West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  Once out of town, Rob was actually beginning to believe that there were still some last vestiges of hope for Paradise as they passed through the lush green back roads of the French countryside – the tiny villages seeming quite the tranquil antithesis to the pandemonium of the Dutch side. The beautiful white Tropic birds that soared overhead and the goats and cows that roamed the pastures untethered, painted the countryside serenely picturesque; and the native children who laughed and played along the sparkling beaches as they passed through the little town of Grand Case while the sailboats cruised across the channel to the neighboring island of Anguilla,2* blended with the rest of the amazing scenery to complete the picture perfect postcard. But Rob’s mind was somewhat distracted from his scenic excursion since he was deep in thought about the last four days he’d spent with Alex, albeit separated by a set of steel bars, but spent with Alex nonetheless. His thoughts wandered as the little car wove in and out of road blocks made by sightseeing tourists in rental cars, playing children, other taxis touring their occupants around the sights of the island, and locals stopping to chit-chat to passing vehicles.

  “Did I sense a change in her once we were free to go or was it my imagination,” thought Rob. “I’m sure she isn’t interested in me, she probably just felt sorry for me. I mean I was a pretty pitiful sight there in that cell feeling miserable for myself because I was stupid enough to believe Sydney was with me purely out of love, and not because she saw me as a likely successor to daddy’s company. What happened to being with someone simply because you love them,” contemplated Rob.

  “Is love something we rationalize away once we get old enough to think before we engage our hearts? The good news is that Sydney wasn’t capable of breaking my heart. She never had possession of it, someone else did, and it certainly wasn’t me.” Rob was now wondering if Alex, like Julie Anne, now owned a little silver locket for the safe keeping of his heart.

  Rob and Raymond finally arrived at the Supermarche in Marigot to find that the line just for a shopping cart wrapped nearly around the building. Luckily, Raymond had often shopped at French markets in the past due to Joey’s affinity for French cheese, French women, and French wines (not necessarily in that order), and Raymond was able to make sense of the products which were marked with French labels, since Rob couldn’t differentiate between a can of green peas and sliced peaches if it didn’t have a picture on it. Grocery shopping even in the states wasn’t something Rob had made a habit of since he ate out three meals a day. Aside from his corner coffee shop and the local health food store where he bought his protein bars, Rob hadn’t stepped into anything much bigger than a convenience store since he was a kid. So, when they finally managed to bribe some native kid with a big smile for a cart, Rob followed Raymond up and down the isles of alien foodstuffs, while Raymond loaded the cart so full that by the time they reached the register Rob’s arms were so overloaded with croissants and French baguettes that he could barely see where he was walking.

  It took the cashier a good twenty minutes to ring up their purchases which came to 5000 French francs. Rob looked at Raymond in a panic, but Raymond assured him that they would indeed accept the U.S. dollar as would just about any island in the West Indies. Raymond quickly calculated the true conversion to good ole greenbacks, an amount that wasn’t quite as shocking. However, at a five to one exchange rate, Rob realized that chartering was likely to be a costly endeavor since this was only enough food for the first few days and they still needed to make a stop at the liquor store for hard stuff and soft drinks which would up the anti at least another fiver. Luckily, the cost of chartering a seventy-five foot yacht these days was quite generous and Rob calculated that there might still be a four thousand dollar profit after commissions, expenses, and wages, but of course he still had to amortize his insurance, fees, taxes and maintenance, not to mention the cost of the boat itself. Rob’s mind was in overdrive doing extended projections in his head and the golden goose, that he had so lucratively projected, was now looking a little more akin to a tarnished hen.

  Four hours later when Rob and Raymond finally returned to Bubba’s Marina in Philipsburg with the Island Fever’s provisions, Rob had one important thing on his agenda before they set sail for Antigua. He’d suddenly realized that he hadn’t called his parents in weeks and figured that by now they’d probably come to the conclusion that he’d disappeared somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. So, when Rob told Alex that he needed to make an important call to the states before they left the dock, Alex immediately assumed that Rob’s intent was to try and win Sydney back.

  Alex sat on deck waiting for an hour while Rob tried to place his call from Bubba’s office, since Bubba felt that it was the least he could do for them at that point considering their past week’s inconvenience. Alex started running the entire phone call through her mind, and her mounting frustration only served to feed her already ambiguous opinion of men’s acumen and discernment.

  “I knew it,” thought Alex. “I knew he’d call her and beg her forgiveness the minute he got out. What is it with men? Do you have to treat them like shit to make them fall in love with you? Are they all masochists, chasing after women that couldn’t give a damn about anything other than their bank account and their credit rating. Don’t men care whether a woman is really in love with them or not, she pondered. Isn’t there something to be said about knowing that someone’s with you because they’re madly, truly in love with you and not because you look like the most dependable and reliable ATM machine to them? I’m not doing it again I’m not going to let myself be hurt by another man. I’m just going to forget about what happened in there. Nothing happened. He was hurt and lonely and you were simply there to help him through a rough time,” Alex tried to convince herself. “What makes you think that you’re the kind of girl he would ever be interested in anyway. Look at yourself. You’ve seen the kind of women he likes.”

