On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean

by Scott B. Williams

  When I reached San Juan in the afternoon, I spent two hours wandering around the wrong part of the city until I found a cab driver who spoke good English and quickly drove me to the right address. When we stopped on the street in front of her parent’s house, Elaine was just getting out of her car.

  “Now I know why you tried to paddle a kayak all the way to Puerto Rico,” the driver said, as he stared at the gorgeous 20-year-old Latina walking towards me with a big smile.

  It is true that I would have paddled a kayak all the way to Puerto Rico for a woman like Elaine, but I knew that she had been engaged for a long time and would soon be married.

  “You look different!” was the first thing Elaine said to me as the cab pulled away. I suddenly became self-conscious and realized that at this point I must have looked like a completely different person than the clean-cut student she had known from a year before. Though I had shaved my wild beard off while still in the Dominican Republic, my hair was still long and unruly, curled to the point of becoming dreadlocks, and bleached surfer-blonde by constant exposure to the sun. But if Elaine had changed any, it was only for the better, and I suddenly found myself wishing she was not engaged.

  Elaine introduced me to her mother, and we went into the house to sit down while she got my mail. Zeida Solis spoke better English than her daughter, and translated for Elaine as I told some of the highlights of my trip at the same time I eagerly tore into my pile of letters. Some of the friends I had most expected to hear from had not written, but there were other letters from people I never thought I would hear from again. Even more surprising was the fact that some of these letters contained cash and checks, sent with wishes that it would help me continue with my journey. Pete Hill and Marty Zinn, who only knew me from the two nights we shared campsites in the Everglades, sent $15. Lisa Roell sent $20 from Key West. There was another $20 from Dr. Steve Ross, a friend from the University of Southern Mississippi who was keeping up with my trip, and $50 from John Herman, a co-worker at the last real job I held. Ernest sent me $10, and a couple of other letters as well. There were letters from other friends and from a cousin.

  This unexpected money would certainly help, but the total was not enough to enable me continue the trip as the senders had intended. I asked Elaine’s mother about the prospects for finding work on the island, and she couldn’t offer any encouragement, saying that unemployment was high, as well as the cost of living. I could not live in my tent and go to a job every day. She suggested that it would be easier to go back to Mississippi for a while to earn money. She offered to let me store my kayak in their yard, but it would be expensive to get it to San Juan. They had a second home in Rincon, a beach house only 15 miles from Mayaguez where Celebration was anchored. I could leave it there, but they were not there often. She did however, have an elderly neighbor, a widow by the name of Mrs. Charlotte Sirutis, who lived in Rincon year round and might let me store it at her house.

  Zeida made some phone calls and found me a deal on a one-way flight to Miami for less than $100. She and Elaine then took me out to dinner in a mall similar to the one in Mayaguez, and then dropped me off at a reasonably priced hotel near the historic part of old San Juan. I took the Linea Sultana bus back to Mayaguez the following day, then offloaded my kayak and gear from Celebration for the last time. I stayed on board a couple more nights, helping them restock the yacht’s dwindling food supply at the low priced supermarket in Mayaguez. They bought $1500 worth of canned goods and other non-perishables. It was such a big order the store manager himself made several trips in his personal Jeep to deliver cases of food. I spent most of a day helping them ferry it out to the boat by dinghy and carry it down the companionway to where we stacked it on the cabin sole until they could sort it all out and stow it in the yacht’s lockers.

  With all this stuff in the way, it was time for me to leave, so the next day I said my good-byes to Josephine and Frank at dawn and paddled north towards Rincon. The sea was flat calm, and I could faintly hear distant city sounds as Mayaguez awoke and came to life. Jagged mountains that were a pale shade of purple rose in the distance behind the city, and were framed in a soft yellow glow as the sun rose behind them. I watched spellbound as I paddled, feeling a lump in my throat as I realized this would be the last sunrise I would see from my kayak for an undetermined amount of time. But on the other hand, this beautiful dawning of a new day seemed to be a promise as well, and it was one that was to be fulfilled with some of the best kayaking of the entire trip.

