On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean

by Scott B. Williams

  He pointed east through the mangrove maze and assured me that Salinas was mucho kilometers farther that way. Dejected, I paddled on beyond the sight and sounds of the little town, the name of which I never learned, and found a perfectly hidden beach under a tunnel of mangroves. I had covered 20 miles that day, 15 of those after the trade winds started blowing. I was ready for a secluded camp where I could get cleaned up and well rested. I took a saltwater bath and shaved, then cooked dinner and crawled into the tent before sunset. I would leave early in the morning to push on to Salinas. I still wasn’t sure exactly where I was due to the mangrove nature of this coastline that made it hard to define, but I knew I was surely within 5 miles of Salinas, despite the dock boy’s exaggerations.

  I paddled out of the mangroves in the darkness of early morning, and by daybreak could see what appeared to be a town on the next point to the east. A cluster of little islands off the point corresponded in position to the Cayos de Ratones (Rat Keys) that my map showed to be south of Salinas. Even if Celebration was not there, I needed to stop and find a store to buy supplies, so I set a course for the distant buildings on the shore and began a two-hour crossing. Halfway across, a fishing boat changed course and came in my direction. The man at the helm offered me a tow to the harbor, feeling sorry for me because I had no motor and not understanding why I chose to paddle. I thanked him and he motored away with a bewildered look on his face.

  From 2 miles out, I could make out a cluster of masts, a telltale indicator of the location of the anchorage within the encircling ring of mangroves that surrounded the harbor. I picked up the pace, growing more excited. Was Celebration there? Maybe even Winning Edge? It would be great to see George again, as well as Josephine and Frank. Somehow seeing them would connect this segment of the trip to my original journey, at least in my mind. I focused on the aluminum masts and closed the gap in less than an hour. On the far side of the anchorage was a tall mast with double spreaders, indicating a yacht the size of Celebration. I paddled through a narrow cut in the mangroves and into the anchorage. There were four boats anchored out and another dozen or so tied to the docks of the marina. The big one on the far side of the harbor with the double spreaders was a canoe-stern design, and yes, there was a broad blue strip just below the sheer line on the while hull. It was Celebration – the yacht I’d lived on for two months. I had never thought I would see her again.

  I paddled up and tied my kayak alongside the dinghy, then climbed into it and rapped on the fiberglass hull. It was still early, about 7:00 a.m. in the morning.

  “Who is it?” Josephine yelled from the forward cabin in a sleepy and irritated voice.

  “Come see!” I yelled back.

  A few moments later, Josephine climbed up the companionway ladder and nearly fell back with surprise when she saw me in the dinghy. “I thought I recognized the voice,” she said, then: “Frank! Come see!”

  “Who the hell is it? Whataya? Outta yer mind waking me up at this hour?” His voice was sleepy and irritable, until he joined her in the cockpit…

  “Jesus Christ! You made it back to the islands! I thought your trip was finished.”

  I was invited aboard, and over coffee, Josephine and Frank filled me in on all the yachtie gossip I’d missed in my 10-month absence from the cruising life. They had only sailed a hundred miles in that period, and explained that it was because they liked Puerto Rico so much they had lingered long in each port. Hurricane Hugo had not hit Salinas hard. Celebration had ridden out the storm with no damage, secured within the protective ring of mangroves surrounding the harbor with all the anchors they had aboard. Josephine and Frank had wisely taken no chances once the yacht was secured, and had retreated to the safety of a hotel in the mountains until the danger was passed.

  “George is in St. John, in the Virgin Islands,” Josephine told me. “He married Millie, and after he finally got clearance for her to leave with him, they sailed out of Puerto Plata. She had never been on a boat before, and threw up the whole time. She was so miserable that George had to take her back, and now he’s working to earn enough money to fly back and forth to see her.”

  Poor George. He just never could seem to get it right. All that longing and searching for a woman to accompany him, then he finds one and goes to the ultimate measure of marrying her, only to find out after the wedding that she can’t stomach sailing. And poor Millie, the innocent young Dominican woman swept off her feet by a charming Frenchman with a sailboat and promises of a better life over the horizon, far from the poverty that was all she had ever known… I hoped the best for them, but I didn’t see how it could ever work out.