  So, Alex decided it was best to tend to her own duties aboard the boat –playing it as cool with regard to their new budding friendship as a spring frost on an early crocus – freezing any chance it had of ever blossoming.

  When Rob returned to the boat, happy to have spoken with his mother, who was thrilled and relieved to know that he was okay, Alex offered nothing more than a cold shoulder and a professional continence towards Rob as she busied herself with duties in order to make final preparations for the boat to set sail for the long night ahead. Raymond was busy battening down the hatches and stowing groceries as Alex lowered the engine sled into the water and started up the seventy-five horsepower Evinrude. Luckily, she had four hours that afternoon to make repairs to their engine, and to be certain the officials hadn’t done any irreparable damage to the boat – however, it was quite apparent that more than one party had been held aboard during their detention. Rob attempted familiar conversation with Alex and was quite confused to find that Alex’s response was as unfamiliar as a taxi driver in New York City. He stepped down into the cockpit and laid his hand on her shoulder hoping to be more successful at getting her attention, but to his dismay, she simply pulled away as if he were Patrick Swayze in “Ghost” pretending to be totally unaware that he was even there, as she busily went about her business.

  Poor Rob, although attentive to the duties at hand, was terribly disturbed by his awakening to the fact that Alex was an attractive, available female. He was also at best, confused by her sudden change of demeanor. After all, she was the captain and all the responsibility did fall on her shoulders, thought Rob trying to rationalize her sudden lack of interest in continuing their courtship dance. Understandable as it was, her renewed, cold, professional attitude only proved to be a frustrating and ego deflating quandary to Rob; and even though his attention was on the motion of the ocean, the vessel in question was definitely not, the Island Fever.

  “I called Immigration,” Alex said woodenly, breaking the awkward silence that had covered the Island Fever like a shroud. “They said that as far as they were concerned, they had
never heard of the Island Fever. I think that means that they can’t get us out of here quick enough,” continued Alex with little emotion. “We’d better get moving on getting this boat ready to sail if we want to make it there by morning. I need at least a day on the other end to get ready for another week out and get this engine tuned… it’s still not running at full power, even though Bubba found me a used prop.”

  “Eye eye,” said Rob a little confused by her brusque brush off. “I’m all yours Captain. Just tell me what you’d like me to do… swab the decks, pump the bilge, scrape the barnacles off the hull?” continued Rob with more than a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Well you can start by taking the sail covers off and hanking the number one jib on,” commanded Alex coldly as she went about setting up her charts3* and plotting in her projected coordinates. Alex then proceeded to check the weather, which predicted smooth sailing all the way. Regard-less, she plotted their course and turned on the Sat–Nav4** even though Alex knew the area like the back of her hand. It was a smart sailor that took advantage of every available aid to navigation that modern technology had to offer, since one never knew when those electronic gismos might come in handy. After all, what if something happened to her, impairing her ability to sail the boat. The last thing she wanted to do was to leave it up to Rob and his elementary navigational skills to determine their fate at sea.

  Once they had put all their purchases away, taken on water and fuel, and finished all their routine pre-flight check – it was nightfall – a perfect time to set sail southeast projecting their arrival in Antigua during daylight the following day. By now Alex was looking forward to hitting the open ocean again after being cooped up in that concrete hamster cage for the last week. Anxiously, she cast off their hopelessly tangled dock lines, and pulled out of the slip without even giving Raymond time to untangle the mess that the immigration officials had somehow managed to leave behind. Once clear of the marina dock in Philipsburg harbor, Alex gave it full power as she headed the Island Fever out to sea as fast as her outboard would carry her, barely stopping long enough to turn her into the wind in order to raise their mainsails.

  The sky was a little overcast that night and the nearly full moon was yet to make its appearance. So loosing the town lights, which their eyes were now comfortably adjusted to as they rounded the point under power and headed off into the blackness of the unlit ocean, was somewhat akin to Ray Charles driving a black Cadillac down a dark country road, with no lights, at midnight.

  1*APPARENT WIND — Apparent Wind is the wind perceived aboard a boat while underway –not necessarily the True Wind which is the measurement of the wind’s real direction and velocity. The Apparent Wind is in fact the boat’s speed combined with the True Wind and is the more important wind to consider when trying to determine one’s tack heading and arrival time. Since the faster a boat sails the further off the True Wind the Apparent Wind clocks.

  2*ANGUILLA — A small island four miles across the channel to the north from St. Martin on the French side, Anguilla is a lightly populated island whose only attributes are its beautiful, powdery white sand beaches and turquoise water, since its interior is scrubby, arid and covered in landlocked, unused saltponds. Aside from the early inhabitants, Arawak and Carib Indians, who called the island Malliouhana, the Spanish explorers settled the island later, re-naming it Anguilla – meaning ‘eel’ for its elongated shape. In 1650 the island became a British Crown Colony who fought off the French more than once over the centuries. In 1967 Britain decided to lump it together with St. Kitts and Nevis to create the Associated State of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla which thoroughly pissed off Anguillians who wanted no part of island rule and they threw the Kittitian forces off the island. After years of failed attempts to negotiate a solution, Britain finally invaded the shores of Anguilla, only to be welcomed with an open-arm celebration, not unlike Independence Day, resulting in the continuance of direct British rule. Today the island has become the home to numerous trendy, luxury hotels, villas, and spas – a new hot reclusive escape for the ‘rich and famous.’

