5*FRIGATE BIRDS — A black, two to three pound bird with a wingspan greater that any other bird in proportion to their weight. Although masters of the air they are hopeless on their own two feet and are unable to take off from the water should they be so unlucky as to land there. Due to being challenged in the fishing department, they have resorted to steeling fish from other birds who are more adept at the task – thus their name “frigate” or “man o’war.”
6*MAST — The upright spar that holds the sail and stands perpendicular to the board when sailing. Of course, since the mast on a windsurfer is hinged, it only remains upright as long as its driver does.
7**WISHBOOM — The wishbone shaped bar that wraps around either side of the mast and is attached to it at one end at the clew. 8*** The wishboom serves a similar purpose as a boom on a normal sailboat.
8***CLEW — The lower corner of a sail – aft – where the sheets tie to control the trim and position of the sail.
9*SAINT MARTIN/SINT MAARTEN — An island originally discovered by Columbus on the eleventh of November, 1493 and claimed for the Spanish. It was later taken over by, and divided between the Dutch and the French. Their method of claiming their respective sides of the island was – the Frenchman and the Dutchman would consume copious amounts of champagne and gin – respectively; and then start at the peak of Mt. Concordia in the middle of the island, and walked as far as they could get in the hot sun before they each collapsed. This proved that the French are far better at holding their liquor since the French won 25 square miles of the little 36 square mile island – leaving the balance for the Dutch. A uniquely democratic solution, don’t you think?
10**LEEWARD — Pronounced (Loo.r.d), meaning the protected side either of a boat, an island, or even a portion of the chain of islands in the Lesser Antilles. It is the side exactly opposite of the windward side – the side from which the wind is blowing. The leeward side is in most cases the dry side of any island since the side to get the wind or weather first, also gets the rain the minute the clouds hit the hillsides. With a boat, the leeward and windward sides change depending on which direction the boat is headed. In other words it goes from side to side depending whether it’s on is on a starboard or port tack. In regard to which chain of islands are considered the Leewards in the Antilles – they start with Anguilla on the northern end, the first island in the Lesser Antilles down through Dominica. These islands are designated the Leewards since they are situated more westerly or leeward – further away from the prevailing easterly Tradewinds than the Windward Islands, which start with Martinique at the northern end and continue on down through Trinidad which is at its extremity near to South America.
11*LANDSRADIO — The radio station atop the tallest island in the area which could transfer radio reception to the telephone lines.
CHAPTER NINE
Excess Baggage
“Never pack more than you can carry.”
Ian
By now Rob was starting to feel a little guilty about Sydney – leaving her all alone in Chicago while he was off having so much fun in Paradise. And Sydney was doing her best to add to his guilt with message after message to Fritz about how badly she needed him for such important decisions about their wedding plans such as – puce and persimmon or celery and celedon. As far as Rob knew she was questioning the menu rather than the color scheme. As damaging as Sydney’s frustration was over Rob’s lack of availability on such vitally important matters, her inherent suspicious nature was twice as destructive. And, she was getting pretty suspicious about the whole affair – after all, Rob was living with another woman, even if she was only the skipper of his boat. Her only satisfaction was in knowing that any woman who skippered a sailboat must be at best quite the opposite of feminine, petite, and attractive. Boy was she surprised when she arrived at the dock in English Harbor unannounced to find a cute little blonde busting out of a very tiny bikini, leaning over the back bridge deck of Rob’s vessel to change his spark plugs. Not to mention the look on Rob’s face when he looked up from greasing the shaft on his engine, only to see Sydney standing there on the dock in her high heals next to ten grossly overstuffed suitcases. At that moment, there were a wealth of images running through Sydney’s mind. Poor Rob – this time he’d really found himself in a pickle since the circumstantial evidence weighed heavily against him, even if he was innocent of any wrong doing, at least where Alex was concerned. Then again, possession is nine tenths of the law, and it was apparent that Rob was in possession of one very attractive female captain. Rob felt little or no pangs of guilt regarding his earlier menage tois, complements of Joey, since he had no memory of his transgression. However, his current compromising position with Alex proved quite the contrary. After all, they were sharing a small rubber raft while getting his engine lubed.
