West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  Of course, being anchored in Simpson Bay, Rob and Alex were only minuets away from Grandma and Grandpa’s beach and still made a habit of parking their other two vessels there – the Dinghy Fever and the Yellow Submarine, so they could stop for a quick visit whenever they came and went. Alex continued her morning ritual of coffee with Grandma and of course, afternoon tea, and Rob made certain to never miss an opportunity for elevenses or happy hour, and a quick game of dominos with Grandpa whenever time allowed. And time, it seemed, was the most plentiful asset Rob currently had on hand.

  Alex had done more than a little exploring over the years in the waters around St. Maarten and she was dying to show Rob her favorite anchorage in the entire world aside from Barbuda – Tintamarre,1* (or Flat Island as it was called by the locals). Its beach was one of the most pristine beautiful deserted beaches around, and Alex wanted to share sleeping on the beach all night under stars with the water lapping along the shore, with Rob. Sleeping on the beach in the islands was only possible to do on Flat Island since the overabundant hermit crab and lizard population left nothing resembling an insect living on the island, (i.e. sandfleas and mosquitoes) to nibble on you during the night as Ichy had painfully experienced.

  Since the repairs were finished, and the Island Fever was staying put in that part of the world until November, Raymond set off for a little surfing in the Dominican Republic, and Luis headed back to St. Kitts to start on the newest boat in the yard. This left Rob and Alex to themselves, with the exception of their new found foster son, Christian. Assured by Grandma that she would look after Christian for a week or so, Rob and Alex decided to venture out of Simpson Bay, sans engine, and take the Island Fever out for her first shake-down cruise since the accident. They’d be only, an hour and a half from the safety of Simpson Bay Lagoon and close enough to get back in an emergency.

  Unfortunately however, the satellite which monitored the weather for that part of the Caribbean also decided to take a vacation and had taken off for some other galaxy, leaving the Caribbean on its own in predicting approaching hurri-canes. But, since the weather looked promising for at least the next few days or so, Alex decided it was safe to sail the ten miles to the other side of the island and visit Tintamarre which was just off the coast of, Club Orient on Orient Beach – the nudist resort on the French side of St. Martin.

  As usual, Alex sent Rob off to town for provisions while she readied the boat for sailing. Upon his return, Rob gave the boat a thorough once over to check for any stowaways named Christian, who may have decided to join them on their little expedition. They left at about midday on Monday hoping to miss the weekend warriors on the little island and find it deserted. It didn’t matter that they were engine-less, they wouldn’t need it to sail around the island to the northeastern corner where Tintamarre lay – an easy sail to weather then a comfortable beam reach past Guana Bay and Oyster Pond. After all, what did sailors do prior to the invention of the internal-combustion engine? Like Alex, they had to rely solely on the wind for forward propulsion of their vessel to carry them to their intended destination.

  Alex raised the main while they still sat at anchor, then helped Rob pull up their extra anchor – a much easier job with an engine. They dropped off their mooring as Alex raised the mainstaysail and set the mainsail hard to starboard, then turned the helm hard to port to back her around under sail alone. Once around, Alex fell off the wind and headed out around Pelican Cay at the entrance to Simpson Bay, as Rob raised their light weather genoa. They headed southeast past Philipsburg on a tight hauled port tack – off in the direction of St. Barth.

  Today, Alex would turn the helm over to Rob since there was no one on board to get hurt and they had no schedules to keep. Taking Grandma’s advise, she had decided to teach him to sail without him even realizing it, and make him think that he was learning all by himself. Besides, from teaching kids to sail for years, Alex knew that the only way to truly learn was by feel. One had to sense the helm in their hands – feel the movement of the boat and the direction of the wind and how the boat responded. Sailing was purely an instinctual thing once one understood the technical side. A seasoned sailor could smell a reef or land without ever seeing it, feel the approach of a low pressure system without a barometer, time the tides by an inner clock, and sense a wind shift by watching the waters ahead. If only one could live their life with the same astute awareness of approaching storms and shifts in the prevailing winds. The well-honed, experienced sailor, learned to become one with their vessel as well as the elements – the way a professional athlete becomes one with their body.