  3*CHARTS — Official seagoing maps which aid one with navigation.

  4**SAT-NAV or Satellite Navigational System – a device used for navigation which displays one’s position via the nearest satellite. Supposing of course, that satellite wants to be found. Today the GPS or Global Positioning System is the most technologically advanced version of this type of equipment, although all electronic equipment is subject to failure and should not be a sailor’s only source of navigation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flotsam and Jetsam

  “Accept whatever comes to you woven into the pattern of your destiny, for

  what could more aptly fit you needs.”

  Marcus Aurelius

  One thing that I should mention here is that, although it can be a beautiful spiritual experience unlike any other, and was my favorite time on the ocean, night sailing in the Caribbean can be a tricky proposition at best. The problem being that any water shallower than the deep blue sea is fish pot territory. A literal minefield of floating polypropylene lines tied to empty Clorox bottles on the surface, marking fish traps on the bottom. Which of course play havoc with propellers, dagger boards, and rudders, hampering your only means of controlling the direction of your vessel should you be so lucky as to snag one on your rudder or wind it around your propeller at four thousand revolutions per minute. The result of which being a knot that not even Houdini could untangle. So, when sailing at night it is requisite that the Captain post a fish-pot watch on the foredeck to forewarn the helmsman whenever one might fall in your vessel’s path. Alex, whose eye was far better trained to spot those elusive little bleach bottles in the dark, quickly took to the foredeck, posting Rob at the helm to follow her instructions while Raymond continued to secure the boat below for their long beat to weather.

  As the Island Fever motored out to sea, the last thing Alex expected, was to find the four foot steel buoy for the cruise-ship mooring, sitting a quarter of a mile off shore. So, when Alex spied this oversized fish pot dead in their path, only meters away from the bow, she shouted for Rob to turn, ‘Hard to Port!’ But instead, Rob, who was not yet completely proficient in the sailor’s vernacular, and still thought of Port as an after dinner drink, turned ‘Hard to Starboard’ – taking the steel buoy, which was a foot higher than the underside clearance of the Island Fever’s bridge deck, between the hulls. Needless to say that with eight knots of power underway there was no stopping the boat until the buoy, it’s shackle, and chain had ground its way down the length of the underside of the bridge deck and port hull. Alex’s screams were quickly drowned out by thirty seemingly endless seconds of the painful sound of ripping, splintering wood. Rob was so stunned, it took him a moment to think to reach down and kill the throttle on the engine. To Rob, unaware of what he’d hit, it seemed like a lifetime, during which he was certain the world had come to and end – at least his that is, as his heart stopped beating until the unknown obstacle emerged out the back side of the bridge-deck. As it exited out from under the boat between the hulls, it neatly took with it the Island Fever’s Evinrude and engine sled along with a good chunk of the bridge-deck and several sections of planking from the hull – leaving the boat a floating wreck.

  Suddenly, all was quiet as Rob, Raymond, and Alex leaned over the back of the bridge deck watching as the engine, sputtering its last breath, sunk to the bottom of the ocean. “Oh my God!” repeated Rob over and over again to himself as he stood there – frozen, as Alex quickly released the mainstaysail halyard and dropped the sail to the deckhouse halting any further forward momentum.

  At that moment, all of the hours spent in seeding their newly digested friendship were totally flushed down the toilet as Rob made the mistake of opening his mouth in a lame attempt to shed the blame of his blunder onto Alex – “How could you have not seen that… thing?!” said Rob accusingly to Alex.

  Not believing what she had just heard, Alex w
ho was showing an amazing amount of self restraint and composure, given the circumstances, turned to Rob whom she was just about to choke on his own topsiders – “I did see it. You turned the wrong way. Starboard right, port left,” said Alex, gesturing to the port side – the left side of the boat.

  Realization started to dawn on Rob as he suddenly turned one shade paler than he already was, as he replayed Alex’s commands just prior to the incident through his mind. Although he had every opportunity to fess up at that moment to the fact that he still didn’t know his port from his starboard, Rob, dying from embarrassment that he’d totally screwed up in front of Alex once again, took the opposite tack and headed off into treacherously deep water.

  “Did you have to wait until we were on top of it before you said something,” continued Rob not knowing when to shut up.

  “Did you see a beacon on it? Next time I’ll be sure they put a flashing light on it,” growled Alex.

  “Now, now,” intervened Raymond as he boldly stepped in between the two who were quite on the verge of going to blows. “It was nobody’s fault… it was just there,” said Raymond in his own way of over-simplifying everything and never laying the blame on anyone or anything.

  But alas, Raymond’s were the last civil words spoken that evening aboard the Island Fever with both Rob and Alex refusing to budge from their position of who was right. In his gut Rob knew that he was wrong, but his utter humiliation not to mention his ego bared him from apologizing to Alex and accepting the burden of responsibility for the unfortunate accident.