Shooting Stars and Flying Fish: Swapping the boardroom for the seven seas

by Nancy Knudsen

  We dine in the family restaurant of Benny, respected citizen. His family has owned, for four generations, a hundred acres of rainforest right under the Pitons. His booming voice rings out from his airy verandah, shouting orders at the various helpers in his restaurant and small guesthouse. He’s barefoot and king of his domain. His tall, fine-boned wife Marcilene does the cooking, his eleven-year-old daughter Jennilyn waits table. Benny Junior, a solemn lad of sixteen or so, drives the runabouts which act as water taxis for the area.

  ‘The Pitons are changing,’ Benny says, and there’s regret in his voice. ‘The neighbouring beach has been sold to a developer.’

  Benny and Ted and I stare out along the pristine beach, alive with kids. They laugh raucously as they splash in the clear sea, their dark faces slippery with salt water.

  ‘That’s so sad!’ I say. ‘This is heaven for these kids – they probably don’t know how lucky they are now.’

  ‘They have no idea,’ says Benny, ‘and soon they will be shunted off, not allowed to play there. We have been offered so much money for this place, but there’s no way that I will sell, and I have made it so that my children can’t sell either. We must preserve something for the future.’

  Benny and I go into his seaside dining room where dinner will be served. But Ted remains, thoughtful, staring at the wildly beautiful beach and its lush overhanging forest, soon to be destroyed by architects who design houses for rich holidaymakers from America and Europe. I can sense what he is thinking.

  We dine on local fish, plantain, breadfruit and yams. Benny gives all his dinner guests a small ceramic sculpture, made by the local villagers. ‘I never sell these,’ he says, ‘but I pay the villagers a little and it keeps their traditional crafts alive.’

  His words stay with us long after we leave to sail south.

  ———

  We continue southwards in a never-ending beam reach. The showers come in small passing squalls to freshen days that are full of sunshine; the anchorages are all westward-facing so there are no lee shores; the water is clear aqua with plenty of firm sand for anchoring . . . The sailing is so good that we bypass the island of St Vincent and enter the large bay at Bequia (strangely pronounced ‘bekway’).

  It doesn’t take long to figure out why this is one of the favourite anchorages in the Caribbean for sailors – large, easy anchorage, no high-rise apartments, small seaside cottages now used as shops and restaurants straggling along the shore. The main road is a footpath alongside the beach, and if it’s high tide you just may get your feet wet.

  The bay is full of cruising yachts but further out, in the deeper water, the megayachts congregate – some are five-spreader sloops, sleek and silky, some ugly many-storeyed motoryachts. Some are covered in toys – jet skis, tenders, windsurfers, helicopters. Yet others are tall ships, with three or four masts, elegant lines. We watch their comings and goings with never-flagging interest during sundowners.

  In the fresh markets the competing stall holders – dressed to a man in splashes of vibrant colour and with long, long dreadlocked hair – are vicious in their competition and miserable in their chatter. They hassle, abuse, shove their faces in between my face and the fruit in my hand. The fruit is full of juice and taste though – the freshest mangos, huge avocados, blood grapefruit, fresh limes, mighty passionfruit, bananas straight from the tree. We dine richly, and suffer the aggressiveness of the market stall holders.

  The sun feels warm on my back as I float face down, breathing through a snorkel. The long, waving grass beneath me glows yellow and green in the sunlight. Tiny fish appear and disappear. An old turtle is oblivious to my sprawling body hanging motionless above him, and munches with great concentration on his grassy lunch. Then he paddles energetically to the surface, takes a breath, curves down in an arc to continue his lunch, then back for another breath, another arc, another breath. I don’t move a single muscle. Luckily there’s no current to take me away. We coexist happily for what seems a long time until, after one of his slow meanders to the surface, he turns – oops – towards me. I start backing out of the way, as delicately as I can, but swimming backwards was not one of the skills taught in my childhood swimming lessons. He regards me quizzically for a moment or two, then lazily veers just enough to miss me by a hair as he arcs back to his busy grazing on the grasses below.