  With his confidence somewhat renewed Rob took the helm of the Island Fever as if he’d been doing it his whole life. He finally felt as if he were steering his own course once again instead of being adrift at sea. He had been a student of life for more than thirty years, but now he had to become a student of the sea, which like life was far bigger and more unpredictable and uncontrollable than our wildest imaginations. The day had given them a small reprieve between tropical depressions, with the wind blowing only about eight knots. The temperature was high in the nineties, and the water was about as calm as a duck pond. For the first time on board, Rob felt in control. What Rob didn’t yet understand was that he might feel as if he were in control at the helm steering his course for a while, but total control of the sea as well as one’s life is as impossible as changing the course of a waterspout.2*

  Once they had Tintamarre in their sights just aft of their beam, Alex asked Rob to jibe3** the boat around and head right for the flat looking rock straight ahead. Alex had chosen not to tack the boat – the winds were so light and the water so calm she was afraid that they might end up ‘in irons’4*** as catamarans are known to do in such light wind.

  As they reached the little bay in the lee of the island, Alex had Rob turn straight into the wind dead at the beach as she unwrapped the halyard for the genoa, letting it slide down effortlessly to the net on the bow of the boat. As Rob did the same with the mainstaysail halyard from the cockpit, the boat coasted to a stop only three meters from the shore. As she drifted backwards on the light breeze, Alex lowered the anchor and fed out enough rode to give them a secure hold, then tied off the line on the windless,6***** coming up short with a slight jolt like a yearling who’s just reached the end of her tether on her first halter.

  It seemed that Rob’s luck was changing since the only boat visiting this popular picnic spot turned out to be a day charter boat that was already in the midst of loading up their sunburnt, waterlogged passengers and gear, and was already busy pulling up anchor for the afternoon cruise back to Philipsburg. At last he was alone in Paradise – something Rob had only dreamed of back in Chicago. But this time, his definition of ‘alone’ included Alex.

  Once the sails were down, bagged and put away under sailcovers, and the bimini top7* was strung over the cockpit to offer some reprieve from the tropical sun, Alex stepped into the galley to make up a batch of her famous rum punch, so loved by both sailor and tourist alike, while Rob unlashed the dinghy from the deck and hauled out the engine from the rear lazarette.8**

  It’s a deceiving illusion how life at latitudes in the teens can easily be perceived as Paradise, especially if one doesn’t have any specific agenda to meet. There are few inhabitants in your Earthly form who don’t need the perfect locale in order to manifest Paradise. Funny… I always seemed to find happiness where ever I went. For me, it was always hard to understand why discontentment seemed to be the prevailing disposition for the human species, and it wasn’t until I had returned home back here on ‘The Other Side’ that I finally got it. Humans just don’t know how to have trust in the greater power of the Universe. They don’t realize that if they were to simply tap into that great ‘one’ energy that is the source of all life, inclulding theirs –everything they could ever dream of could be theirs.

  A tall rum punch later, Rob had finally started to settle into the ‘changes in latitude,’ as the song goes (anothe
r Jimmy Buffetism), and Alex had prepared little cocktail lanterns9*** to illuminate the evening as well as a fabulous dinner ready to go onto the grill once they had built a fire on the beach. They loaded up the blankets and cookout provisions, and motored to the shore to set up their bar-b-que at the northeastern end of the beach under the red sandstone cliffs, where Alex placed the lit lanterns in the nooks and crannies to add a little added ambiance. The sun was setting fast as they stacked the last of the driftwood they had collected with the charcoal and lit their cooking fire.