  After a few hours of leisurely paddling and contemplative drifting, I reached the beaches of Rincon and moved closer to shore, gliding past rolling brown dunes and groves of coconut palms. I saw the Solis’ bright pink beach house, looking just as Zeida had described it, and just north of it, the American and Puerto Rican flags that flew in Mrs. Sirutis’s yard.

  Charlotte Sirutis was a lady who had done lots of canoeing in her time, much to my surprise, and she understood exactly what my trip was about. Her husband had circumnavigated Long Island in a canoe when they lived in New York. Of course it would be fine to leave my boat with her as long as I wanted. It would be safe, and I could call her from Mississippi to check on it. She had a secure garage, enclosed by the iron bars so typical of Puerto Rican houses, and the boat would be protected from the weather and safe from theft while it awaited my return to this excellent jumping-off place to resume my journey.

  I unloaded my much-degraded gear, hosing down what was left of it with fresh water to prevent further damage in my absence. I put the clothes and other things I would need for my trip in a new duffel bag I had purchased at the Mayaguez Mall, and left my camping gear, paddling equipment, and guns and ammunition in the kayak, sealed inside the watertight storage compartments. Then I left Rincon on the Linea Sultana bus and returned to San Juan. Zeida had another letter for me from Ernest, but unfortunately there were no one hundred dollar bills enclosed, so my plans for leaving the island remained unchanged. The cheap flight I found to Miami required no advance reservations, so Zeida phoned the airport and found out there was a flight out that very evening at 7:30 p.m. All I had to do was be there 30 minutes in advance with $78 in cash. It didn’t matter to me that the plane would land in Miami, almost a thousand miles from Mississippi. At least I would be on the continent, and I could make my way to my home state one way or another.

  It was fully dark when the 727 climbed out over the Atlantic and set a course for south Florida. As I was borne along at 500-knots through the night I could see nothing below that indicated the presence of the hundreds of tiny islands and cays that had taken me 6 months to traverse by kayak and sailboat. There was hardly time to reminisce about all the people and places I had visited before the jet began its descent into the sea of lights that is Florida’s densely populated east coast.

  Eight: Puerto Rico

  …for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

  —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  At the Miami airport, I took a taxi to the Greyhound station to see how much it would cost to ride a bus back to Mississippi. I didn’t have enough to get to Hattiesburg, but I could afford the fare to Mobile, Alabama, and that was close enough. My brother, Jeff, who lived in Hattiesburg, could make the two-hour drive down to get me if I could get that far.

  Jeff walked right past me at the terminal in Mobile when I arrived the following evening after almost 24 hours of frustrating stops in more towns than I could count. I grinned as I watched him search the crowd for the clean-cut, pale-skinned brother he had said good-bye to on Black Creek. When I tapped him on the shoulder, he turned around to see a wild-haired stranger with an island tan so dark he would have mistaken me for a foreigner. I gave him a two-minute synopsis of the trip as we carried my duffel bag to his truck, explaining why I had to break up the journey and come back to Mississippi to find some work.

  “How much money have you got left?” he asked as we drove out of the city.

  I chec
ked my wallet. “Four dollars,” I said.

  We both laughed. I had achieved my goal of separating myself from the quest for material things and status. Jeff thought I was better off than he was. He worked everyday of his life, but still wealth eluded him and it took every dime he made just to stay afloat with a wife, three kids, and all the bills that living in society demanded to be paid.

  At least it was almost summer in Mississippi. The warm weather of May was practically the same as that of the tropics I had left behind, so I didn’t have to make any major acclimation changes. I spent some time with my parents and took an old tent I still had from my earliest days of camping and set up a semi-permanent camp in the woods of my father’s family farm. My dad had a big field of watermelons he had planted on a whim on part of the property, so we agreed to go in on halves with the profits. I would do all the work of hoeing and keeping the coyotes and deer out of them, and then the selling when harvest time came.