  Josephine and Frank also told me that Texas Tumbleweed, the yacht we’d last seen in the Caicos, had been blown ashore from an anchorage on the east side of the island by the storm. Stan and his family were living in an apartment while they undertook major repairs in a boatyard. Hundreds of yachts had been lost or severely damaged in Puerto Rico, and even more on the harder hit islands of Culebra, Vieques, and St. Croix.

  After a good long visit with Josephine and Frank, I left them to attend their other business of the morning and paddled over to an interesting marina dock that was built around the hung mangroves that bordered the shore. There was a bar at one end of the shaded dock, and a spacious deck with tables and chairs that were deserted at this hour. Across the harbor beyond the green of the mangroves on the opposite shore, blue mountains in the distance provided a backdrop for the masts of Celebration and the other yachts in the anchorage. I was already taken with Salinas, even before I met the interesting people I would find there. But at the time, I had no intention of staying more than a few hours, so I made my way along the road that led from the marina to the main part of town, 2 miles away. I was looking for a grocery store, and after I found one I returned to the marina sweating under the load of supplies I’d bought. I washed my laundry in the automatic machines provided for marina guests, and took a shower while I waited on the clothes to dry. This done, I sat in the cool of the shade on the deck and updated my journal, frequently interrupted by other boaters that were curious about my strange mode of travel.

  Josephine and Frank came to the dock in the meantime, and as the afternoon slipped away in conversation I decided I might as well stay a day or two in Salinas. Josephine told me I had to meet Fred and Mary, a sailing couple who lived on their boat here, since they knew a lot about the Virgin Islands and could give me plenty of useful information.

  When Fred and Mary showed up a little later as we were having a drink, Josephine introduced us, telling them I was from Mississippi.

  “Mississippi! Are you really from there?” Mary asked. “You don’t sound like a redneck.”

  Mary was from Connecticut, Fred explained.

  I assured her that I was, switching to my best Southern drawl in response to both questions. You would think that Mississippi was the most exotic, dangerous, and unknown Third World country on earth, the way Mary questioned me about my home state. She said that she had once passed through a portion of Mississippi, on the way to New Orleans with some college friends. She spoke of the trip as if she did not expect to make it through, actually surprised that she did not end up in a small town jail or victim of a lynching party.

  Fred, a California native, was laid back and much less outspoken than his partner. He and I hit it off from the start, due to our mutual interests in boats, the sea, and the islands – and our mutual dislike for mainstream society. Fred and Mary insisted that I come to their yacht, Estrelita, (Spanish for “Little Star”) for dinner, and before we finished eating, Fred invited me to stay with them for as long as I liked. He said I could boost my travel funds by helping them with some work on Estrelita, which had been badly damaged by the recent hurricane while anchored in Coral Bay, in the Virgin Islands. Fred said he would pay me by the hour, and in addition, provide meals and a berth on Estrelita. Since he was an expert in fiberglass repair, he would also help me patch up the hull of my kayak in a more permanent m
anner than my duct tape job.

  It was the 21st of December. Christmas would be better spent in good company, I reasoned, and my kayak did need a better repair. I took Fred up on his offer and he said we would start work in the morning.

  Fred told me about his experiences in Hurricane Hugo, saying he had chained Estrelita to an immovable mooring in Coral Bay. He stayed aboard the yacht alone, while Mary went ashore for safe refuge. Fred said that he had to wear a diving mask to go on deck to adjust lines in the 100-knot plus storm winds. The damage to the yacht came not from the wind, but from another sailboat that broke free of its anchors and was blown into Estrelita, breaking off a section of the bow and the bow pulpit, and ruining lifeline stanchions and a lot of paint. If Fred had not been on board to fend off the other yacht, he and Mary would have lost their boat, which was also their home.

