A Thousand Miles from Anywhere

by Sandra Clayton

  In all the chaos, the only coherent words are from the man in the engine bay who bellows, ‘Bring me a poly bag!’ which in similar circumstances is probably the last thing I should have had on my mind. As the boat is anchored quite close to us I wonder briefly if, in the event of its blowing up, it will take ours with it. Within minutes, though, everybody is back at their original jobs again; sanding the toe rails and cleaning the chrome, all except the man from the engine bay who pants quietly on the foredeck and is rather sooty.

  After our first long passage we had created a maintenance and cleaning schedule of our own. Nothing as dramatic as our neighbour’s but, as a blue water cruiser, your boat is your home. At the same time – especially if you are almost constantly on the move as we were initially – it is rather like being on an extended holiday. And once the Atlantic crossing has been made you are into a period where there is no pressure on you to do anything. You can island-hop, swim, socialise, sunbathe or spend your days in a languid haze. Sun, sea and pina colada. You have months ahead of you and the cry of mañana! can be heard in the land.

  What may be good for cruisers, though, is not always good for yachts. The sea is a hostile environment for any vessel. Hot sun, saltwater and high winds all take their toll on its exterior, plus daily wear and tear on a compact living area. It is important, therefore, to strike a balance between that extended holiday and going to seed.

  Voyager has also covered 3,000 miles in the last couple of months, quite a lot of it in testing conditions. So, as well as polishing the salty bloom off cockpit and helm, and shampooing the upholstery there is some serious maintenance to be done. Engines, batteries, outboard motor and davits, a complete check of navigation lights and rigging and the mast. And with the bit firmly between David’s teeth, we even end up with a couple of usable interior lights that haven’t worked since we bought the boat.

  He also inspects and cleans our heating system after finding traces of oxidation around a hose and circlip. A little seawater had obviously worked its way into its exhaust system during the Atlantic crossing. Happily the heater still works because, like a house, a cruising yacht is a home for all seasons and we may not be in warm temperatures indefinitely.

  Of course, the most crucial reason for getting your boat back into good working order, if you happen to be loitering in a hurricane zone, is the ability to leave at the appropriate time. We have been mulling over our options.

  We could sail south to Trinidad, which is below the hurricane zone, or continue on south down to Venezuela or Brazil. Or we could go through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Islands. The problem with all of these is heat.

  The temperature here is already quite hot enough for me and it is still only spring. The scorching summer temperatures to be expected much further south is daunting. And while yachtsmen we have met have said what a beautiful cruising ground Venezuela is, they have added that for safety it is best to sail in convoy so that when anchoring in isolated places one person can remain on each of the boats while the others go ashore. They have also said that the people they met there were wonderfully kind, but that the level of poverty was distressing, particularly the effects of malnutrition and the lack of health care.

  Rather than going west, to the Pacific Islands, David has a fancy for Alaska, to the north. The distances are immense, however. To get to Alaska would mean a seven-week voyage of 5,000 miles from Panama to Hawaii. We should winter there and then sail a further 2,000 miles to Alaska the following summer.

  To do this we should have to be through the Panama Canal by March to avoid the Pacific’s tropical storms which blow from June to October. To have done it this year we should have had to leave Antigua after Voyager had been antifouled at Jolly Harbour. But we had wanted to see more of the Leeward Islands than just Antigua, and in particular the Virgin Islands beckon.

  Our dilemma is solved during a visit to Falmouth Harbour’s supermarket one morning. Standing in the queue at the cash desk I get talking with an elderly, somewhat feisty American woman off a little red and white sloop anchored further down the harbour. The conversation turns to future destinations and I mention my reservations about too much heat.

  ‘Why don’t you just keep goin’ north, to the States?’ she asks.

  We should love to, I tell her, but our budget requires that we anchor wherever possible and we couldn’t afford American marina rates.

  ‘How tall’s your mast?’ she asks.

  Unsure as to what that has to do with the price of marinas, I tell her.

  ‘And what’s your draught?’

  I wonder if I have just joined her in something Americans call ‘a senior moment’, but I tell her anyway.

  ‘Go up the ICW,’ she says, and proceeds to tell me about the thousand miles of inland waterway between Florida and Virginia where you can anchor pretty much all the way, and even tie up for free once in a while. Its disadvantages are that it is very shallow in places and there are also some fixed bridges, so for yachts with a tall mast and a deep keel it is out of the question. For Voyager there would be no problem at all.

  ‘And it’s all different,’ she adds. ‘Rivers, lakes, marsh, grassland...’

  I blink at her. It sounds too good to be true, like the sort of thing people sometimes talk about but haven’t actually done themselves. My thought must be evident in my face because she says a little huffily, ‘Bin doing it ten years!’

  32

  Moving On

  The new plate arrives and we arrange a berth on a pontoon at the top end of Falmouth Harbour. This area is known as Catamaran Marina although ours is the only cat we have ever seen in it. The reason we are here is that Hank needs electricity so that he can fit a dryer to our refrigeration system which needs to run all night to ensure that all the moisture has been removed. In the meantime we acquire, hunt down and remove a cockroach and Hank introduces us to Roach Hotels: little boxes available from the supermarket that you put in dark corners and cupboards, which lure the wretched things inside and from which they never leave.

