1980 (23) - Recovery

Parrot Bay - an art quilt by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

We spent most of the month of July anchored in Road Town, living rather quietly, since Ed couldn't leave the boat.  In the middle of the month a tropical wave passed through.  While a tropical wave is not as bad as a tropical storm, which isn't as bad as a hurricane, it's still lousy weather, with heavy winds and driving rain.  We had to put out a second anchor during the worst of the storm.  Ed, with his back problems, had trouble setting it.  We were only too well aware that Hurricane Season was upon us, and that we would have problems securing the boat if a trip to Hurricane Hole became a necessity. 

Ed had assured me that once the muscle pains in his back eased, it would be the end of his problems.  He’d said the same thing when the pains were in his hip area, but this time he was right; he finally started moving around the boat again.  We left Road Town on July 25th and stopped for a few days at St. Francis Bay on St. John.  The improvement came rapidly.  Ed was once again pacing the deck for exercise and rowing the dinghy into shore - his first time off the boat in 35 days!  From that point on, he steadily improved, walked normally again, and could go for miles at a time.   

Parrot Bay - Detail

Courtesy of our cruising lifestyle, I faced my own “health challenge” – finding an ongoing supply of birth control pills….  Since St. Thomas belongs to the United States, I went ashore in Charlotte Amalie one day, hoping to locate a Family Planning clinic.  I went to the Legislature building, looking for a phone book.  I wanted a number for Planned Parenthood, but didn’t find it listed.  A man working there offered to help me.  He introduced himself as the special assistant to the head of the Senate.  He called around, and found the location for Family Planning.  He ended up driving me there himself!  I think he just wanted to get out of the office for a while.

I made an appointment, and returned on that day.  When I reached Family Planning, I was told the clinic was being held in Frenchtown, which was across town from where I was.  I drove over with three black women.  It turned out they were the nurse (driving), the doctor, and the receptionist.  I carried the black bag!  We opened the clinic, where there were a few other women waiting.  The doctor proceeded to throw a fit.  The water was off – again!  She was yelling about how unsanitary it was for her to examine women without being able to wash her hands in between.  No kidding!  There was a water cooler at the clinic.  The doctor would take a cup of water to use with each patient.  I was glad I was the second patient.  I had the exam, and got six months of birth control pills.  Even that took some talking.  Three months of pills was the limit they were allowed to hand out at one time. 

Parrot Bay - Detail

July 28th was Hurricane Supplication Day in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  It's when everyone gets the day off from work to supplicate the gods for safekeeping from the hurricanes.  One week later Hurricane Allan (the worst of the century, topping the previous year's Hurricane David) blew into the Caribbean.  Someone in the Virgin Islands must have prayed effectively, because Hurricane Allan stayed well to the south of the Virgins, merely causing bad squalls in our area.  To be on the safe side, we motored over to Hurricane Hole on St. John.  We secured Tropic Moon with three anchors, and three lines to shore.  While there, taking advantage of the calm waters, we worked from the dinghy and painted the second half of the topsides.  Compared with the previous year, very few boats bothered to take the trouble to leave their regular anchorages.

While in Hurricane Hole, we ran into some people we’d met briefly in Antigua in February.  Jerry and Martin were living on a sailboat, Travel.  In May they’d decided to sail to the Chesapeake Bay, by way of Bermuda.  Bermuda is 950 miles due north of the Virgin Islands.  They liked Bermuda and stayed for five weeks.  While there, they learned that Martin could have a job on Tortola as a mechanic with a bare-boat charter company – so they sailed straight back to the Virgins.  I was somewhat aghast at the thought of sailing 1900 miles of open water, and ending up right back where you’d started.  Martin and Jerry were from England.  They’d crossed the Atlantic three times, so it wasn’t anything to them.  They told us they were staying semi-permanently at Maya Cove, on Tortola.  We said we’d look them up.

Waiting out Hurricane Season, we spent August through October cruising the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.  It was a relaxing time, and a nice change not having to face any new islands, with the attendant problems of locating food, water, and marine supplies.  Our sailing was measured in terms of a few hours, rather than a few days.  After spending our second summer in the Virgins, we knew the islands well enough that we seldom took out a chart.

1980 (22) - Still Hauled Out

Marty Macaw.  An art quilt by Jean Baardsen.

