On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean

by Scott B. Williams

  Despite all the fun, I was growing impatient to leave now that my kayak was fixed and the holidays were over. I paddled around the harbor to test the boat and started reorganizing and packing my gear. I made several trips to the grocery store in Salinas to stock up on supplies, and by January 3, I was ready to leave. I felt good about having the boat repaired, but even better was having a new supply of money. I had the $450 from selling the desalinator, Fred and Mary paid me $200 for the small amount of work I did for them, and I sold them my Beretta pistol for an additional $100. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take firearms into most of the countries ahead on my route, and I planned to get rid of the rifle as well somewhere in the Virgin Islands. After buying all my supplies and making final preparations to leave, I had a total of $1250, almost twice the amount I had come to Puerto Rico with 4 weeks ago.

  Fred and Mary treated me to a lobster dinner the night before I left, and the following day I ate lunch at the pizza place with them and Frank and Josephine. It was afternoon before I paddled out of the marina, and I knew I wouldn’t get much of a start, but I could at least reach the islands we visited on Balca’s sailboat and find a place to camp. I was ready for the freedom of the sea and my kayak. I couldn’t bear to think of another night in the stuffy confines of a sailboat, with good company or not. Like my later passion for working with wood and fiberglass and building boats, little did I know that I would one day become an enthusiastic sailor and even live aboard a sailboat smaller than Estrelita.

  Nine: Into the Wind

  If a man is alive, there is always the danger he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  The serenity of Salinas harbor was an illusion that made me temporarily forget my monumental struggle against the trade winds ever since rounding Cabo Rojo. As soon as I left the protection of the mangroves, I found myself battling a fierce headwind that threatened to tear the paddle from my hands. I was glad I did not have far to go that day. I stopped at 4:30 p.m., when I reached the string of cays where we had snorkeled on New Year’s Eve. I paddled through a cut in the mangroves and found a small beach Fred told me about. Though it was more mud than sand, it was high enough to provide a campsite, and quite secluded as well, hidden as it was from both the open sea and the sound inside the islands. A few coconut palms shaded the beach, but none bore any nuts. I set up my tent and built a fire to roast one of the huge plantains I bought from a farmer in Salinas. As I was eating, a bold rat came out of the surrounding bushes to watch me from the other side of the fire, hoping for a handout. He had no fear and would not leave even when I threw rocks at him. Others joined him during the night, but they could not get at my food, as I learned long ago to keep my kayak sealed up tight at night.

  I was in the habit of getting up late after my lazy days in Salinas, so it was 8:00 a.m. before I was traveling the next morning. I stayed in the lee of the string of cays as long as possible, then took a winding channel that Fred had told me about that tunneled under the mangroves for half a mile before exiting in the open sea. Beyond these mangroves, I came to a barrier reef that he had not told me about and could find no opening to deep water. I followed it east from the inside for 2 miles until I came to a dead end where the reef met the curving beach of the main island. I could see a place to get out, but the powerful breakers cresting at the cut were as high as 10 feet. I didn’t relish the idea of tackling such breakers in rock-strewn waters, but I didn’t want to backtrack for miles to search for a safer way either.

  I chose to take a chance in the surf and managed to make it through, drenched and charged with adrenalin, but by frantic bracing with the paddle, I avoided capsizing. My problems were not over once I was in the open. Around the next point I encountered wind so strong I could barely make headway against it. A rest of only a few seconds resulted in precious lost ground as I was blown back almost as fast as I could paddle forward. I was paralleling a nice sandy beach off to my left, but couldn’t think of landing there as it was pounded by crashing breakers. I stayed two miles off, opting for the safety of deeper water, but there were scattered shoals and reefs even that far out that caused the waves to stack up and break. The situation was getting dangerous as 10-footers were not uncommon and some were even bigger. The wind blew white crests of foam off every peak and the sea was an opaque, muddy brown, rather than the clear emerald green I had come to expect of the Caribbean.

  One swell lifted me high above the rest and I nearly panicked when I saw what was coming. A brown wall of water at least 15 feet high and hundreds of yards wide was rolling my way, cresting and getting ready to break. I strained to turn my bow to face this monster and succeeded just in time. Farther down the wave, to the left of where it would overtake me, I could see the top curling to form a “pipeline.” It crested right under my hull rather than breaking on top of me as I feared it would. For a moment, I was suspended in the air over 15 feet of nothingness until the kayak fell through the space the wave had occupied and landed in the trough with a resounding splash. I paddled on, shaken by the near wipeout and looking out to sea with dread for similar killer waves.

  I reached the lee of Punta Figuras by the end of the afternoon, so exhausted I could barely wield the paddle. I found a pass through the reef and landed on a brown sand beach. There was an old lighthouse tower on the end of the point, accessible by a dirt road where a couple stood by their parked car, making out and watching the sunset. I wouldn’t have cared if there was a shopping mall on the point. I wasn’t going any farther after what I had been through. I set up my tent near the water’s edge and cooked dinner. The last light of the setting sun cast lovely shades of purple on the mountains beyond the beach, framed by a surreal green foreground of coconut palms. I snapped several pictures, unaware that the used Pentax 35mm camera I had brought back from Mississippi to replace my dead Minolta was not functioning at all. I would shoot dozens of rolls of film on this segment of the trip only to discover that none of them were properly exposed when I dropped them off for processing upon my return.