Rob quickly began a futile attempt at damage control while trying hopelessly to stow Sydney’s baggage – ignoring Alex’s insistence that it was far too much for the boat to carry.
Suddenly, he felt as if he were responsible for slightly more excess baggage1* than he actually owned or cared to, and he was getting worried about how he was going to stow it without rocking the boat or possibly even sinking the ship as Alex feared. Rob was beginning to think that he should have invested in a larger boat since even the QE II would have felt like close quarters to this crew at the moment. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most congenial atmosphere on board, since Alex’s first impression of Sydney was that she was a spoiled little, rich bitch. Not to mention her sinking disappointment, since she was just starting to enjoy spending time with Rob. And, well you can imagine what Sydney’s mind had conceived in regard to Alex.
It seemed that Sydney had decided to surprise Rob and come down for a little vacation when she learned from Fritz that there was a week open in their charter schedule. Why, she had even made plans to sail with them to St. Maarten for Carnival,2** which luckily for them had been held late this year due to the island’s mourning of the death of an important government official.
So, to Rob’s surprise, there was Sydney standing in the Island Fever’s cockpit with her hair falling out of the perfect French twist, her dress all wrinkled and sweat soaked,and her make-up smeared and dripping down her face in rivulets. She was more than a little hot and bothered by the non-air-conditioned island taxi ride from the airport, a broken nail due to the fact that there was no one at the airport to carry her luggage, and two missing bags. At that moment, she had no intention of holding back any accusations which were rapidly germinating in her mind and wasted no time in slinging the first insult at Alex. “So you’re the woman who’s been cohabiting with my future husband for the last six weeks,” she snarled.
“I guess if you call captain and owner working together on a charter boat, cohabiting, then I stand guilty of the crime,” responded Alex, pleading her confession in her best Mae West while futility attempting to retain a straight face.
Of course, this only served to infuriate Sydney further, who now proceeded to fire the next round at Alex, point-blank, “Why do you even bother to wear that rag you call a bikini top, it’s so skimpy that it hardly serves any purpose. But then, if I was as small as you, I wouldn’t be too concerned about covering them up either.”
Luckily, Alex immediately recognized the gauntlet which had been so neatly laid down before her, disguising a simple hormone induced fit of raw female jealousy, and chose not to pick it up and accept the challenge. At least not on Sydney’s terms. Instead, Alex simply whipped open the bow-tie holding her top in place, and in the tradition of the islands, gallantly removed the offending object in question totally revealing her well proportioned, firm, tanned breasts. “If it bothers you that much, I won’t wear it. After all we are in the Caribbean,” said Alex as casually as if she were removing an overcoat after coming in out of the cold.
This brave act of Alex’s left Sydney absolutely speechless, a condition that was quite new to her and most of all to Rob, who was extremely impressed with
Alex’s masterful one-up-manship of Sydney, not to mention how intrigued he was by seeing her topless for the first time. Rob stood there with his mouth open in disbelief waiting for the explosion that was surely imminent. Thank goodness for Raymond who had the insight and good judgment to intervene at that critical moment with a tall frozen pina collada, Sydney’s favorite drink – little parasol and all. Unbelievably enough, Alex’s stand had actually caught Sydney so completely off guard that her temper was somewhat quelled by her confusion and embarrassment, at least for the time being. And Raymond’s icy refreshment, seemed to serve as a relief from the heat in more ways than one – it seemed to quench the fire that was on the brink of igniting from sheer internal combustion.
“How could she have just turned up like this without calling first,” thought Rob. “I’d planned to break it to her slowly that Alex was young, blonde, and attractive. I would have told her… eventually. I’ve always known that Sydney was the jealous type but I didn’t expect that she’d really be threatened by Alex. I’d better find a way to smooth this over fast or by next week her father will have bought a cruise ship and offered Alex a job, if Sydney doesn’t make her quit first.”