  We’re in the Tobago Cays, one of our most memorable experiences of the Caribbean.

  It’s crowded, but why wouldn’t it be?

  So close to the other Windward Islands that it’s accessible by plane for day trips, Tobago Cays is an iconic portrayal of all the best in tropical cruising. The waving palm trees, white sands, clear water and amazing sea life attract tourists by the boatload. Trying to imagine we are the only ones here, we roam in our dinghy, finding the best spots to swim and snorkel. We wander the nearby islands – all uninhabited and chaotic with palm trees and windblown plants. We climb the hills, loiter on the clean white sands. At night, the reef and the palm trees fade with the sunset, and inhabited islands twinkle in the distance.

  We gradually make our way down the Grenadines, each village sleepier than the last, and then on to Grenada until we reach Prickly Bay, shallow and pleasant, where most Caribbean cruisers turn around to go north again. But we will not – our path is onward, onward, forever a strange anchorage and a new experience.

  It is when we are away into the ocean heading southwards for Trinidad, with Blackwattle leaping and cantering over the undulating waters, that the Windwards offer their parting gift.

  I am sitting thinking about not very much, staring dreamily at the orange globe of a sun, reddening as it sinks serenely behind the horizon, becoming a semicircle, an arc, a small glimmer. Then, wondrously, at its last sinking moment, it’s there, the green flash – that rare, tiny, but brilliant blaze of green light that appears with the last glimmer of the sun. I startle as I see it, unmistakably. Now I am alert and screaming out for Ted. Too late, Ted, you missed it. The flash disappears, then the boat rises on a wave, and the green flash reappears, just for an instant before the horizon is dark, as though the flash had never been.

  I had seen the green flash twice in one sunset.

  16. Kings, Carnivals and AK-47s

  Trinidad and Venezuela to Colombia

  It’s a slogging overnight sail against the wind with a glaring moon, indifferent to our comfort. By dawn the faint looming shape of Trinidad can be seen in the mist, and the morning arrives bleakly. The water is khaki-coloured and swirling with counter-currents. Venezuela is also there – a misty shape to our right. The air is thick and doughy; we’re clammy-skinned before we have reached the great cut in the mountains through which we must pass. Cliffs of dense rainforest rear up on either side of the channel, hovering black in the early-morning light. There are long sprawling houses high above us, shady verandahs devoid of people.

  By the time the main is down, Ted’s brown skin is shiny and trickling droplets of sweat, and it’s only 10.30 am. The marina, when we find it, has a derelict look, with discarded building materials lying in piles. There’s a bare concrete pagoda with some discoloured plastic tables and chairs beside the water, with straggling palms that fail to divide the hard stand from the marina. We are boxed in on all sides with raw concrete and an oppressive rainforest-covered cliff hangs above. Did we really need to come to Trinidad?

  But the next morning I am woken by the most extraordinary music and skip out of bed to the sound. Thousands of birds are chirping, warbling songs, calling long, high notes – it’s a natural orchestra in the air all around us. The rainforest which loomed oppressively yesterday is today blossoming with sweet melodies.

  As ever, we find previous cruising friends already in the marina – Sandy and Karl on Fantasy1 and Peter and Chris on Chatti are here too – and we set off together to explore the highlands by car. Winding up through the mountains, there are so many flowering trees t
he forest is like a tended garden – wild crotons, flame trees, trees of mauve and white and blue and pink. Palm trees flourish along with myriad tropical plants – breadfruit, passionfruit, cocoa plants, calabash, wild and tangled. The rich wet smell of leaves and flowers and rotting vegetation fills the air. There are bold teak trees growing straight and tall, curling vines covered with flowers, leaves of every size, the greenest moss and lichen, bamboo stands galore. Often the road becomes a tunnel, with wild trees and vines completely blocking out the sun. There are occasional tiny villages, with sleepy locals watching us listlessly as we pass.

  Carnival is approaching, that marvellous confluence of French and African cultures, and the fever has already gripped the island, which is the worldwide capital of Carnival. Every day and night there are events – concerts, steel-pan band competitions, parties galore. We hear of the factories occupied days and night for many frenetic weeks making costumes.

