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| Anchorage at Philipsburg, St. Maarten |
To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.
We left Virgin Gorda October 11th, at 7:00 a.m., and arrived
in St. Maarten the next night at 9:00 p.m. - after 38 long hours of sailing. St. Maarten is 80 miles to the east of
Virgin Gorda and, as there's generally a steady wind out of the east, it’s
impossible to sail in anything resembling a direct path. We had strong winds and were able to travel
at 5-6 knots the whole way. But, with all the tacking we did, we actually sailed 200 miles to cover the 80
miles distance between the two islands. It took far
longer than expected, as we had planned on arriving in daylight. Rather than spend another night at sea,
we decided to try entering the harbor in the dark.
Through the afternoon, as we made our slow progress toward
the island, we compared the coastal features with the chart and picked out what
appeared to be Philipsburg, the capital, and a port of entry. I still wasn't overly confident that we'd
even found St. Maarten. I mean, how
does one really know? They don't put up
signs or anything. (Note: This was way before GPS, and we
didn’t have satellite navigation. Our
navigation tools consisted of a sextant, for sun sights, the compass, and the
knot meter.) When darkness fell, we
could see a flashing light that verified our position. Once near land, we dropped the sails and
motored into the bay. We couldn't make
out any anchorage, as it was very dark, so when we were past the mouth of the
harbor, we just dropped the anchor right there, left our stern light on, and
collapsed into bed. The next morning we
raised the anchor and motored over to the other yachts to join the flock.
When we left Road Town for Virgin Gorda, after not sailing
for a month, I felt that everything I had learned came together. I had more confidence in what I was
doing. When we left Virgin Gorda to
sail to St. Maarten, rather than staying at the wheel as usual, I went forward
to attach halyards and jib sheets. I
raised the sails myself for the first time.
And, although we were alone on this 38-hour sail, I felt things went
well, and I held up my end of the watches.
That is, until Friday morning, when we sighted St. Maarten about 25
miles away, dead into the wind. We were
making very little progress in the right direction. I wanted to start the engine, and motor straight in, rather than
face another day, and possibly another night, at sea. The captain (a sailing purist), refused to discuss the
matter. I was furious, resigning my
crew position. I told the captain he
could sail his own f***ing boat, and went below for several hours. I made up for it later by coming on the
wheel at 2:30 in the afternoon, and staying on till 9:00 when we finally
anchored the boat.
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| L'Escargot, a restaurant in Philipsburg |
October 20, 1979
St. Maarten, part of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, is a country on the southern part of a Caribbean
island shared with Saint Martin, a French overseas collectivity. Its natural
features span lagoons, beaches and salt pans. The capital, Philipsburg, has
cobblestone streets and colorful, colonial-style buildings lining the Front
Street shopping area. The port is a popular cruise-ship stop.
Sunnie (our friend from Ann Arbor, who had visited us in
Grenada), worked for International Supply on St. Maarten. Our mail was being sent to International
Supply, and we were anxious to collect it.
On Monday, we tried to call IS from the phone company, but couldn’t get
through. Learning that IS was only a
mile away, we walked over, where we found that Sunnie was on Antigua. We were told she’d be back on Wednesday. Since the phones still weren’t working, we
walked over a second time. We learned
that when Sunnie flew in that morning, she hadn’t had picture ID with her
landing papers. She got kicked off the
island! She had to get on another
plane, and fly back to Antigua. While
we were in the office, the phone rang.
We heard Bob say, “Hi, Sunnie, just a minute.” Bob handed the phone to me, and I gave Sunnie quite a
surprise. (International calls were
going through, but not local ones. Go
figure.) Sunnie finally made it back to
St. Maarten on Friday.
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| The Hustler, Arawak Motors, Antigua |
After Sunnie straightened things out with immigration, she
planned to go back to Antigua for another month. Bob, who owned International Supply, had several companies on St.
Maarten and Antigua, including Arawak, on Antigua. Arawak is an automobile manufacturing company that makes the
Hustler, a car with a fiberglass body.
Sunnie was managing the car company.
Arawak was turning out two cars a week, and wanted to increase
production to six-ten cars per week.
Sunnie told us there was a big market for the Hustler in the
Caribbean. The car was good at climbing
mountains and crossing rough terrain.
The car rental agencies in the islands liked to buy them.
St. Maarten is a duty free port, with lots of nice
shops. We spent most of a day wandering
through the stores. My favorite was Thimbles
& Things, which had imported needlepoint canvases from all over the
world. We were surprised to learn that
Thimbles & Things is one of the companies Bob owns.
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| Thimbles & Things, Philipsburg, St. Maarten |
The week after we arrived at St. Maarten, we took Sunnie and
two of her friends, James and Joanie, out sailing. James runs the fiberglass part of the auto company, and Joanie
manages Thimbles & Things. There
was almost no wind for sailing. After
three hours, we weren’t very far out of the harbor. We ended up going to the next bay, and anchoring there to go
swimming. I had fixed a lunch of
Gazpacho, with cheese and rolls. Sunnie
brought a case of Heineken and a cooler of ice.
It was one of those classic situations where we had to be
back by a certain time because James had a plane to catch. Ed said, don't worry; we'll just start the
engine and motor back. Though the
starter motor was sounding a little sick, the engine did get going, and we
returned to Philipsburg on time. I
still haven't figured out why it worked when we needed it, because that was the
last time the engine started.
Ed tried the engine again in the evening, and nothing
happened except a click. He took the
starter motor apart and found myriad problems - rusted-out brushes, a broken
tooth on the pinion gear, disintegrated insulation and insulating tape. We weren’t able to find the parts we needed
on St. Maarten. Bob checked when he
flew to Antigua, even visiting junkyards, with no luck. Ed sent a cable to the place in England
where we’d gotten engine parts before, and order replacements for the brushes
and the pinion gear. We cabled money
from the British Barclays on St. Maarten.
What with cables, and shipping costs, we were paying $80 for a $10
part. Ed’s hoping the parts will arrive
this week.
As we generated our own power by running the engine to
charge the batteries, no starter motor meant no engine, no power, and no lights
at night. It got dark at 6:00 p.m. Cooking by kerosene lamp may evoke images of
old-time sailors, but roughing it was never my idea of a good time. Besides, if you don't have sufficient light
in the galley, the cockroaches come out to forage, and I worried about one
ending up in the dinner. Though we
probably wouldn't have noticed; it was too dark to see what we were eating.
We were without power for two weeks while Ed tried
everything he could think of to get the engine going. Tropic Moon has a 52-hp diesel engine that sits like a large
green monster below the saloon floor.
Ed tried starting the engine manually by attaching a pulley system and
rope to the flywheel, and pulling on the rope.
When it didn't work from inside the saloon, he threaded the pulley
system through the hatch in the saloon roof.
Ed hung onto the rope, and jumped off the main boom, with continued
negative results. Our last attempts
involved ropes threaded from the engine, out the hatch, up to the bow, with Ed
and I running (sort of) along the deck hauling on the rope. No go, and very embarrassing. Someone, seeing all the ropes and pulleys
and strange goings-on, asked Ed what he was building. Ed then took a few days and rebuilt the starter motor, insulating
all the coils, and using the broken pinion gear. It was still too inefficient to start the engine by itself, but a
combination of the weak starter motor and the pulley system finally did the
trick.
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