’s still working of its own accord.’”

  “Sydney doesn’t run my life you know,” slurred Rob as they made their way across the dockyard lit only by the full moon which danced across the unconscious bodies strewn about the dock – sailors who had been unable to walk to or find their boats once the party was over. “You know, for that matter, no one tells me what to do with my life but me. I mean, I can do anything I want with my life. Even buy a boat, quit my job, and move to the Caribbean if I want.”

  “Sounds like some pretty big talk to me. Owning a boat’s a huge responsibility. You’ve gotta know how to take care of it and sail it. You can’t just dive into that sort of thing without some experience behind you.”

  Reaching the Island Fever’s slip, Rob stopped and turned seriously to face Joey. “I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you sell me half of the Island Fever, I mean you’v
e got all the experience I need.”

  Joey chuckled for a moment feigning amusement at Rob’s request, pretending he thought it to be a joke.

  “I’m not joking, sell me half of the Island Fever,” Rob repeated, trying to sound as straight as his inebriated brain would allow him.

  “But she’s not for sale, and even if she were, you couldn’t afford her.”

  “Try me,” Rob challenged as he pulled his checkbook from his back shorts pocket. “What’s she worth?”

  “At least a mill. But I told you she’s not for sale, not even half of her.”

  “Turn around.”

  “What for?”

  “Just turn around,” slurred Rob in a week attempt at a command.

  Trying to pacify him, Joey turned around and Rob proceeded to use Joey’s back as a desk to write a check for five hundred thousand dollars, even though he was unable to focus on the lines. With great effort he tore the check from the checkbook and proudly presented it to Joey as if to prove him wrong.

  Joey just looked down at the piece of paper in Rob’s hand, totally bewildered, then at Rob, and then at the Island Fever. “What’s this?”

  “A check for half the boat,” Rob said flatly as if the deal were already closed.

  “I… just don’t know about this Rob, this is a big decision for me. I mean this is something I’m going to have think about,” Joey insisted as a faint smile raised one corner of his mouth undetected by Rob. Folding the check he tucked it away in his shirt pocket for safe keeping. “Let me sleep on it. I’ll give you my answer in the morning.”

  So dim was Rob’s state of consciousness, he was barely aware of the two girls Joey sent him as a present that evening to consummate their deal. In fact he was far too inebriated to say no due to any sort of guilt about Sydney. Both Maya and a sexy blonde Swede named Inga, joined him in his bunk just in time to help him get comfortable. They undressed him as he swayed with the motion of the boat on the dock, and tucked him into his bunk – joining him to be certain he was well taken care of. Joey knew that it was every man’s dream to make love to two women at once, and in light of their new partnership, he hadn’t hesitated for a moment to share the wealth with Rob. They started by slathering Rob with lotion – each working on a different part of his now titillated body. Rob was in ecstasy with a gorgeous blonde and a brunette massaging him from his loins to his toes, but when Inga placed her well endowed lips around Benny and proceeded to resuscitate him, he was in ecstasy. In fact, the Benny Monster had surely decided to make a grand appearance that night. But, when Maya took over and climbed aboard – Rob was certain he’d died and gone to heaven as he lost all conscious recall of what was to follow – once Benny took the helm.

  In fact, Rob would find that when he awoke the next morning, he unfortunately, or fortunately, didn’t even recall his infidelitous evening with the two gorgeous, naked girls who lay contentedly either side of him in the bunk. It was just as well, at least in his absent state of mind, he would remember nothing to feel guilty for, where Sydney was concerned at least. Up until that point, Rob had shown an amazing amount of self restraint in the area of fidelity to his wife to be. But then, Rob had always been that kind of guy since sincerity was his middle name. He had always been obsessively honest to his own detriment. Having been raised by a semi-Catholic mother and grandmother who had given up on converting his Protestant father, Rob had the market cornered on guilt and remorse in his family, which was the only remaining influence from his years of Sunday mass and weekly confessions with his grandmother, Lilly. His impulsive purging of guilt drilled into him by years of confession, had made it difficult for Rob to cheat on Sydney or any other past relationship that he’d ever had without spilling the beans. Besides, other than Sydney and Julie Anne, his other relationships could, like his airplane rides, be tolled on a single die.

  His grandma Lilly, a devout Catholic, had bravely immigrated alone from Italy to the United States when she was only seventeen. A tall, beautiful, dark eyed Italian girl, she’d landed in New York with little money, her mother’s ring, the clothes on her back, an old steamer trunk, a talent for baking, and her virginity. Within weeks her money had been spent, and her mother’s precious heirloom, not to mention her virginity, had been liquidated. Her baking skills had finally landed her a job bringing in a few measly dollars a week, and a place to live above the bakery with three other girls. Although, it became quickly apparent that the baker was looking for more ovens than the wood burning ones downstairs in which to bake his strudel. It didn’t take Lilly long to realize that her quickest way out of that dirty, unfriendly city was to meet a man that would take her far, far away and provide for her a life – if not an exciting life, at least a comfortable one. Lilly was a quick learner. She had astutely determined that the best way to meet a man from another part of the country would be, of course, at tourist attractions. So, on her days off, Lilly spent her time touring the sights of the city in hopes of meeting, if not her true love, the love of her life. Of course, this process required a lot of trial and error – meeting men from numerous cities, not to mention Ports of Call. But, Lilly was holding out for her best shot at security after giving up on all the unreliable candidates she’d met.