  Tonight it’s the semifinals of the steel-pan bands. The steel pans are made from fifty-five gallon drums, and are the national instrument of Trinidad. The town is teeming with people, and the normally dark streets are rumbling with trucks turned into mobile bandstands that carry the precious silvered drums.

  With a guide and car, and in company with Karl and Sandy, we roam the streets, trying to catch sight of Trinidad’s band heroes going to and from the competition grounds. Suddenly I see a number of brightly glinting bandstands complete with steel pans being carried and rolled along a side street. I bound out of the car to take a photo, and Ted, Karl and Sandy leap out too. The driver is close behind us. He’s shouting but I can’t hear what he’s saying – I’m too busy getting my photo.

  Suddenly, a young buck from the crowd dances in front of me, wiggling his hips and shouting, ‘Take my picture! Take my picture!’ He is a little alarming, maybe high on something, so I step backwards involuntarily and pretend to take his photo quickly to allow him to pass. Our driver is beside me in an instant. ‘Go, go, go! Go back to the car,’ he shriek-whispers urgently.

  Chastised, we do as he says. Once inside the car he explains, ‘I thought he might grab your camera, and then I would have to run after him to try to get it back. This would be a terrible situation for me, because then I would have left the four of you alone on the street, and you would all be unprotected.’

  Such is the danger of the streets. The most unfortunate fact about Trinidad is that it is one of the natural geographic drug routes between the suppliers of Venezuela and the hungry drug markets of the United States. The temptation towards riches for a poor policeman, coastguard or any other young man with no prospects is too hard to resist.

  ———

  To stay for Carnival in Trinidad is an alluring idea, but Panama calls. A cruiser simply can’t see everything, and we decide we don’t want to be rushed in the second half of our Caribbean experience.

  So, leaving Fantasy1 and Chatti behind, it’s off to Venezuela. Our first stop is Porlamar, on the island of Margarita. The anchorage is wide and shallow, and there’s a backdrop of big-city skyscrapers lining the beaches. The bay is full of black and grey pelicans and dozens of yachts.

  We become accustomed to locking our dinghy with steel wire, raising the dinghy at night – ‘Lock it, lift it or lose it’ is the motto of the cruisers here. We don’t see much of Venezuela on Margarita – the security situation means that it’s not advisable to wander alone. We are taken to the shopping malls by minibus through streets where every single structure is barred, and every wall encrusted with broken glass or razor wire. The houses are one-storey concrete blocks, paint faded or gone, walls crumbling. There are no gardens, and the streets are strewn with rubbish.

  ‘It’s much worse on the mainland of Venezuela,’ a knowledgeable cruiser in the bus tells us.

  We sail on. On Tortuga, another Venezuelan island, with no sign of human life except a few fishing shacks, the sand is so soft and white it feels like talcum powder under the toes. As an Australian I am used to fine white sand. I remember beaches of my childhood that had sand so fine that it flew with the wind down the wide empty beaches to sting our legs and set us scuttling to cover them with our beach towels, squealing and giggling . . . but I never saw sand like this. It is so fine that each tiny wavelet on the shore is milky with suspended powdered sand. And as I look out at the aqua waters beyond, there is nothing around but a fine white sandy strip between the water and sky – teal-coloured water and a sky made to look violet by contrast. This is a lonely atoll, invisible until just a couple of miles away, and found only by navigation to a waypoint.

  We walk across a short grassy strip and find a lagoon – a vast shallow place ringed with coral. I wade across the lagoon for a very long time toward an island beach. It never seems to get closer and Ted shrinks behind me until I have to strain to see his black head lazing in the water. I reach the beach with aching thigh muscles. Here are only low bushes. I sit. It’s quiet. The only noise is the distant roar of surf from the windward side of the atoll, and sometimes the squawk of a frigate bird. The world is far away from here – here there are no expectations, no wars, no pollution, no judgement, one can simply . . . be. At these times my chest fills with air and I have the strangest feeling of not existing at all, merely being part of the world, like a wavelet or a grain of sand, or even part of the air all around me, with no dividing line between myself and my surroundings. How much more bewitching this wide, wild expanse is, full of frigate birds and grey pelicans, than the touristy Windwards.