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

Since I had finished the bottom work, and the carpenter was done with the mast, the next job I was "assigned" was sanding and painting our 45-foot stick.  The mast was on sawhorses, in a distant corner of the boatyard.  I'd work over there by myself.  The first step was sanding the mast, and then I was ready to paint.  I opened the can of white paint, stirred it up, and poured some in a bucket.  I started at the foot of the mast.  I found the paint was going on fairly thickly, so I would brush it really well to avoid getting drips.  I had painted about half the mast when I decided to quit for the day.  Looking over my work, I discovered the paint had slowly sagged, and there were drips everywhere.  Since the paint had already started to set, there wasn't anything I could do about it. 

When I told Ed, he said I should have known to thin the paint.  Actually, I hadn't known that, since I hadn't had to thin the antifouling paint.  The next day I thinned the paint and covered the second half of the mast.  I did a really good job on the part that was going to be too high to see anyway.  With the mast again upright in the boat, the drips ran sideways, from front to back.  I planned to tell people a really strong wind had come through, right after I had finished painting…. 

Marty Macaw - Detail

After that job, I tried to keep a low profile, but Ed suggested that since we needed to paint the topsides, I could start that project while we were still hauled out.  He wanted me to sand, patch and paint for six inches above the waterline, as well as the area under the stern, so that we could finish the job when we were back in the water.  Since that area of the boat was above the level where I could reach, I had a fellow from the next boat help me set up scaffolding; I would wobble my way around with sand paper, epoxy and paint. 

Ed's father, Bernt Baardsen, had been holding airline tickets to fly down to Tortola on the off chance we might need him to crew with us up to the States.  By then I was sure we weren't going to be making the trip, but Ed was holding off his decision in hopes of a miraculous recovery.  When that didn't happen, Bernt came down anyway to give us a hand with some of the boat work.  He arrived the day we were being launched, getting to the yard as the boat was being lowered into the water, and jumped aboard.  While he was with us, he and I sanded and painted the starboard side of the topsides, working from the dinghy.  He also did some carpentry work for Ed.  We even got in a little sailing, and spent a few days at the Bitter End on Virgin Gorda. 

This shot is to give you an idea of Marty's size.  He greeted people
at my solo exhibit of forty art quilts, held at Myrtle Beach in 2004.

Since Ed's parents were so worried about him, we had thought his Dad's coming down would help ease their minds.  If anything, seeing Ed made things even worse.  By the time Bernt arrived, the pains had moved through Ed's leg and were in the muscles in the hip area.  Ed could still limp around, but couldn't sit up through a meal.  And, of course, no amount of persuasion would convince Ed to seek further medical attention. 

Bernt went home after ten days, probably more upset than when he’d come down.  Ed had me write in my next letter that he felt his parents should have had more faith in his judgment.  (Heaven only knows why!)  And since I was including that little gem, I decided it wasn't the appropriate time to mention that the day after Bernt left, the muscle pains moved from Ed's hip area to his lower back; he couldn't take the pressure of any amount of standing or sitting.  He was flat on his back - and would be for the next three weeks.

1980 (21) - Crisis # 2

Tropic Moon with a new paint job

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

The second crisis came because Ed decided we would do the work on the boat bottom ourselves, instead of hiring the yard.  (Money concerns – it had only been nine months since our last expensive haul out.)  Since Ed couldn't stand up for any length of time, that left me to paint the bottom of the boat.  In all honesty, I didn't believe I could do the job - not to mention the fact I certainly didn't want to do it!  I came really close to resigning my crew position and deserting the ship.

Tropic Moon’s bottom, the part of the hull below the waterline, was about 40 feet long and six feet high.  Counting both sides that made quite a bit of area.  The yard did a preliminary scraping when they hauled the boat, but there was always more marine life that had to be scrubbed and sanded off.  The boat's hull curved in to a narrow keel.  To do the lower half of the bottom, I had to work squatting down or kneeling. 

Our first week out was during a heat wave (temperatures 90-100 degrees, and no wind, but plenty of bugs).  I'd be working with a hose in one hand and scrub brush in the other, covered with tiny biting bugs, dripping sweat mixed with bottom paint and dirt, and standing or kneeling in the mud formed from the running water.  When I'd stop for a rest, Ed would take over and work on the lower parts, since he was okay as long as he stayed on his hands and knees.  It really is true, though, that you can adjust to almost anything.  On the second day, when I was on the second side of the hull, my spirits picked up considerably.