  Fred said that they owned land in St. John, and normally anchor nearby in Coral Bay, but after the hurricane they brought the boat to Salinas for repairs because they needed a slip with electricity to run power tools. Parts and materials were also more readily available on this more industrialized island. Fred had been in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for 17 years, working as an engineer and a commercial diver. He learned to dive in the Navy, and had been a SEAL operative in the Vietnam War. But Fred wasn’t the kind of fellow to talk much about himself, and shrugged off his experience as no big deal. He seemed more interested in helping me with my trip by giving me a job and repairing my boat than anything else.

  I spent much of the next two days using an orbital sander to smooth down the teak toe rails and other exterior deck trim that Mary was going to refinish with varnish. Though the sun was intense, the trade winds I had fought so hard against to get here blew constantly, providing refreshing relief that made the working conditions pleasant enough. Sleeping in the airless and confined space of Estrelita’s cabin was more difficult than the work for me, since I was so accustomed to sleeping outside in my well-ventilated tent.

  Our work started late each morning, as Fred and Mary liked to sleep until at least 10:00 a.m., giving me time to wander around the quiet streets of Salinas until they were ready to begin. Even when we were working, the pace was never fast, and by the time the sun “dropped below the yardarm” each day at 5:00 p.m., Fred figured it was time to make some margaritas. I was set up with the eating as well. If Mary didn’t cook an elaborate dinner, Josephine did, or we would all go out to eat at a pizza restaurant near the marina.

  During a break from our work on Estrelita, I unloaded my kayak and Fred and I lifted it up on the dock to access the hull damage. When we removed my duct tape, we saw that it was worse than I thought. Evidently I hit some rocks pretty hard even in the short trip from Rincon. There was a crack all the way through the hull in the well-worn section of the bow, and though I hadn’t noticed any leaking, thanks to the tape, I wouldn’t have gotten much farther in a boat with a hole in the bottom. Fred made a list of materials we would need and said that we would make a trip to the hardware stores in Ponce after Christmas.

  We continued our work on Estrelita on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas Day all the yachties in the harbor got together to produce a potluck dinner on the dock. The offerings included traditional Christmas favorites as well as island specialties, but it didn’t seem like Christmas to me in these tropical surroundings. I called my family back home and learned that Mississippi was in the grip of an unusual deep-freeze, with a low temperature of 4 degrees above zero. I was wearing shorts and sandals. It was 85 in Salinas.

  One unexpected opportunity came my way at the potluck when I met a single-handing cruiser who was planning to sail his boat across the Pacific Ocean after leaving Puerto Rico. When he learned that I had a portable, hand-operated desalinator, he offered to buy it for his life raft emergency kit. I didn’t expect to need it in the islands ahead, now that I was past the arid Bahamas, and his offer of $450 sounded too good too pass up. I had bought it for less than $400, wholesale from the manufacturer. He came over to Estrelita with the cash the next day, and I gladly parted with the watermaker, hoping I wouldn’t be sorry later by getting myself lost at sea with no water.

  Fred and Mary had recently purchased 25 acres of rain forest high in the mountains north of Salinas, and Mary offered to take me to see it, since they recently hired a surveyor and she needed to check the boundaries. I doubted it would be a real jungle, despite Mary’s insistence that I needed my long pants, insect repellent, and machete. Puerto Rico does have a tropical national forest called El Yunque, a pristine remnant of the original jungles that covered all of the larger Caribbean Islands, so I looked forward to going with her to see how it compared with the forests I found around Samana Bay.

  It took an hour to get there, even with Mary driving at breakneck speed along the twisting mountain roads that were cratered with potholes. We passed scenery that could have been in the Dominican Republic – crude shacks, chickens, dogs, pigs, and children lining the roadway, banana plantations, and wild breadfruit and mango trees. As the road climbed away from the sea, we passed through clouds of white mist that shrouded the green-cloaked mountains.

  At the entrance to the property, on a steep dirt road that forced Mary to put the Nissan pick-up into 4-wheel-drive, we stopped at the house of 87-year-old Don Felix, who lived with his wife in a small house surrounded by an herb garden. Mary told me that people come from all over Puerto Rico to visit Don Felix, a man reputed to have great knowledge of medicinal plants and of the natural healing methods of the old shamans who were his ancestors.