  In the meantime, I prepared a slide presentation of my journey and made a trip to Pensacola to speak to the Gulf Coast Outdoor Club. Pat Milton, my friend who helped me before by getting gear for the trip was an enthusiastic sea kayaker. He owned a camping equipment store and was the president of this club. He advertised and organized the event so that the resultant audience was an enthusiastic group of canoeists and kayakers who were fascinated by my tales of sharks and desert islands. Although I extended an invitation to any of the members who wanted to accompany me on the next leg of my journey, I was not really surprised that there were no takers.

  Though I was certainly no farmer, my dad and I got lucky with the watermelon crop that year and just in time for July 4 had acres of huge, perfectly formed and deliciously sweet melons. After talking to some other people in the business, I decided that the way to make the most profit off the watermelons was to sell them myself out of a truck somewhere on the side of the road. Since I had no vehicle of my own, I borrowed my dad’s Nissan pick-up. Each morning before sunrise, I loaded it until the suspension could take no more and made the 1 ½ hour drive to Jackson, where I found an ideal location to peddle the melons along busy Highway 80. The watermelons brought $4 each, and most days I sold out by mid afternoon. It was an ideal way to make money, really, as I passed the time waiting for customers by reading adventure travel books and studying my maps of the Caribbean. Sitting there in the sultry heat of a Mississippi summer, I felt like the Dominicano fruit vendors I had seen everywhere on the island, peddling their wares from pushcarts and bicycles.

  During most of this time until the watermelons were sold, I lived much as I had while on my kayak trip, sleeping in my tent and cooking simple meals over a fire. My camp was not far from Bowie Creek, which runs through the property, so I had good source of water for washing and bathing. But despite the fact that I was still living apart from society, I was not content there and longed to get back to the islands as soon as possible. I saved most of the money I made off the watermelons by simply not spending any money, but when the harvest was done I still did not have enough to return to Puerto Rico.

  Since it was already late summer and the Atlantic hurricane season was at hand, I decided to wait it out and work some more so that I could replace all my essential gear. As it turned out, this was a wise decision. Hurricane Hugo devastated St. Croix and parts of Puerto Rico that year, but luckily for me, Rincon and the rest of the west coast of the island was spared from the destruction.

  By the time cold weather began creeping down into central Mississippi, I was determined not to wait any longer. I bought a plane ticket from New Orleans to San Juan, and after purchasing this and all the gear I had to replace, I had just $700 in my pockets when Jeff drove me to the airport.

  I wasn’t worried though as the jet descended that night towards the most brightly lit island in the West Indies. Seen from the final approach, San Juan was a sparkling carpet of lights that filled the plain between the mountains and the Atlantic coast. I had resigned myself to a long night of hanging around the airport, since the flight arrived at 10:00 p.m. and the Linea Sultana bus did not run until after 8:00 a.m. in the morning. I didn’t dare start spending my limited travel funds on such luxuries as a room for the night. All I wanted was to get back to my kayak where I could start living out of my tent again. I passed the rest of that first night on a bench outside the airport, alternating short naps with periods of writing in my journal.

  Getting to Rincon took most of the next day, but when I arrived at Mrs. Sirutis’s garage, I found my kayak just as I had left it. I had come prepared to make some repairs and planned to spend a few days getting ready to travel again. Mrs. Sirutis said I could camp on the beach in front of her yard, so I set to work immediately.

  The gear inside was a mess; there was mildew or rust on almost everything. I cleaned the interior of the boat and resealed the bulkheads to the hull with some silicon marine caulk I brought for the purpose. I set the kayak aside to let this dry for 24 hours and sorted through the other stuff. I had brought a brand new tent; identical to the first one I had started the trip with. It was another Eureka Aurora, a modified A-frame that Pat Milton had arranged to get it for me through his store’s contact with the manufacturer. The company had graciously sent me another new one for this next leg of the trip. The only thing they wanted in return was for me to send the old one back so they could analyze how it had held up to the rough conditions I had put it through, since it was advertised as an “expedition” model. I packaged what was left of it in the box the new one came in and mailed it back to Pat. He later told me that when the people at the factory received it, they asked if it had been repeatedly run over by a truck. I guess most weekend campers don’t break poles and destroy zippers.