  Three months after landing in America, she went to the top of the newly built Empire State building to look at the city, but more importantly, to look for a man. As she was struggling with a telescope, a kind man named Canton, had gallantly come to her assistance. Canton was it seemed, visiting New York from a state in the mid-west called Iowa, and most importantly, looking for a wife to take back to his home town. Within two days, Canton had proposed and the two were on a train west to the land where the corn grew tall, and unlike New York, the people were friendly. Less than eight months later, a robust, healthy, eight pound baby girl, Helen, Rob’s mother, was born a bit premature. Lilly had explained it away as her healthy genetic constitution and how she too had been born a preemie at eight pounds. And Canton, who was in love with Helen from the first moment he laid eyes on his blue-eyed, golden skinned daughter, never even bothered to do the math.

  That night on the Island Fever, when Rob had finally drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face, although seemingly in a state of unconsciousness, he tossed and turned all night – more than Bobby Lewis had in his brief but memorable career. It was a long restless night, filled with one bad dream after the other, interspersed with dreams of Lilly’s steamer trunk hidden in the bilge of the Island Fever. Rob’s subconscious was somehow making a connection between Lilly’s mysterious trunk and the Island Fever – both of which were symbolic of the unknown in Rob’s world. Their deeper connection having yet to be revealed to Rob as he rehashed a recurring dream all night that he had bought a boat in the Caribbean, spent all his money, lost his job, his girl, and his sanity, and he didn’t even know how to sail. He awoke late the next morning, with the sun high and the boat sweltering hot wondering how to interpret the previous night’s hallucinations – until he started remembering the previous night’s folly, like recalling a bad dream.

  1*CATAMARAN or ‘CAT’– A boat, either power or sail with ‘two’ hulls of equal size, which are held apart by a rigid deck – a notoriously fast hull design for sailing vessels. This type of boat should not be confused with a trimaran which, as its name suggests, has ‘three’ hulls in total –one central hull and two outrigger-like hulls. A Spronk catamaran is named after its Dutch designer who built these classic boats in the West Indies for nearly three decades.

  2*NELSON’S DOCKYARD — Named after Britain’s favorite hero, Admiral Nelson, it was built on Antigua in 1745, as the main naval station for Britain in the Lesser Antilles. After the restoration of the ruins, today it has become a center for yachting commerce in Antigua.

  3*MONOHULL — As opposed to a catamaran or trimaran which have at least one back-up hull to keep it afloat in an emergency, a monohull is a sailing vessel with only one hull, which has a very large, long fin made of lead called a keel
attached to the bottom – designed to keep it upright at all times, even once it has drug the boat to the bottom of the ocean after it has sprung a leak. This minor design flaw of course defines the difference between a monohull and a multihull as –a boat that will surely sink, and a boat that will not, even though the latter may end up upside down.

  4**ANTIGUA SAILING WEEK — Formerly part of the CORT circuit – Caribbean Ocean Racing Triangle – it is now an independently held race which, over the years, has become more of a tradition than an event. There hasn’t been a catamaran class in the Antigua race week however, since a ‘Hells Angel’ of yacht racing catamaran captain, T-boned one of the classic maxis at the start of the race several years ago. Catamarans are also frowned upon by more traditional sailors, due to the fact that their multi-million dollar monohulls are thoroughly embarrassed by those funny looking raft-like craft, worth a fraction of their value, who breeze past them as if they’re standing still.

  5***HEAD — This is not a reference to any part of the human anatomy, either large or small, but is in fact a term used to describe nautical toilets, the etymology of which there’s no need to go into here other than to say that the head or bow of the boat was used to relieve oneself by the early sailors. In many cases today it is simply a hole through the deck on a catamaran – especially in the islands, where they have yet to learn of such sanitary concepts as holding tanks and dumping stations. Why bother, since on most islands, the island’s raw sewage is dumped directly into the town harbor anyway, and those who have no land fill simply dump unwanted garbage off shore.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hook, Line, and Sinker

  “Sharks are one of the dangers of swimming

  in tropical waters.”

  Ian

  And a bad dream it was – more like a nightmare in fact. However, the check to Joey for a half million dollars to buy half of the boat and the message to his boss telling him to where to stick his investments was unfortunately a reality. It only took three hours waiting in line at the island’s phone company and three minutes on the phone to his bank in Chicago to find out that it definitely wasn’t a dream at all – in fact, Joey had already cashed the check. It took only three seconds on the phone with his boss to realize that he had indeed left the message. God, maybe life in Chicago hadn’t been so bad after all. But it was too late for regrets, since he was the proud new owner of one half of one very big Hobie Cat,1* thought Rob, looking at his half million dollars floating there in the dirty, scummy water of English Harbor. Why, Joey had even had the decency to leave Rob a bill of sale, and a note telling him that he had slept on it and had decided to take him up on his offer. He had also added that he had important business elsewhere and would be gone for a while asking Rob to please take good care of their boat while he was away. This time Joey had gone fishing for very big game and Rob had taken the bait and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Rob it seemed was Joey’s newest prize and he was feeling quite like a fish that had been hooked, landed, and mounted, all in the course of a week.