  Senior Felix greeted us before we got out of the truck. With a machete in hand and the agility of a man a fourth his age, he led us up the steep slope above his home to the wall of green where his fields ended and the jungle began. Near the edge of this forest there were dozens of citrus trees, and we paused long enough to sample softball-sized grapefruit. Don Felix then led the way downhill into the bush, following a steep ravine of slippery, mud-covered banks that forced us to grab branches and tree trunks for balance. I was amazed at his ability to move through such terrain, but I had no time to ponder it. If I slowed down to catch my breath, the old man would be out of sight in the thick foliage.

  At the bottom of the ravine we reached a stream of clear, cold water and turned east to follow it into what was truly as legitimate a rain forest as any I had seen in the Dominican Republic or on television. Tall trees, whose species names I had no clue of, formed a solid canopy overhead. Interspersed among the varied hardwoods were lofty palms Mary said were sierra palms. These and the giant tree ferns that were everywhere lent a primeval feel to the scene. Vines, orchids, and bromeliads hung from every available space on trunks and branches, and ferns and other herbs covered the ground to waist level, making it impossible to see where we were putting our feet. I was glad to know there are no poisonous snakes in Puerto Rico. Don Felix pointed to countless plants, talking constantly in rapid Spanish, which I understood none of, and Mary comprehended only parts. She said he was explaining the medicinal uses of the various species, as well as reciting totally unrelated poetry as he walked.

  We followed the orange surveyor’s flagging that marked the edge of the property until Mary was satisfied that she knew where the boundaries were. Then we returned to Don Felix’s house to drink coffee brewed from the beans that grew in his backyard. From his door, there was a magnificent view to the south of folded green ridges backed by the backdrop of the blue Caribbean Sea far below. Mary gave Senior Felix and his wife a bag of groceries she had picked up for them in Salinas, then we headed back to the coast. Once again, Mary drove as if she were running from the law. She pushed the tired old Nissan pickup to the limits of its braking and suspension system, and when we somehow made it back to the marina in one piece, I told her I’d rather walk than ride with her again.

  The next day Fred and I collected the fiberglass repair materials we would need for my kayak as we drove all over Ponce, searching half a dozen hardware stores. Fred w
ould need some of the stuff we had left over, so I only ended up paying for about $25 worth of materials. We spent another day actually making the repairs – sanding the damaged areas down to bare Kevlar, applying strips of fiberglass tape saturated in epoxy resin, waiting for it to cure, then sanding and faring until it was ready to paint. Fred knew a lot about working with fiberglass, having build many small boats and repaired numerous larger ones. Little did I know that this first experience with epoxy resin would lead me becoming a part-time boatbuilder and boat repair specialist. But at the time, I had little interest in any work-related pursuit. I just wanted to get on with the repair and get underway again as soon as possible with the extra money I had come across in Salinas.

  When Fred was done, the repair was invisible except for slightly mis-matched paint. My kayak was as good as new. I left it out of the water for a few more days at Fred’s insistence, to give the resin and the paint time for a full cure. Finished with my boat, we continued our work on Estrelita, replacing winches and other deck hardware, and then the mast stays and masthead lights. For these tasks I had to ascend the 50-foot mast in the bosun’s chair, hoisted aloft with the halyard winch by Fred.

  On New Year’s Eve, we took the day off to go sailing with Fred’s Dutch friend, Balca, on his beautifully restored classic wooden ketch. Balca and some of his employees sailed the boat from Boqueron for the holidays, and we spent the last day of the year and the decade anchored near some islands south of Salinas, snorkeling among coral reefs and taking frequent breaks to sample fine wine and cheeses on deck. Back in Salinas that afternoon, I helped Fred and Mary finish off a bottle of tequila without the margaritas, and then we headed to the Salinas yacht club for the special party that was being held for all the boaters in the harbor. I didn’t need anything else to drink after that tequila, but when a certain cute young Puerto Rican woman named Brenda, who was working at the bar, kept insisting on giving me free drinks, I found her hard to refuse. I didn’t find my way back to Estrelita until sometime the next afternoon.