  Alex knew in advance to bring a feast of scraps for the lizard population of the island, and leave it far off in the bushes. This would keep them at bay and uninterested in Rob and Alex’s dinner long enough for them to eat, since Alex had actually witnessed a starving Tintamarre lizard, deprived of mosquitoes and no-see-ums, actually jump onto a hot grill in order to get to the marinated chicken legs before the tourists. Of course, the land crabs did move a little slower, but eventually they would seek out any morsel that resembled food on their barren little isle as well.

  Dessert had never tasted so good thought Rob as they made love after dinner on the beach – on an island which they, for the moment owned – in a world that they alone inhabited. Then they lay content and euphoric with the surf lapping at their feet as the evening breeze gradually cooled the heat of their passion. There under the heavens – with an endless blanket of stars caressing them, they fell asleep in each other’s arms, breathing in the essence of one another’s being. And, as the full moon rose over the ocean behind them, Rob was certain that he’d finally arrived – at least at a way station on the course to his destination.

  1*TINTAMARRE OR FLAT ISLAND – A private, deserted, French owned, island off the windward side of St. Martin, which is home to nothing more than a herd of goats, lizards, and hermit crabs. It did however, serve at one time as a Vichy French provisioning stop in the Eastern Caribbean for German subs. The ruins of the old sub dock and landing strip, along with the remains of many small buildings, still exist today not to mention parts of wrecked aircraft.

  2*WATERSPOUT – The dangerous marine cousin to the tornado which can play havoc with small boats since they are erratically unpredictable and a rather common occurrence in the tropics.

  3**JIBE – The opposite of tacking with the boat turning downwind instead of into the wind. It is the stern, not the bow that swings across the wind in a jibe. An accidental jibe occurs while steering downwind and not paying attention to the accuracy of ones course or an unexpected change in wind direction. An accidental jibe is when the wind catches the back of the mainsail and throws it and the boom violently across the boat to the other side – risking damage to the rigging, or as mentioned earlier, damage to crew members’ heads by booms unsecured by a boom vang or strop. All of which is somewhat analogous to life slapping you up side the head when you aren’t paying attention to the prevailing forces of nature.

  4***IN IRONS – A term used to describe a condition when sailing to weather where the vessel has tried to point5**** too close into the wind and has become stalled – ‘in irons.’ This condition can also occur during tacking, especially on some multihulls, since they are lighter and don’t always have the weight to carry them through the tack to the point where the wind has filled the sail on the opposite side.

  5****POINTED OR TO ‘POINT’ – To ‘point’ into the wind is to turn the nose of the boat too close to the direction that the wind is corning from. As mentioned before in ‘beating to weather;’pointing too close to the wind stalls the boat, preventing forward propulsion from its sails. This is also a quick way to stop the boat or curtail one’s forward momentum rapidly if you are close-hauled, since unlike a car, a sailboat does not have brakes.

  6*****WINDLASS – A type of winch located on the foredeck of a vessel which holds the anchor rode – the end of the anchor line which is attached to the boat and not the anchor. As opposedto a gypsy which holds the anchor chain.

  7*BIMINI TOP – A fixed, collapsible, or removable awning or top which is used on a boat for shade.

  8**LAZARETTE – A storage area in a boat’s hull, generally located in the aft or stem of the vessel.

  9***COCKTAIL LANTERNS – Make-shift lanterns made from empty Heineken bottles – stuffed with rags and filled with kerosene.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hurricane Hole

  “You can choose to sail across the ocean of life…

  or you can drown in it.”

  Ian

  The next morning Alex woke just before dawn and disengaged herself from Rob’s embrace, careful not to awaken him. Slipping on her shoes, she climbed to the top of the cliff overlooking the eastern end of Anguilla and Scrub Island and greeted the new day. It was a beautiful day, thought Alex, breathing in the exhilarating sea air. Partaking in her morning meditation she found it hard to focus as she basked in a feeling of great well being and the warmth of Rob’s love.