  After some blissful days at Tortuga and then Los Roques, where there are about 350 square miles of coral cays, we press on to the Dutch island of Bonaire – just in time for Carnival!

  After the dishevelled nature of the Caribbean so far – abandoned car wrecks, shabby houses, weedy streets and rusty-barred broken windows everywhere – Bonaire seems like Legoland.

  The main town is on the lee side of the long island, with a long, straight esplanade. Sixty twin-buoys in a precise double row along the waterfront mean that visiting yachts are lined up like obedient schoolchildren. The houses are neat and pastel-shaded, with well-tended gardens.

  The main Carnival parade takes place the day we arrive. The noise is bone-jarring. Band after band travel in big trucks, their African rhythms fighting for decibel supremacy. Around and behind them their followers dance in extravagant costumes, gyrating wildly. They all dance in such confusion that often it’s impossible to tell which dancers go with which band. Sometimes, the procession is halted by some unknown blockage ahead for up to half an hour at a time, but the music keeps playing and the dancers keep dancing. The thrill in the air is so contagious that the watchers often dance too – old and young, staid and exuberant – including the Blackwattle crew!

  ‘Come on, Ted! Everyone else is dancing!’

  As the evening progresses the line between participants and watchers blurs then disappears. It’s a marathon of glee.

  To reach our dinghy on the esplanade later, we have to walk the streets where the parade has just passed. With all the alcohol, with all the excitement, milling crowds and racing adolescents, there is not a can, not a wrapper, not a piece of rubbish anywhere to be seen. What an even more impressive performance that is!

  We decide to hug the Colombian coastline and see the fabled city of Cartagena rather than take a direct route towards Panama. We’ve been warned that it’s a drug-running area and should be avoided, and that the winds rip without mercy, but the direct route has an even worse weather reputation.

  It should be four days to Cartagena. No trepidation, Nancy, let’s get on with it.

  Twenty-four hours after departing Bonaire with a bright forecast and a twenty-knot breeze behind us, the day dawns gloomy, a strange haze in the air. The sky is beige and, as our tiny speck of boat inches across the moving circle of the ocean, the grey water seems oily, slippery in the misted sunshine. The sun is dizzy-making; the world has a
distant look, like I’m seeing it through the wrong end of binoculars. It’s fuggy inside the boat as well, strange. I’m not hungry. The watches pass at night as in a dream, or maybe nightmare. Ships leap out of the dark only a few miles away. Only a few determined stars can pierce the gloom, and even the bioluminescence in the water below is muted, dull.

  By morning two things are clear. I am running a temperature, and the weather in front of us has turned foul. As my eyes ache and the world outside my head is glassy we decide to take shelter behind a cape – Cabo de la Vela – for which we have merely a waypoint and no small-scale charts.

  We anchor in a large bay, barren and rocky, with fishing boats appearing as slim black streaks in the distance, occasioning snatches of thoughts about pirates and drug runners. Frigate birds wheel in clouds around us, swerving and arching as they hunt the waters.

  Soon after anchoring I notice a large open fishing boat approaching at speed, three dark-clothed men aboard, holding – I can’t believe it – automatic weapons. This is happening very fast, too fast. It is not looking very good. I am thinking, I want an aspirin and bed, not a confrontation with an AK-47.

  They pull up with a swoosh, like show-off skiers, spray everywhere, the sudden wash rocking Blackwattle violently, and cleverly just avoid ramming us. A very, very young man shouts, ‘Welcome to Colombia, we are the Colombian coastguard!’

  It turns out that this is about all the English the guys know, but the smiles tell the story well enough. ‘Europe?’ they ask, with big knowledgeable grins. ‘No, Australia,’ we say, grinning back. They look blank – even through my flu-fogged vision I swear they have never heard of it.

  As they speed off after looking at our passports we can’t help admiring the three 200 horsepower outboards driving their ‘fishing boat’ and the many fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel that virtually fill the boat.