Although Sydney’s jealousy was quite flattering in some ways, Rob was a bit concerned as to whether or not Sydney’s distrust of his commitment to her was something that he could deal with the rest of his life.
“I just feel sorry for poor Alex, I should have warned her. She really doesn’t deserve this sort of abuse. What if Sydney does make her quit? I guess I have to try to diffuse this thing before it ever gets started. Maybe I should convince her that Alex and I can barely stand each other.”
Under the circumstances Alex somewhat understood the purpose of estranging himself from her in front of Sydney. After all, any gesture of familiarity between them could have easily been misconstrued by Sydney as more than it truly was. So, when Rob began speaking to her like an employee, not to mention Sydney commanding her like a servant, Alex was ready to jump ship before they even left the harbor.
Hoping to pacify Sydney with sailing and a little island hopping, and distract her enough to keep her mind on anything other than her competition to see who was going to be the real captain of Rob’s ship, Rob decided to leave in the wee hours of the morning. Alex would just have to get by with their broken engine, which was unable to go over six miles per hour due to a prop bent on a piece of floating garbage on the last day of charter. Even though it was barely enough speed to maneuver that type of large, unwieldy boat in a tight anchorage, Rob insisted to Alex’s dismay, that it would have to wait until they got to St. Maarten for repair. He was desperate to placate Sydney, and luckily, his strategy worked as he knew it would. After all, Sydney was Syndey, and it didn’t take long for her to take control of any situation she found herself in. In fact she was already planning their voyage and insisted on stopping on the way to St. Maarten on that quaint but chic little French island of St. Barth that she had heard so much about. She was simply dying to have lunch on the beach at Chez Francine, and of course browse through a few of the shops on the quai. In fact, Sydney had it all mapped out even before she’d arrived on the island, since she’d managed to get the latest inside track on the chic and hip places to see and be seen in the islands from her posh circle of friends.
Alex was more than a little pissed off about their change in plans but then it was Rob’s boat, and if he wanted to sail to St. Barth two days early then she couldn’t stop him, or even have much to say about it. Alex just hoped that the engine would hold out until they got to St. Maarten, where she knew she could buy a new prop and make the needed repairs before their next charter.
Alex set sail from Falmouth Harbor, where they had filled their water and fuel tanks, around two the next morning, estimating their arrival in St. Barth after sunup, no matter how good a speed they might make with a fifteen knot breeze on a downwind broad reach.4* She calculated the seventy-eight mile trip to take them somewhere between five to six hours since on a downwind leg, a catamaran averages more or less the speed of the wind. Alex preferred not to arrive at the entrance to Gustavia in the dark, even though it was reasonably well marked by a beacon on shore guiding sailors between Pain du Sucre (Sugar Loaf) and Gros Islets, and The Saintes (offshore rocks and islands). She always tried to be a cautious sailor and avoided putting herself, her passengers, or the boat into any questionable circumstances whenever possible, since there were enough times where undesirable conditions could not be avoided. Alex didn’t believe in using up all of her good luck up on unnecessary risks.
As angry and frustrated as she was, Alex did look forward to going to St. Barth and St. Maarten for the food and the beaches. One could find food worthy of European bistros at any one of the many French, Italian, and Creole restaurants that littered the two little islands. Antigua on the contrary offered only mediocre, bland dining, reminiscent of its British heritage. Alex had found the Englishman’s food to be quite boring and unfullfilling, much like their lovemaking. Based on her geographically impossible rule, Alex had allowed herself a moderate sampling of lovers over the years in her travels, feeling secure that she would never encounter a foreign one-nighter again. However, with the jet age, the world had grown smaller and Alex had run into a French fling on the dock one day while hauling out her boat in Guadeloupe, convincing her that even her geographical requirements were not necessarily a reliable rule-of-thumb anymore.