  When she returned to the beach, Rob was still sleeping so peacefully she decided to let him be and swam to the boat to shower and change, and prepare a grand breakfast. It had been years since Alex had felt a desire to be the least bit domestic, but due to her new relationship with Rob, she found herself enjoying the thought of cooking and pampering him. A housewife she wasn’t, but it was fun to have someone in her life once again who she wanted to cook for. Aside from Michael, the only other man lucky enough to witness Alex’s domesticity had been her father, whom she had cooked for since she could reach the stove without a footstool.

  Meanwhile, back on the beach, Rob was beginning to stir under the fast rising sun as were the crustaceans and the reptiles. Totally unaware of the rapidly approaching army, Rob kept right on dreaming away, basking in the warmth of the golden sun and sand. The crumbs from the previous night’s dinner had lured them from their home in the bushes and into the open since any other source of food on the island, had been polished off the night before – both the stash Alex had left for them and the final remains of the previous night’s bar-b-que. For these crusty little island dwellers, breakfast was about as scarce as a banquet in Ethiopia, and to them, any available crumb constituted a feast.

  Rob was busy dreaming about acupuncture when he suddenly realized that the needles were moving across his body. When he cracked one eye trying to ascertain exactly where he was, he found himself eye-to-eye with a miniature version of Godzilla who stood on his chest, licking the corners of Rob’s lips. Rob it seemed, was breakfast. Screaming, as if he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake, Rob sprang to his feet and tore into the water like a man with his pants on fire.

  Hearing Rob’s screams, Alex stuck her head through the companionway hatch just in time to see Rob hit the water with several crabs still attached to his clothing. Alex felt terrible for not realizing that the natives might be restless and stirring that early, but she still couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped out at the sight of Rob, with crabs.

  Rob and Alex spent the next four days swimming, spinnaker flying,1* and making love on deck, morning, noon, and night. Of course, Rob barely needed a spinnaker to fly at that point since he was soaring pretty high on his own, thanks to Alex.

  Rob and Alex lay on deck at night – Rob now the one pointing out the constellations above, since he was still studying celestial navigation in his seamanship course. It amazed him how clear the heavenly bodies were out there away from civilization, as on the night of his first passage to St. Barth from Antigua. Rob was finally closing in on tapping into ‘the source,’ even if he wasn’t totally proficient at direct communication at this point with us celestial inhabitants.

  On the fifth day, while checking in on the VHF radio2** with Island Waterworld to get a recent weather report, Jeff got on the radio to inform her that he had received word that there was a tropical depression headed north, which had just been upgraded to a tropical storm (over 33 knots3***). It was currently two hundred miles southwest of them and heading north at about twelve knots. It had entered the Carib
bean down around Martinique and had, as most hurricanes do, hooked a hard right once it was well into the Caribbean. The weather had snuck up on them since they had had little warning due to the lack of a satellite for their area. Although it would likely pass the island causing nothing more than squalls and rain showers, Jeff suggested that they head back for the bridge opening at five that afternoon. That way they would have time to set up their mooring and secure the boat safely inside Simpson Bay lagoon – the safest hurricane hole4**** in the Caribbean. Just in case. After all, it was August.5*****

  Alex knew that storms and hurricanes in this part of the world almost always tracked north to northwest, and since it was already well to the west of them she felt confident there was no imminent danger of it becoming a threat. After all, it was still only a small tropical storm and posed little danger of becoming more than that before it passed well west of them.

  Alex often lived her life irreverently, however, the two things she did respect were the weather and the sea. Most of her life was somewhat controllable, but the weather and the sea were beyond her control – beyond human intervention. Man had been unable to harness them – the weather – the wind – the sea. They ruled him –played him, and brought him to his knees to beg for mercy at times. A hurricane or waterspout were two of weather’s most magnificent, yet terrifying displays of its indisputable power. Once formed there was no stopping it – diverting it – managing it. It was impossible to control – one could only avoid it, prepare for it, and pray.