  While on the pontoon we are conveniently placed to visit a nearby bar recommended in Chris Doyle’s cruising guide as offering probably the cheapest lobster dishes in Antigua. We decide to treat ourselves to dinner there. After a long walk in the dark and a fruitless search we ask a couple of passing policemen. They purse their lips, think very hard and stare at one another in puzzlement until the older one remembers that there used to be such a place but it went out of business a long time ago.

  Back out at anchor we decide to remain over the weekend to ensure the refrigerator plate works. On Saturday the Australian couple we met at Great Bird Island arrives on an overnight stop in the harbour and we spend another sociable evening together. On Sunday we get a taxi up to Shirley Heights, a former military lookout, now a bar and restaurant which puts on a barbecue Sunday evenings with a steel band and rum punch from 4pm and Reggie from 6.30.

  There is a big round table with a big friendly atmosphere around it, much of it courtesy of a tall Trinidadian – who introduces himself as Carl Wilcox, stage name Stretch, ‘the original limbo dancer’ who performed at the London Palladium in its televised heyday – and his Canadian wife who was once employed by the fashion designer, Norman Hartnell, to write out his clients’ bills ‘because of her lovely handwriting.’ Ah, those gentle, blue remembered days! Shirley Heights also has a spectacular view of English and Falmouth Harbours and is a wonderful place to watch the sun set.

  We walk back down through extensive military ruins – officers’ quarters, artillery barracks (subsequently an asylum) and Clarence House also a ruin but with a terrace lined with oleander and a terrific view over English Harbour. Night is well fallen by the time we get back to our dinghy and the sky is overcast. We have forgotten to bring a torch with us and dinghy back to Voyager in darkness.

  Our new fridge plate is working wonderfully, with just fifty minutes on tick-over from the starboard engine daily being more than enough to charge it up. Unlike the lit
tle standard fridge, there is a lot of room, it gets really cold and I don’t have to get on my knees to stock it or retrieve something from the back. The only slight disadvantage with our new arrangement is that if what I want is at the very bottom, my feet leave the floor. The answer is to line it with two trays of Caribbean beer so there will always be something cold to offer guests.

  We have only one last thing to do now and then we are ready to leave.

  Monday morning we dinghy into the marina to enquire after our mail. The receptionist in the marina office is someone we have not encountered before. Her name is Layla and she says her father posted a parcel to her from England at the beginning of December but she has still not received it. She also does something none of her colleagues, nor the local postmistress, has done: she explains Antigua’s postal system to us.

  Individual letters or postcards, she says, are delivered direct to the addressee but anything larger – packages, parcels or large manila envelopes such as ours – remain at the sorting office in St John’s and a blue postcard is sent to the addressee – in our case to Falmouth Harbour marina office – advising that our mail is available at the sorting office for collection.

  Before receiving it, however, it has to be opened in front of a post office official and the contents inspected and assessed for taxation against the various scales of tax which are levied on different categories of goods. When we tell her that our two envelopes will contain only paperwork she says that is taxed, too. So much for an invoice, so much for a letter and so on. We take the next bus into St John’s and make our way to Antigua’s cavernous sorting office.

  The island’s postal service is operated via school exercise books and biros. The two women behind the massive counter consult their exercise books for a long time before declaring no knowledge of our two manila envelopes. In between times they have made several visits to a room behind them, through the swing doors of which can be glimpsed a vast floor space covered with parcels and packages.

  Finally one of the women suggests we check at the marina office again when we get back, to see if a blue card has been received in the meantime. This defies logic, because if there is no record of our mail having arrived at this sorting office, how can a blue card have arrived at the marina since we left there this morning? We are being given the run-around. But the scene which has been playing out to our right convinces us that it is nothing personal. This is just good old-fashioned bureaucracy at work.

  Along the counter stands a local couple with two very small, obedient children close beside them. You know just by looking at them that they are nice, decent people who keep a loving home. Everything about them reminds me of an immediate post-war childhood in an economically-devastated England. Their leanness. Their worn but clean and well-pressed clothes. Their quiet endurance.

  While the family stands passively before him the official tears open the cardboard box addressed to them. It is soon apparent that it is from a friend or family member overseas. Someone earning better money and with easier access to goods than those back home. Also obvious is that it contains Christmas presents because each small parcel that emerges is neatly wrapped in festive paper, tied and labelled. A Christmas morning treat for loved ones far away, on the Christian calendar’s most joyful day. Except that it is now February.

  The man in uniform behind the large counter slowly and methodically strips the cheerful wrapping from every item in turn and holding it up to the light inspects minutely the little bright-red Santa stocking, the child’s toy or the small adult luxury, notes down the amount the family will have to pay for it and then tosses it onto the growing pile of gifts and torn wrapping paper beside him. All to be scooped up and shoved back willy nilly into the cardboard box afterwards and pushed across the counter to the couple when the tax has been paid. The mother, meanwhile, has subtly used her body to shield the children’s view of the entire proceedings, so that at home, restored in some measure to their wrappings, the little packages can still be a treat for them.

