Offshore Islands

by John Francis Kinsella

Barton skippered the steel hulled yacht, a ketch, the Marie Galante, for its owner David Castlemain. Barton, a Frenchman born in New Caledonia, a sometime adventurer, who in spite of his reputation disliked taking senseless risks. Amongst his many and varied talents he was a highly experienced seaman and a certified professional skipper.

  When, from time to time, the yacht was chartered by Caribbean Property Development for one of its frequent promotional cruises, Guy Courtauld took over as Barton’s first mate.

  Courtauld was Barton’s total opposite, an amateur though first class seaman, who whenever the opportunity arose derived an unequalled pleasure from racing the large yacht in heavy seas with, in the opinion of certain persons, a total disregard for the risks incurred, sailing on occasions with an inadequate crew, both in experience and numbers.

  The 33.5 metres long ketch had been built in 1964 by a Dutch yard and was designed for worldwide navigation; it had been rebuilt in 1993 with the addition of the most modern fittings and comforts.

  Castlemain boasted that his personal company in Guadeloupe had paid just over one million dollars for the boat, a snip compared to the price of a new boat, which would have cost him up to seven million dollars. The ketch had two 250 HP Gardner six cylinder engines that could do eighteen knots, thirty three kilometres an hour for landlubbers, as Barton explained, that was fast for a sailing yacht. It could hold up to nine thousand litres of fuel, in two tanks, giving it a cruising range under power of just over five thousand kilometres.

  The ketch could carry eight passengers. It had two staterooms and two double-berthed cabins, fitted out in Cuban mahogany and marble in the bathrooms. In addition were the skipper’s cabin and quarters for the crew, a galley, and a radio and navigation centre. It was a fine boat with its two masts rising to almost one hundred feet above the water line. The deck fittings were in the finest teak and mahogany.

  To sail such a boat needed the highest degree of skill, balanced on the heaving fore deck adjusting the sails and riggings or at the head of the one hundred foot masts was not for the weak hearted or inexperienced, at sea there was a constant threat of danger.

  Under ocean going racing conditions and full sail the ketch required a crew of up to eighteen members and could theoretically, in favourable racing conditions, cover over 500 kilometres under sail in twenty-four hours. Most of the time, it sailed under power for the comfort of its charter passengers, who for the most part were well off tourists playing at being yachtsmen. In normal weather conditions and under power, the ketch covered up to 800 kilometres a day.

  For most of the year Barton rented it for charters. He advertised it as a five star service with full air-conditioning, cordon bleu cuisine and a capacity for eight first class passengers. It could be chartered for groups at twenty five thousand dollars a week all included, or individually for four thousand dollars per person a week, on condition that he could find at least five passengers.

  The cruises aboard the Marie Galante normally consisted of a seven day circuit in the Windward and Leeward Islands, stopping at spots chosen by the passengers, though longer cruises could be booked to other destinations. The passengers were guaranteed to be far from the large tourist cruise ships routes, visiting picturesque ports and deserted beaches with white coral sand and clear water.

  For Castlemain the deal was profitable - when Barton could afford to pay the rental. In theory Castlemain’s tax write-off covered the investment and the financial charges, whilst the Irish Union Bank covered the costs whenever he invited the bank’s business guests for a cruise.

  Barton’s constant problem was to fill the boat during the season, at least twenty-five complete weeks every year. It was not that people who could pay three or four thousand dollars a week did not exist, there were simply not enough of them and charter competition in the islands was fierce. On many charters the boat did not have a full compliment of passengers, or, he was forced to offer cut prices to fill the boat.

  Whether the boat was full or not he still had hefty costs, harbour charges, wages, maintenance and repairs. The result was that he frequently found himself in arrears with his rental payments to Castlemain, who though he was not pressing, took advantage of his position as owner, when the arrears became too great he became overbearing and patronising.

  Barton would have been trapped had he not had the liberty due to the great distance that normally separated him from Castlemain. It allowed him to make the other arrangements necessary to supplement his income, enabling him to keep his freedom at sea, the thing he valued most.

  Whenever Castlemain arrived for one of his frequent Caribbean cruises, with his high placed friends or important clients of the bank, mixing business with pleasure, Barton and his crew sailed the ketch to pick up the guests at the designated port on one of the islands. He normally handled all of the everyday problems leaving Castlemain to play the skipper at the twin helms when it amused him.

  Castlemain was nevertheless a good sailor. He could ably captain a crew under competition and had in the past honourable defended himself against the best in races such as the Antigua Classic Week.

  “You could sail around the world in this boat without any problem, but with the silly bunch of bastards I normally sail with we hardly ever put out the sails,” Barton often sighed.

  The yacht was fitted with the latest satellite navigation system, a Global Positioning System, which had a precision of five to ten metres at sea. The central unit was linked to the helm so that the boat could be navigated automatically or à vue as desired. Every few seconds the boats position was updated and displayed on a monitor.

  Courtauld was technically outstanding with the sophisticated computerised navigation and weather forecasting system, he was however not a good navigator with natural skills, more a technician, but with the best technology available on board he had not the slightest problem to plot a route and hold it, that was until the system broke down, when he became totally dependant on Barton’s skills.