  Taking a cue from my experience with the wind and waves the day before, I left well before daylight the next morning and paddled 5 miles to the next point of land, where I found a more secluded beach. Though it was still early in the morning when I got there, I went ahead and set up camp, far back in the bushes and hidden from the beach. I wanted to take a day off to study my maps of the east coast of Puerto Rico, and the crossing to the Virgin Islands. There was a trail leading to the beach nearby, but my tent and kayak were so well-concealed by the palm fronds I draped over them that people walking by never knew I was there. My map showed no beaches on the southwest corner of the island that looked suitable for camping, so I knew I would have to make a long day when I left this campsite to get around to the eastern shore of the island. I turned in early and left two hours before daylight, making a wide detour back to the west to skirt a barrier reef that blocked the point from the open sea.

  Just past the next headland to the east, I paddled in close to shore, paralleling a long sandy beach shaded with palms and sparsely settled with cool-looking bungalows. It looked like the perfect place to live, and I envied the lucky residents who woke up every morning to such an idyllic setting. There were big breakers dumping hard between me and the beach, but I felt I was far enough out to avoid them, even though I was close enough in to wave to the few people walking along the shore who noticed me paddling by. Pre-occupied with these sights on land, I didn’t notice until the last minute that a huge breaker was closing in on me from seaward with all the fury of the one that nearly wiped me out two days earlier. Once again, I was lucky. The wave crested just as it passed under me, lifting me 15 feet straight up and then breaking in roar of whitewater that probably would have smashed me into the beach if it had broken a few seconds sooner. What a way to wake up! I snapped out of my lazy, early morning musings and quickly paddled wel
l out until I was a mile off the beach. I learned my lesson about playing around too close to the surf zone.

  A couple hours later, I rounded Punta Tuna and could suddenly see the blue outline of the island of Vieques, floating on the horizon to the east. I had at last conquered the south coast of Puerto Rico. Now the shoreline curved to the northeast. My plan was to follow it all the way to Fajardo, near the northeast corner of the island, and from there make my crossing to the Virgin Islands by way of Culebra, another Puerto Rican island similar to Vieques that lies about halfway to St. Thomas.

  Near Punta Tuna, the coast offered nothing but inhospitable cliffs, so I had to paddle miles before I finally reached a place to stop for lunch on Punta Yeguas. The lovely crescent beach enclosed within a split in the point would have made a first-rate campsite, and I had already done 10 miles that day, which was as good as each of the last two days of fighting the wind. But now I had the wind to my starboard beam as I was going more northward. I wanted to make progress while I could, so I left the point after taking time to eat and swim.

  Early in the afternoon, I came to the ritzy marina at Palmas del Mar, and turned into the channel to look for Texas Tumbleweed, since this is where Josephine said the yacht was undergoing repairs. The big ketch from Texas was there all right, propped up on jack stands in the boatyard, but I didn’t see any sign of Stan or anyone else I knew. My inquiries among the other boaters resulted in no friendly conversation, so I headed back out to sea. The boatyard was a depressing place of wrecked and broken dreams, and the sailors there who were trying to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Hugo’s devastating visit had no time for a free-spirited kayaker who escaped their misfortune.

  The skies grew dark as an ominous-looking storm approached from the east, but after I left the marina and passed another headland to the north, the beach I found there was unapproachable due to a tremendous surf break. I was effectively trapped between the storm and the surf, so I headed towards the storm, knowing after my experience with the two big waves that I would be safer in deeper water where breakers were less likely.

  The wind increased steadily as the squall closed in, and I watched in fascination as dark clouds and the curtains of rain beneath them swallowed up Vieques, 10 miles away, and kept coming my way. The heavy overcast took the light from the green water and turned it to gray, punctuated everywhere by whitecaps and blown foam. I wasn’t too worried though, feeling sure I was well beyond the big breakers that closer inshore could do me harm. The worst I expected was to get drenched by rain and blowing spray. I kept paddling north, stretching out to make long, powerful strokes that I hoped would carry me out of the storm’s path.

  That’s when I saw disaster coming. A wall of green water appeared inexplicably from seaward, dwarfing the surrounding seas. It was a rogue wave, and to my horror, I saw that it would crest at about 20 feet. There was nowhere to go and no way to outrun it. I was directly in the path of this monster, which was already curling at the top. This one would not pass under me like those others that had broken too late to be a problem. It was about to dump its full fury right on my head. I dug in frantically with the paddle to spin the kayak bow-first into the wave, but sea kayaks are long and narrow, designed for straight tracking rather than quick maneuvers. The best I could do was not good enough, and I was able to turn only partially into it. I took a deep breath to prepare for the inevitable dive I was about to take. In almost slow motion, a cascade of roaring white water tumbled down the near-vertical face of the wave, and the next thing I knew I was swallowed up and being rolled over and over in its fury like a rag in a washing machine. Though I managed to stay locked into the cockpit with my knees at first, the wave kept the boat under for so long that I had to pull the sprayskirt and swim for the surface before I ran out of air.

