West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.

  2131 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 305

  Hollywood, Florida 33020

  954-925-5242

  e-mail: fellpub@aol.com

  Visit our Web site at www.fellpub.com

  eISBN: 978-0-8839-1207-2

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter Title

  Introduction

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  1 — Discontentment

  2 — Guardian Angel

  3 — Paradise Lost

  4 — Hook, Line & Sinker.

  5 — Survival

  6 — Dead to Weather

  7 — Celestial Navigation

  8 — Approval

  9 — Excess Baggage

  10 — Some Otters Don’t Swim

  11 — Guilt

  12 — Innocence

  13 — Freedom

  14 — Flotsam and Jetsam

  15 — Ego or Eating Crow

  16 — Lambchop or Mutton

  17 — Bankrupt

  18 — Dirty Laundry

  19 — Wisdom

  20 — Fear

  21 — AC – DC

  22 — Black-Out

  23 — Dinghy Fever

  24 — Lost at Sea

  25 — Paradise Peak

  26 — Mistaken Identity

  27 — Heart and Sole

  28 — Tropical Depression

  29 — Changes in Latitude

  30 — Hurricane Hole

  31 — Weathering the Storm

  32 — Overboard

  33 — Eye of the Storm

  34 — Dead Reckoning

  35 — Life & Death

  36 — The Payoff

  37 — Paradise Found

  INTRODUCTION

  In the tradition of Herman Wouk, I would like to offer up the following words of wisdom about ‘life in Paradise’ and dedicate this story to all of its misguided seekers. I thank Mr. Herman Wouk for his contribution to the world of “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” a book read by few, but treasured in the Caribbean by all sailors and land lovers alike who have been stricken at some time or another with that dreadful disease known as ‘island fever.’

  •

  All of the following events and many of the people have indeed been inspired by actual occurrences and real characters – either experienced or witnessed by the author while living in Paradise between 1980 and 1986. The circumstances and names have been changed however, in order to protect these survivors of Paradise.

  “Your reason and your passion

  are the rudder and the sails

  of your seafaring soul.

  If either your sails or your

  rudder are broken, you can

  but toss and drift or else

  be held at a standstill in mid seas.”

  Kahlil Gibran

  “The Prophet”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “He who looks outwardly dreams,

  but he who looks within awakes.”

  Carl Jung

  I lived, I thought in Paradise. Six years of my life were spent in the West Indies searching for that elusive destination in the tropics. Buddhists know it as Nirvana, Existentialists find true bliss in just ‘being,’ Adam and Eve knew it as Eden, Robinson Caruso called it shipwrecked, and westerners have their own vision of this state of ultimate ‘being’ – they call it ‘Paradise.’

  I ran a yacht for charter for four of those six years that I lived in ‘Paradise’ – believing that simply living that romantic island lifestyle would surely fulfill the quest. Even though I thought I had arrived, I was mistaken. Somehow I had followed the wrong heading along the way – I had failed in my quest to discover true Paradise in my search for ultimate happiness. I failed because I was searching from the outside and not from within – for a place instead of a way of perceiving and accepting reality, or at least what we define as reality. I was searching for something or someone to supply it for me instead of creating it from myself.

  It wasn’t until I had nearly finished this book, now many years later, that I felt truly enlightened as to the whereabouts of Paradise. As I dove into the depths of this tale which mirrored my own biographical pilgrimage, it was as if all my lifetimes of inner knowledge were slowly regurgitated into consciousness by my inner being, or possibly even by my inner guide in order to make me take stock of my own good advise and see the light. They say that when the horizon seems the darkest – we can finally see the clearest. It wasn’t until I had found myself in a great black void that I realized that I was looking at the world, and at my life, with binoculars in order to see what my life might be like way down the road instead of what it was now. Writing this book was a cathartic process of learning to see the horizon as it stretched out ahead, without worrying about what it would bring. It helped me to learn to live in the now, which in turn allowed me to plot my current position in order to navigate my course without the aid of an external compass.

  For me, sailing represents a metaphor for freedom. Through this humble comparison of life to the Zen of sailing, I have attempted to offer my own process of discovery of nearly every human’s desired destination – even if everyone’s perception of Paradise is different, as is their route by which to get there. It’s the acceptance of the trials and errors of the journey along the road as valuable lessons for growth, that truly allows one to appreciate the achieved destination – if and when they finally do arrive.

  Too often I have prematurely weighed anchor to journey farther across the seas of life in search of something to nourish my soul instead of simply setting a secure mooring and searching the depths within. Like a lost sailor I found myself stranded on a desert island over and over again, thirsting for sustenance — in need of the food and water necessary to keep my soul alive, never realizing that I was indeed the island I had yet to discover and that life was my vessel. I have since learned that everything I would ever need, had been aboard all along.

  “Life is like a magnifying glass – if you get

  too close to something, it’s fuzzy.”