Sydney stayed on deck for the first ten minutes but since the only mode of travel that interested her was first class air, she opted to sleep through the tranquil night sail rather than fret herself about large fish and the big black sea that seemed to swallow them up the minute they rounded Johnson Point and headed west northwest around the western side of the island. Rob helped Sydney crawl into the master bunk which she nervously referred to as a coffin for two. She kissed Rob goodnight, popped a sleeping pill, then donned her night cream, ear plugs, and her eye mask. Once all of her senses were obscured, she lay down apprehensively for her first night at sea, which was technically also Rob’s.
“Don’t worry,” Rob assured her, “I’ll come down to join you as soon as I’m certain they have everything under control. Knowing all the while that there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be able to sleep knowing that they were on the open sea.
Of course, with her ear plugs in Syndey heard none of his assurances and had already pulled the sheet over her head – like a corpse in their coffin built for two. Relieved that she was settled, Rob turned out the light and climbed the steps from the hull, then crawled on his hands and knees through the closed companionway up to the deckhouse. He was quite happy to reach the fresh air on deck once again since he still hadn’t gotten the hang of staying below deck while the boat was under sail.
Now, Sydney was even less of a sailor than Rob, if that was possible, and by around three in the morning Sydney emerged from her bunk in the leeward hull greener than the color of the phosphorus in the wake behind the boat. For everyone but Sydney, who was at this point suffering from that French disease known as ‘mal de mer,’ a.k.a. ‘green at the gills,’ and busy feeding the fish over the back of the bridge deck, it was a glorious full moon sail offering up a magical moonbow5*.
Sydney was in the cockpit for the rest of the night, draped over the back of the bridge deck like a wet towel – drifting in and out of consciousness in between bouts of nausea and vomiting. The fact that there was no horizon to watch in the darkness made the queasiness worse. Having been a sailor myself, I know that finding a fixed point of land to stare at will usually help to still the confusion in one’s inner ear, by convincing the mind that not everything on the planet is moving.
Rob sat with Sydney all night knowing first hand how it felt to succumb to the motion of the ocean since his first day out he’d been armed with enough experience in the matter to last him a lifetime. Although he was adjusted to the ocean’s motion, this was Rob’s first outing in the boat after dark and to say that the prosp
ect of a night sail had made Rob a bit anxious at first, was an understatement. The last thing he needed was to let Sydney sense his anxiety, so Rob did his best to play the courageous sailor for Sydney’s sake even though it had put the fear of God into him. But, once they passed the Northern head of the island and found themselves in open sea where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean, his fears were quelled by a somewhat more relaxed state of terror which eventually settled down to a mild panic once they were well on their way past the small islands to the west of them – Monterrat,7*** Nevis,8**** and then St. Kitts, or St. Christopher where the Island Fever had been conceived and born.
Slowly, as his fears subsided Rob began to realize how incredibly beautiful it was to be on the water at night. It must have been the galloping motion, characteristic to catamarans, that made Rob imagine he was riding on a magnificent black horse over a magical carpet of starlight which stretched across the heavens. Except where the second liquid crescent moon danced off the wave crests in shimmering snakes slithering across its surface, it was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. For the first time in his life Rob felt close to God, he thought. Or, whoever was responsible for the creation of this seemingly eternal Universe with which Rob now felt as one – simply one more breath of light which twinkled in the ethers. For the first time in his life, he no longer felt the separation between his mortal existence and the rest of the cosmos. Somehow, everything aside from that moment seemed as if it were only a mere perception; for in that moment, Rob had been transported beyond the physical to a place that seemed in truth reality – a place beyond body, mind and ego. He felt as one with the very soul of the Universe. In that moment he had finally arrived. Although, to my great disappointment it was to serve as only a brief preview for Rob instead of a new reality, since by the time the sun had come up the magic had worn off and he was now focused on one very green Sydney who lay unconscious in the cockpit. Rob was starting to get concerned since she was slightly greener than the new foliage on the hillsides of St. Barth.9******
West of the Quator Page 12