  I came up in the midst of an angry gray sea under a sullen gray sky, out of my kayak, and treading water in more than 3 miles from land. It suddenly hit me how alone I really was, facing the open ocean in nothing but a 17-foot kayak. There was no time to ponder my predicament, however. I had to catch my boat before it was swept out of my reach. Somehow, I still had the paddle in one hand, but the nylon cord that I normally used to tether it to the deck snapped like a thread. The kayak was close by, thanks to the fact that it was both flooded and inverted, the only thing that kept it from being carried all the way to the beach by the big wave. I swam to it, righted it, and quickly got back in by climbing over the stern, straddling it like a horse until I could slid far enough forward to get my rear-end down into the cockpit. The whole boat was half-submerged with the cockpit completely full of water, but I rapidly pumped it out while scanning the horizon for more rogue waves. Thanks to my careful lashing of everything on deck and in the cockpit, no gear was lost, and no damage was done. I resealed the sprayskirt and finished the pumping until once again the kayak felt light and responsive to the paddle.

  The seas around me averaged 5-7 feet, so I could only assume the one that capsized me was a rogue that was big enough to break over some shelf of shallow water I had wandered unknowingly over. The darkest of the storm clouds were now passing well to the south of me, so I paddled north as fast as I could, hoping to miss the worst of the wind. I was soon overtaken by blinding rain, but was able to navigate by keeping the sounds of the breaking surf far to my left, as I traveled up the coast.

  The shoreline here was quite straight, with miles of beach exposed to the open sea. When the rain let up I could see that I was going to have to face the surf zone if I wanted to get to shore, and I had to get to shore – I was too exhausted to go much farther. I had already paddled 20 miles that day before the capsize, and there would only be a couple more hours of daylight. I had to get to shore to get all my gear out of the storage compartments and make sure water had not damaged it or my food supply.

  I took my usual precaution in big surf of coming in stern first, back-paddling between wave sets and keeping my bow to seaward so I could see and prepare for breakers. The waves breaking on this beach were 7-10 feet, but as there appeared to be nothing on the shore but soft sand, with no signs of rocks or reefs offshore, I decided to go for it and succeeded in getting through the surf. As the stern was swept onto the sand I leapt out of the cockpit and dragged the heavy loaded boat beyond the reach of the next wave. Then I took a deep breath, grateful to be on dry land again, and looked around at the deserted beach where I had landed. There was nothing but sand and coconut palms for as far as I could see in either direction. The palms were so dense that I knew they had to belong to a commercial plantation, but there was no sign of a road leading to this part of the beach. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had found an uninhabited landing site where I could dry out and recover from my ordeal.

  I quickly unloaded the kayak and spread my wet gear on the deck and about the beach. Some water had gotten into both the bow and stern storage compartments, but thankfully not enough to ruin anything. I pitched my tent and was about to prepare supper when I saw a lone man walking towards me from a mile down the beach to the north. When he reached my camp, he began talking excitedly in rapid Spanish, some of which I could understand. He was asking if I planned to camp here alone, and when I told him yes, he seemed more excited and jabbered and pointed into the forest of coconut palms behind my tent. I didn’t catch everything he was trying to say, but I did hear the word for “murder” several times and got the impression that he was trying to warn me it was dangerous to camp here. But so be it. The thought of mere murderers could do nothing to convince me to face that surf zone and paddle back out to sea after what I’d been through that day. When I showed no intentions of leaving, the man continued on his way south, shaking his head, and mumbling under his breath. I watched until he disappeared into the distance, then I assembled and loaded the AR-7 rifle and placed it close to my sleeping bag – just in case.

  No visitors with homicidal intentions came in the night to my campsite in the coconut plantation. I slept soundly until dawn and then quickly broke
camp to leave, only to be caught in a downpour before I could get the kayak loaded. Disgusted with my luck, I covered my stuff with the tent fly and huddled under the palms until it passed over. The surf was still heavy when I shoved off, but I plunged through it without capsizing and reached the relative calm of deeper water.

  I headed for Cayo Santiago, a small island just a few miles offshore that was en route to the next headland to the northeast. Fred and Mary had told me that there was a colony of Rhesus monkeys and possibly baboons as well, on Cayo Santiago – like the ones I’d seen on Key Lewis in Florida. Fred said they had been put there by the government years past for research. As I approached the small cay from downwind, I could smell the monkeys long before I got close enough to see them. The place stank like a zoo. I approached close to shore, snapping pictures (with my worthless camera) as I drifted, of monkeys that watched me from the trees. I stopped to eat lunch on a dock someone had built on the island, keeping a wary eye out for the baboons Fred had warned me about. I didn’t see any, but the monkeys watched from a distance until I left. (I later saw a television documentary about the monkeys of Cayo Santiago, and there was no mention of baboons on the island.)

  Though it was almost noon when I left Cayo Santiago, the wind was relatively calm, and the seas were almost glassy – a dramatic change from the day before. The water was a lot clearer than any I’d seen on the south coast of Puerto Rico, and I could often see the bottom as I passed over coral reefs.