  Reading the weather was still as much an art as a science, but they were assisted by the European Weather Centre at Reading in England, which transmitted digitalised information on the weather to vessels equipped with suitable computers and faxed maps that showed the latest weather developments.

  Castlemain had originally bought the boat through a charter company that had been set up together with Xavier de Montfort. They had planned a fiscal write off by completely rebuilding the boat to cater for up-market charters. His intention had been to combine business with pleasure and renting the boat for charters to Barton to cover the operating costs.

  The charters proved to be insufficient and the operating costs high. The pleasure turned sour for Barton until Courtauld suggested he could help with the costs by turning the boat to a more profitable occupation, seducing investors seeking fiscal relief in the French Antilles.

  A weekend on such a boat was enough to convince even the most reticent investors that the skipper, whether he be Barton, Courtauld or de Montfort for the occasion, was a member of the jet set that they were about to join. They rarely failed to sign up after cocktails, as the sun set through the riggings behind the prow of the Marie Galante, against the coconut palms the lined the shore of Les Isles des Saintes.

  For every completed deal Barton was paid a commission in addition to a basic fee for each passenger trip made for Caribbean Property Development clients.

  Barton together with Courtauld were to sail the boat up to Nassau Town in the Bahamas where they would pick up Arrowsmith. Then they would head back directly south to the Cuban island of Cayo Coco. It should be a decent trip as the wind and the currents were favourable in an east to west direction and they were well out of the hurricane season, though storms could develop at any time of the year. The boat could turn in a smart 16 to 18 knots in favourable conditions under motorised power with canvas rigged when the westerly trade winds were blowing behind them.

  Barton had arrived in Guadeloupe some ten years previously. He had
always led a globetrotter’s life, as a sometime navigator, sometime reporter or writer, seeking excitement or adventure wherever new opportunities presented themselves. He had landed in Guadeloupe as an international correspondent for a Parisian newspaper, to cover the anti-Communist guerrilla movements in Central and South America and the developments in Cuba. At first he had enjoyed the pleasure, being a press correspondent he was often pointed out as a minor personality, but he soon realised he was badly paid. What was worse he realised that covering minor wars in the Americas was a dangerous job; he discovered that the bullets in Colombia were real and the guerrillas were deadly serious.

  With his knowledge and experience as an ocean going yachtsman and game fisher, he tried to find a job in the charter business, but without success following the economic crisis at the end of the eighties.

  He lived beyond his means, but his opportunity to rectify that came when he met Guy Courtauld and turned his hand to real estate, Courtauld recognised that Barton was a natural salesman even if he was not a great businessman. They made a good team at the right moment with business slowly picking up as customers started arriving and as Caribbean cruises became more democratic, reaching out to the middle-income groups from the USA and Europe. Airport passenger facilities and runways were extended to handle mass tourism and wide-bodied jets setting the conditions necessary for a boom in tourism.

  He had made some good money, but then became bored; a salesman’s life was not for him. Things took a turn when Xavier de Montfort came up with the idea for the charter company with Castlemain. He introduced Barton to Castlemain who immediately took a liking to him, admiring his free wheeling style of life and the endless stories of his sometimes-unbelievable adventures around the world, he proposed to Barton to oversee the refit of the Marie Galante and then offered him the job of skipper on the yacht.

  Barton accepted with enthusiasm and revelled in the newfound glamour that such a boat attracted, he spent money at an astonishing rate, much greater than he could have imagined, and he became addicted to a life style that he had difficulties to maintain.

  When with Courtauld they turned the boat to selling real estate, apart from the occasional attractive and bored wife, it was a come down. He could not support the endless whinging of overpaid doctors, dentists and their too often overweight pushy wives, about taxes and their struggle to make a living to support their spoilt kids.

  As the bills to his suppliers or the rental Castlemain became pressing, Barton supplemented his income using the boat as a refuelling tanker, providing a service station for the gofasts that ran the Caribbean routes between the Colombia and the islands. During his years as a correspondent he had made a lot of unlikely friends in Central America. He knew that there were plenty of opportunities in that business and a lot of money to be made, but he was careful, he did not relish a long jail sentence and above all in a South American jail.

  Barton was not the kind of man to settle down to serious business and living, he needed a constant change of scenery around him, new faces, and new challenges.

  His meeting with Erikkson, who had been a cruise guest of Castlemain, offered Barton the opportunity of assisting him on certain trips he made between Sweden and Estonia, during the Caribbean off-season. The idea appealed to Barton providing a change of scenery in a cooler climate. Erikkson’s business of money laundering and running counterfeit currency was another possibility for Barton to supplement his income, which could perhaps give him the chance to one day become the skipper of his own boat.

  Couturier arrived at the marina in his Jeep and started to unload the last minute provisions, extra wine and lobsters. They had planned their six-day cruise heading up to Nassau in the Bahamas, threading their way through the islands. Their first planned stop would be at San Juan in Puerto Rico then following the coast line of the Dominican Republic before turning north to the Turks and Caicos Islands before finally arriving in Nassau. Depending on their speed they would anchor overnight in the one of the multitude of bays or by one of the small offshore islands.

