Lindsay
Wright tops up the cruising kitty by working as a Caribbean
charter skipper.
The good ship Gandalf was a familiar sight
in the eastern Caribbean . Her proud clipper
bow and raised poop evoked the pirate ships which had plied those waters a
century or so beforehand.
The 46 tonne staysail schooner sailed six
days a week between St Maarten and the neighbouring island of Anguilla
My crew, Bobby (South
Africa ) and Bobbi (Canada )
and I, gently motor sailed out of Simpson
Bay
The first rounds of complimentary rum punch
disappeared into the rapidly reddening tourists as the white sandy beaches and
rocky headlands of the St Maarten coast slid by. Our route took us close by the
airport and every so often a jetliner would be warming up its engines, poised
for takeoff at the end of the runway. We found that, by carefully trimming the
sails beforehand, we could get an exhilarating blast out of the bay propelled
by the warm, kerosene smelling 25 knot jet blast as the plane roared off down
the runway.
An hour later we’d be clear of the coast
and be out of sight of land for half an hour or so before the low lying shore
of Anguilla smudged the horizon ahead, growing steadily larger until we sailed into the calm waters of Sandy Bay.
Our guests snorkelled on the reef, lounged
on the beach or the boat and swam in the shallows until lunch was served on
board, then relaxed as Gandalf reached sedately homewards.
For
the entire off season, Gandalf plied back and forth with 15 – 20 people on
board.
Then the tourist season began in earnest.
Every day Gandalf was packed with up to 42 winter wracked Americans. The
resorts were thronged with gaily clad and loud voiced vacationers and the roads
clogged by their rental jeeps.
Gandalf sailed on schedule, breezing
serenely out of Simpsons Bay and across to Anguilla .
The Bobbys and I, flat out with the increased workload, remarked that the plane
timetables had changed but didn’t put too much thought into it.
One day, as we cruised past the airport, a
plane was lining up for take off. It must have been an inkling of impending
disaster that made me look over my shoulder at the last minute. The plane did look a little different to the off
season people movers and it seemed to have an extra engine mounted on its
tailfin too.
Suddenly the aeroplane accelerated away
with an ear wrecking roar, and disappeared down the runway. The jet stream
smacked Gandalf flat on her beam ends with what felt like about 80 knots of
wind. Forty two portly American tourists slid into the lee scuppers in a
screaming, bellowing mass of oily humanity, along with cameras, bottles of
suntan lotion, snorkeling gear and towels. Straw sunhats cartwheeled away
downwind and glasses of rum punch went flying, splashing their sticky contents
among the beach gear and bodies thrashing frantically to leeward. I dangled helplessly from the steering wheel.
The lid from the huge chilly bin aft had swung ajar and I sighted little green
bottles of Heineken beer plop…plop…plopping into the sea.
Slowly Gandalf swung upright again as her
ballast overcame the inertia of about four tonnes of hysterical humanity on the
lee deck. Our shattered guests crawled shakily back across the boat while the
crew checked that nobody had been hurt.
That evening, when Gandalf was safe back on
the mooring, Bobby, Bobbi and I took our snorkel gear back to the beach. We
swam out and recovered ten of the beer bottles that had plopped overboard, then
sat sipping from them while the sun slowly sank below the horizon. It was just
the sort of day when we’d be likely to see the fabled green flash.
Ends…