  After getting off the return bus we book a call to Tony who says that he will start applying for replacements or copies of the essential items in the two envelopes he airmailed to us six weeks ago. Given that Layla is still waiting for the Christmas parcel her father posted from England eleven weeks ago, plus our experience at the sorting office today, there seems no point in waiting around for our mail any longer.

  Meanwhile, at Falmouth Harbour a sea change has been taking place in recent days. It is almost as if we have passed through some sort of minimum residency period or perhaps it is simply that we have become a familiar presence. Both Mrs Kinsale and Miss Myrtle greet us cheerfully on our arrival at the dinghy dock now, without any interest in our laundry. While the young woman at the supermarket has become positively cordial, engaging us in conversation yesterday, and putting our purchases in double poly bags today before dispatching us with a ‘Take care now’ that is almost affectionate.

  When we check in one last time with Layla at the marina office and tell her that we have decided to abandon our mail, she very kindly offers to have it re-directed when the blue card arrives if we will telephone her with an address. And last, but by no means least, when we go and clear out at Immigration the officer on duty wishes us a happy return.

  NEVIS

  33

  Charlestown Harbour

  Before setting out on the 55-mile passage to Nevis we listen to Harbour Radio’s weather forecast. The promised 10 to 15 knot wind turns out to be weak and fluky and in order to arrive before dark we need both engines on.

  Once out at sea, however, we enjoy again the sight of the islands in a shimmering sunlit sea; Nevis and St Kitts, the tiny Redonde where nobody goes because there is no anchorage, and Montserrat breathing ash from its crater.

  We also have our first-ever sighting of brown boobies, large, beautiful, graceful birds, intent upon the flying fish they are feeding on. It is a pity that human traits are ascribed to birds. As a result the gannet is condemned as greedy, the albatross doom-laden, and the boobie stupid, possibly from the Spanish slang bubie, or dunce, because they were so tame they would stand about on sailing ships and the sailors simply scooped them up and ate them.

  According to a local newspaper, some fishermen on Tortuga, an island off Haiti, have found another use for boobies. Apparently their fluffy white chicks make excellent bait for catching langosta, a species of lobster, for the restaurant trade.

  The top of Nevis’s dormant volcano has been wreathed in cloud ever since we first spotted it ahead of us. We arrive off the island just as it is getting dark, find a suitable depth of water near to the beach and drop our anchor.

  We dine on corned beef, vegetables and a glass of red wine. Corned beef makes a quick and nourishing meal after a long day although its tins are said to be responsible for more visits to Accident & Emergency wards than any other single cause. The ones we have on board are the sort where you turn a very small key round and round so that it peels the tin into a long, very narrow strip of thin metal until it forms a large, unstable coil around the tiny key and which springs suddenly, leaving you with the unpeeled part of the can containing the exposed meat in one hand and the lid and the key in the other, joined together by the domestic equivalent of razor wire.

  We both sleep like logs.

  We get up into a morning that seems to be made of shimmering silver. It is the effect of a low, bright sun on water set aquiver by a sea swell. When a large, four-masted yacht passes between us and the sun, the brightness through its sails and rigging turns the whole vessel into filigree. And there are brown pelicans everywhere.

  Some of them are bobbing on the water. Some have made other arrangements, for moored close inshore there are a number of open, wooden fishing boats, about 12ft long. They have names like The Ark, Noah and One Day At A Time and all of them have been commandeered by pelicans. In a bid to keep them off, given the inevitable mess seabirds leave behind them, one of these small painted boats has a wind-driven
bird-scarer revolving on its bow and a spinning anchor ball at its stern. The pelicans have simply arranged themselves around these obstacles and one recumbent body and massive beak is even draped around the boat’s name – Sea Bird. There are also a lot of flies.

  After breakfast we dinghy into the island’s capital, Charlestown, which is only a short trip away. The dinghy dock is unusually high. There is a more accessible one but it belongs to the local fishermen and our cruising guide advises yachtsmen not to tie up to it but to use this public one.

  Since taking up sailing, somewhat late in life, I have acquired a number of new skills. Among the more picturesque has been: leaping onto a slimy pontoon into a 25-knot offshore wind clutching a mooring line; hanging by my feet from a pulpit to hook up a mooring buoy; and balancing on one leg on Voyager’s cabin roof in an Atlantic swell to hold the radio aerial as far up the backstay as possible because it’s the only way David can hear the weather forecast.

  I now add something more usually encountered on an Army training assault course. The part where new recruits attempt to scale a high wall but, on failing to clear it, either slide back down or end up dangling from the top of it by their finger ends.

  Charlestown’s dinghy dock is effectively a narrow pier leading from a high bank. It is over six feet high, built of rough timber and the only way to reach the top is to haul yourself up. The solitary toehold is the V provided by two slats nailed between the uprights although this is as likely to trap your foot as provide a platform from which to launch yourself upward. And that poses the other problem. Too little vigour and you risk falling back into your dinghy. Too much, and you go right over the top and into the water on the other side.