  Bustling up the gangplank Courtauld called out to Barton who was below examining the reports that were being faxed from the weather centre.

  “Hey gimme a hand up here!”

  Barton’s head appeared, transpiration glistening on his tanned head.

  “What up?”

  “Nothing, I need a hand with this lot.”

  “Okay, the forecast looks great by the way, just a little bit of heavy weather to the east, won’t worry us. Looks like were in for a nice trip. ”

  “With Kennedy!”

  “He’s okay.”

  “Where is he by the way?”

  “He should be here in about half an hour with Castlemain, Stein and the girls, that’ll give us the time to get the rest of these things stowed away.”

  Kennedy had made a detour to Pointe-à-Pitre with Castlemain and the two girls, to buy films for his underwater camera. Barton said he had been complaining his diving mask leaked, he wanted something new.

  “The others here?” He asked nodding his head in the direction of a crewman pulling on a winch on the forward deck.

  “Sure everything is in order, André’s in the galley preparing for this evening and Joe’s checking the generator, as soon as Castlemain shows up we’ll be off.”

  The ketch needed a five man crew under normal sailing conditions, but they rarely got much more than the forward sail up, more for show than anything else, it was too much hard work. Their cruises were much more relaxed under power and avoided accidents with the likes of inexperienced guests such as Kennedy, who would be sure to get himself in a knot with the rigging.

  Barton and Courtauld knew the Marie Galante, and its crew who were of old experienced sea hands, the weekend would be fine, if the heavy weather stayed over the east Caribbean.

  They lifted anchor on time and the ketch manoeuvred smoothly out of its mooring as the passing tourists looked enviously on, wishing that they too were rich. Kennedy and his party sipped drinks and acted out their part, aloof, pretending to ignore the land bound strollers. The boat slide over the water, the hum of the motor barely audible.

  They were soon out in the bay and the shore shrunk into a low line of coconut palms with the hills in the background. The sea was smooth, just a gentle swell as the ketch gathered speed and they set about stowing their affairs for the next couple of days on board.

  Courtauld returned to his maps and charts while Barton took over the helm, there was very little movement in the bay, it was too early for the jet foil ferries returning from Marie Galante, there was just a container ship coming up the coast line of Basse Terre and the usual sailing boats that hugged the shore.

  They intended to anchor overnight just off Plymouth on Montserrat and continue the next day sailing north. It was an easy four day cruise up to the Antigua for their guests, it was a trip that Barton had made so many times he could almost sail by view without any difficulties.

  “Let’s get down to some serious business now, drinks! I’ll fix up some Champagne for the girls and a ti-punch or a Mojito for us.”

  “You’re worried that the girls may get drunk.”

  "Sure if we lose them overboard it’ll be a shitty trip - without any sex,” said Courtauld pouring a good measure of rum into the cocktail mixer.

  “It’d be better if it were Castlemain and Kennedy overboard,” replied Barton roaring with laughter as he saw Kennedy’s head appear around the cabin door.

  “What’s that?” said Kennedy.

  “Nothing Pat, just having a laugh at your expense, here take this tray up without dropping it, it’s for the girls, not too strong, a Champagne cocktail with plenty of fruit juice, we don’t want them drunk yet!” He grinned.

  Kennedy managed the tray up the steps onto the deck, steadying himself in a precarious fashion against the handrail as the swell lifted the ketch. Stein was amusing Castlemain and the girls with one of his stories of Caracas, they laughed and he
paused pointing to the drinks, then grabbing the tray before Kennedy in his clumsiness strewed the lot over the deck.

  “Pat you’ll never be a sailor now,” he said imitating Kennedy’s accent to Castlemain’s great amusement.

  “Come along now girls, get some of this into you,” Stein held out a pair of glasses, then picking up the cocktail flask in an almost religious gesture, pulled open the lid and sniffed. “Hmmm, this’ll put some hairs on your chest,” he said filling Doudoune’s glass and lasciviously eyeing her overflowing bikini top.

  Courtauld and Barton joined them on deck for the ti-punch, one of Guys potent rum cocktails. They had a full ship, eleven including themselves, two couples, plus the two crew members who busied themselves with the ketch. André, the mate, watched them from the helm, whilst Henri busied himself with preparations for the dinner in the galley.

  About three or four kilometres to the starboard the darkening coast of Terre Basse rose up into the clouds that shrouded La Souffrière, the lights of Pointe du Vieux Port started to twinkle. They made a steady eight knots, the swell had subsided and the warm air together with the effects of the punch softened their mood, they savoured an almost mystical moment, which they knew was a rare experience that was not to be spoilt.

  “Did you know that not far from this point Columbus landed on his second voyage to the Americas,” said Stein pointing towards the dark coastline that had become barely visible, except for the lights of the cars that wound their way along the coast road.

  To the north the sky was cloudless and the moon shone brightly over the sea. The motor throbbed gently as André reduced speed, in an hour they would arrive in the port of Isle des Saintes where they would dine on board before making a late evening tour of the small port and its bars.

  Chapter 32

  Timeshare