  That first night back in Puerto Rico, I pitched the new tent on the narrow strip of beach between Mrs. Sirutis’s fenced-in backyard and the angry surf caused by swells rolling in from the Mona Passage. Rincon is known for its surfing, and this time of year the breakers were much larger than they had been in the summer when I had first landed here. Before dawn a larger than normal breaker hit the beach especially hard, sending a flood surge of seawater two inches deep into my tent. When that happened, I knew I was back. All the time in between spent in limbo in Mississippi seemed to vanish. I would have to quickly get used to discomfort again.

  The next morning I walked to the grocery store in Rincon several times, each time returning with a bag or two of groceries and other supplies to stock up for my departure. My water bottles and cookware were no longer serviceable, so I bought a new pot and skillet and got four gallon-sized Clorox containers from Mrs. Sirutis to carry my water supply.

  The bottom of the kayak was also damaged from repeatedly dragging it across the sand to escape the surf zone on countless landings. Although Kevlar is extremely impact-resistant, I was to learn that it does not stand up to abrasion very well, and the sort of abuse I was putting it through had eventually taken its toll. Much of the hull along the keel was badly worn, in some places to the point of leaking. I asked Mike Neckar, the builder, about this in a phone conversation before I left Mississippi. He didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about. “Just put a few layers of duct tape on it and you’re good to go another thousand miles,” he had assured me. Not being familiar with epoxy and fiberglass lay-ups at the time, I did not have the tools or know-how to do otherwise, so I followed his advice and used duct tape.

  There was never a question about which route I would take to continue east from Rincon to get around Puerto Rico. Although it would have been much shorter to follow the north coast of the 100-mile long island, this route is exposed to the open Atlantic Ocean and much of the shoreline is rugged and rocky, offering few places to land. It is also more populated, especially in the San Juan area. The south coast, on the other hand, would offer numerous bays, outlying islands, and mangrove swamps. Being less populous, it would be much more suited to my mode of travel.

  In Rincon, I asked some of the locals about the condit
ions I could expect along this route. I was told that camping could be dangerous on some of the beaches near the cities – and though I would avoid San Juan, there would be two major cities – Mayagueze and Ponce, along this route. It was not the first time I had heard warnings about crime in Puerto Rico, but I didn’t plan on camping near populated areas anyway. I would take my chances with the insect hordes of the mangroves rather than put myself in a vulnerable position on a popular beach.

  The first day back in the kayak would, out of necessity, be a long one. Most of the shore between Rincon and Mayaguez is developed, so I would have to paddle at least 20 miles to get well south of that city. I worried that I would not be in shape to paddle hard those first few days. Leaving 30 to 40 degree December weather in Mississippi and stepping out of a plane into the upper 80’s was a bit of a shock, and the sweat poured on my walks back from town, carrying heavy bags of groceries. It would take a week or more to re-adapt to the tropics.

  Sleep didn’t come easy my last night in Rincon – partly because of the heat and humidity and the crashing surf, but mostly because of the excitement of anticipation. I stayed up late, marveling at the incredible beauty that surrounded me. Sixty-foot coconut palms leaned out over the water’s edge, back-lit in the soft white glow of a full moon that rose just after dark. The palms rattled in the light nighttime trade winds, and I walked the beach in nothing but shorts, thinking about friends and family back home bundled up for the cold, if they were outside at all. I felt lucky and blessed beyond measure to be able to live this experience. I had high hopes for the journey ahead, but I had learned from the first leg of the journey that one man’s plans meant nothing in the face of wind, sea, and unforeseen man-made obstacles. Wiser now, my hopes and dreams were tempered with the reality that the key to successfully traveling these waters by kayak was flexibility and a willingness to change plans at a moment’s notice.