  Elizabeth Claire Prophet

  DEDICATION

  This tale of Paradise is dedicated to all of those in my life who have inspired my love of sailing – my brother, Roy, who first inspired the awe of sailing in me as we both learned to sail by bouncing off sandbars in the Piankatank River in a center-boarder; to Buddy Bond who taught me to love catamarans, encouraged me to make sailing my business, take my Captain’s test, and ran me away to the Caribbean; to the U.S. Coast Guard who allowed me to become one of the first female Captains, even though they had to scratch out “he” and write “she” on my license; to Jon Westmoreland who taught me to love the ocean and all that goes with it, and the one who made a real sailor out of me; to my dear little fifty foot catamaran, Ikhaya, who made me understand the love between a sailor and their vessel; to D. Randy West, a pirate, a comedian, and a seasoned sailor known and loved by all in the Caribbean, who advised me and supported me during the writing of this book, and who loaned me his extraordinary hurricane stories; to all those on ‘The Other Side’who have inspired and assisted me with the writing of this book…

  …and last but not least I would like to dedicate this book to Lorna Steele, a West Indian poet, who taught me how to live life in the tropics, even if it did take me several more decades to grasp living life in Paradise.

  THIS HOLLOW CRY

  Show me your chains, my Afro’d friend,

  Who chants so vibrantly for “Freedom!”

  What binds you now to this or that,

  Or even – God forbid, to anyone?

  Show me the blindfold keeping you

  Ever in darkness, away from sunshin
e,

  Or from reaching upwards to the green hills of life!

  And who draws for you the line between

  The good and evil areas of strife?

  Who enforces what you do (or fail to do!)

  In order to attain the best or worst

  Of being within you?

  Where is the Cross you carry, the scar you bear?

  Tell me little puppet, whose whine for ‘freedom,’

  Rings so falsely on my ear,

  When they hanged your slave ancestor –

  Were you there?

  Lorna Steele

  “Nothing shortens a journey so

  pleasantly as an account of

  misfortunes at which the hearer

  is permitted to laugh.”

  Quentin Crisp

  CHAPTER ONE

  Discontentment

  “There is no sorrow like the memory of a love, knowing it is lost forever.”

  Ian

  It was a typical Monday morning in Rob’s life as he awoke to the smell of coffee from his automatic coffee maker, which he religiously set for 5:00 AM every evening except Saturday. As he arose in his chic yet modest penthouse high above the still sleeping city, he poured himself a cup of Java – black as always, shaved, dressed, and headed off to the gym for his hour work-out and shower – a quick protein shake at the snack bar, and another coffee on the run to the Chicago Stock Exchange. Opening at 7:00 AM like a race started by a shot from a starting gun, the trading floor delivered Rob into a sea of chaos and unrelenting pressure each day until its close at 4:00 PM sharp. Somehow, Rob managed to survive the day on caffeine and protein bars – never letting up his pace until he joined his fiancee, Sydney, every evening at seven for dinner at the newest, trendiest restaurant that she had uncovered from the gossip of her peers – at one of the many social events the city had to offer. A true dilettante, Sydney offered Rob entrer into a world that was about as alien to him as the Pleiades,1* since Rob had grown up in a small farm town in central Iowa – as far away from Chicago as one could get and still be in the corn belt.

  Rob considered Sundays as a day of rest as far as the alarm went, and instead of the gym he partook in his and Sydney’s weekly routine of sex before mass, which they attended with her parents. Sydney had taken it upon herself to convert or more accurately recruit Rob into the church – a firm prerequisite of her father’s to marrying his only daughter. For Sydney, who was raised to be a devout catholic and a ‘good girl,’ sex on Sunday was a deliberate desecration of the Sabbath which titillated her and verily pushed the envelope of her deviant behavior. Thanks to her mass produced childhood and puritanical bourgeois upbringing, Sydney was a tad straight-laced and pedestrian when it came to her imagination – especially where sex was concerned.

  Raised in a mixed household comprised of Protestant and Catholic, Rob felt somewhat familiar, if not comfortable in church – considering that over the years he had come to qualify himself as an agnostic, or at least, a skeptic at best. Becoming religious at this point in Rob’s life was highly unlikely and conforming to the strict dogma of the Catholic faith was simply not in his cards. He was the first to admit his skepticism of God, and heaven, and hell. All he was sure of, was that he was one more rat in the maze of life racing to get ahead of his own shadow. But to appease her parents, Rob attended Sunday mass with Sydney, realizing of course that it wouldn’t hurt to enhance his social and future business connections amongst the well healed parishioners of their affluent congregation.

  Rob Mariner was bright, attractive, ambitious – most importantly, Rob was a success by that point in his young career as a stockbroker in Chicago. Only eight years out of college with his masters degree in business and already Rob had achieved certain respected measures of success amongst his peers. He wore the right clothes – Armani, of course – drove the right car, worked hard at the right job, lived in the right building, dated the right girl, and had managed to put away a fair amount of money for a rainy day, or a sunny one should it ever come along.

  Five years at this pace was usually enough to burn out even the toughest of individuals, and Rob was fast approaching that mile marker since this was his 56th month on the floor as a trader. The business had been good to Rob who was enviously referred to by his fellow traders as ‘Houdini,’ since his uncanny feel for the market and its unpredictable vacillation had always been more than just a hunch to him. Somehow, he had a sixth sense of knowing when to take a risk, when to invest, and when to get out. Rob could smell a downturn coming the way a professional gambler smelled a streak of bad luck and always managed to escape in time, totally unscathed. Too bad this extrasensory perception failed him when it came to his personal life.

  Although Rob’s life was apparently blessed, there was only one small problem – he hated it. His job was killing him, his boss was an ass-hole, his girlfriend a prima-donna, and he needed a vacation – desperately! Contrary to the appearance of perfection in Rob’s world, life was beginning to feel like a prison comprised of unfulfilled expectations, obligations, and shallow meaningless existence. That Sunday night dread of Monday morning coming all too fast was now starting for Rob on Friday night. Rob knew there was a time when he had truly loved Monday mornings and his job. He had looked forward to that shot of adrenaline which surged through his body when he stepped onto the trading floor. But somehow, he had drifted into a fog, almost a numbness – an absence of all feeling.

  He just couldn’t seem to remember how it felt to be passionate about one’s work – about one’s life. Rob’s success had become empty – meaningless – he was living in the season of his own discontent. He had lost his joie de vivre. He felt passionate about nothing, not even his fiancee Sydney. Maybe he was just one of the sixteen percent of the U.S. population that was clinically depressed. Or was he just bored, he wasn’t sure any longer that he could tell the difference. Maybe he should just join the other five million people in America who were on Prozac or some other designer, mood elevating drug, and get it over with. Or, quite possibly, it was just simply time for a change of scenery.

  Even though Rob realized he was somewhat dispas-sionate about his current engagement to Sydney Corandini, the daughter of one of Chicago’s wealthiest businessman, he sincerely believed that he had everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. She was tall, beautiful, had a great body even if it wasn’t all original equipment, long dark hair, and a business degree from Harvard, which she had no intention of ever using. Daddy had made certain that his little girl – an only child since her brother died at three, got the best of everything and would never find the need to work a single day of her life. In fact, work was included in Sydney’s list of distasteful four letter words. She felt that even Rob’s job was only a temporary disgrace until such time as they were married and Rob would of course be made a partner in daddy’s firm.

  Rob sat across from Sydney that night at dinner in a posh Chicago, Damen Avenue restaurant – exotically decorated in a multi-cultural motif, as Sydney had immedi-ately pointed out to Rob who sat staring up at a bigger than life size Hindu Shiva with his many arms intertwined amongst his multitudinous consorts.

  “The restaurant’s only been open two weeks and already it’s been graced by the Maharishi himself, four movie stars and the President,” prattled Sydney to a disinterested Rob. “Don’t you find it strange that there was nothing in the paper about the President’s visit to Chicago?” Sydney continued, barely even pausing for a response.

  Rob sat across from her all through dinner listening to the events of her uneventful day of shopping with her friends Karla, Marla, and Wendy in the morning; and more shopping with her mother in the afternoon. Sydney and her mother had a weekly routine of two sacred days for shopping – Monday and Thursday, which to miss would have been as dire as the desecration of a holy sacrament – her other days being comprised either of bridge or charitable luncheons. Sydney it seemed was destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Since her marriage to Sydney’s
father, Mrs. Corandini had defined her whole identity as Jack Corandini’s wife and society’s maven – chairwoman of all the right charities in town.

  Rob sat thinking to himself that maybe he had been wrong about Sydney’s joblessness. Indeed, it was Sydney’s job to shop all day – everyday, luckily on daddy’s open accounts which were available to her at any and all establishments she chose to frequent. Rob studied her beautiful face as a botanist might scrutinize a specimen for its inherent attributes, hoping to find one feature that had not had some means of alteration perpetrated upon it by a rich, Chicago plastic surgeon – made wealthy from hundreds of rich girls like Sydney whose fathers and husbands had spent small fortunes paying off their revolving charge accounts. Rob searched Sydney’s face for that cute little mole she used to have on her right cheek when they’d met, but strangely it seemed to have disappeared. Likely, he thought, into some surgeons collection of unwanted fat, wrinkles, eyelids, and nose cartilage. Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it had never really been there at all, but he had fairly good recall for such detail and decided to simply file it away in his cerebral data base along with the memory of Sydney’s laugh lines.

  Rob had met Sydney about three years out of college when he was just learning the art of making money for his clients, and most importantly, as far as Sydney was concerned, for himself. Rob had never felt that he needed a lot of money, after all, he had come from a modest but comfortable home on his parents small farm in Iowa which raised, as most farmers did in that part of the country – corn. Their roots having come from poor farmers and immigrants who had never had much more than the daily bread on their tables. Rob had known though, that he would do well at whatever he decided to pursue since he’d always done well in school and had graduated top in his class from the University of Chicago2* with a degree in business and finance. As a child, Rob’s mother had encouraged his green thumb and had made him tend her vegetable garden for her, producing his award winning zucchini each year for the county fair. Regardless of his apparent talent for making things grow, Rob had chosen in the end to seed a more profitable garden. Since he’d come to the city he’d discovered that indeed his green thumb had not deserted him, and he was now adept at raising a different type of green crop.