Fish Tale, a small art quilt, by Jean Baardsen

Ed had indicated spots on the hull, adding up to about 10% of the bottom area, that had to be sanded down to bare steel, and patched with epoxy.  The sanding, patching, and sanding the patches, spread over a couple more days.  Then the patched areas had to be built up with a layer of primer and four layers of our orange undercoat.  We had a weird looking polka-dot bottom!  I could get through two coats of orange per day.  I finally got to the satisfying part - painting on the red antifouling, which was the finishing coat.  I painted the antifouling on each side of the boat in a day, and was rather pleased with the final appearance.  Several of the yardmen came up to compliment me on my work.

On our first day out of the water, the yard had used their crane to pull out our main mast.  It was set on sawhorses off in one corner of the boatyard.  We hired a carpenter to cut out the rotted section and scarf in a new piece of wood.  He'd come by for a couple hours in the evening when it was cooler, and he was done with the job in a few days. 

Fish Tale.  Detail.  All fish, fans, etc., were machine embroidered.

Ed also hired the yard to pull the propeller shaft out of the boat.  (Water leaked into our steel hull every time we motored.  On the passage from St. Maarten to Tortola, when we motored for fourteen hours, Ed had pumped salt water out of the bilge three times.)  Nanny Cay's "prop expert," Roy, was assigned to the job.  A week later, he still hadn't gotten the shaft out.  Sometimes we'd have as many as six fellows swarming over the boat, apparently trying to help (or maybe just standing around watching me paint).  I got the assurance from the yard foreman we were only paying for Roy.  After trying large hammers, wheel pullers and acetylene torches, everyone concerned admitted defeat, as the coupling to the engine refused to come off the propeller shaft. 

Ed was left with two choices - put everything back the way it was (and live with the leaks), or get a whole new propeller shaft.  Ed (by pure luck) heard about a new machinist on the island, Michael Masters.  Mike, (by even purer luck), had an 8-foot length of 2" bronze shafting he had salvaged from another boat.  That may not sound like a big deal, but when you understand that was probably the only piece of shafting usable on our boat in all the Virgin Islands; that we had tried to call a company in Puerto Rico, but couldn't get a phone number because the operator had never heard of it; and trying to air freight anything from Puerto Rico to the British Virgin Islands either took one afternoon, or six months (usually the latter), well, we just couldn't believe our luck!  Ed took a hacksaw to the old shaft, and got it out of the boat.  Mike spent a week machining the new shaft to adapt it to Tropic Moon's unorthodox innards, and we were back in business.

Haul out – to be continued….

1980 (20) - Crisis #1

Brown Landscape - Art Quilt by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

Our first crisis came when Ed's physical condition deteriorated significantly.  I suppose this is as good a time as any to present Ed's "medical opinion" as to the source of his problems.  He felt that during our several-day trip in December from St. Maarten to Antigua, when he'd been on the wheel for extended periods of time, and had been rather careless of his sitting position, he had abraded the casing on the sciatic nerve on the right side of his body.  This is where the nerve passes through a small opening in the muscles in the hip.  He reached this conclusion (and it was several months in the forming), based on talks with his Dad, some problems his brother once had, visits to a chiropractor on Tortola, and a study of Gray's Anatomy.  He never did see a medical doctor or get an x-ray.

We also understood there are two types of nerves, one taking messages to the muscles, and the other returning pain signals to the brain.  For all the months since Christmas, Ed hadn't had much muscular control in his right leg.  When lying on his back, he hadn’t been able to lift his leg more than six inches.  Coinciding with our haul out at Nanny Cay, Ed started getting feeling back in the leg muscles, and the pain was excruciating.  In fact, the pain was so bad that when I learned of an American "bone doctor" on the island, Ed agreed to see him.

Fabric Postcard, 4" x 6" - Jean Baardsen

The “bone doctors” were two chiropractors.  They both examined Ed, and agreed they couldn't determine the source of the problem - but did offer several possible causes.  The more professional of the two chiropractors explained about the opening in the hip muscles where the nerves pass through.  The other one, among his many guesses, suggested muscular dystrophy or multiple scleroses.  The chiropractors wanted Ed to get an x-ray, but the only machine on Tortola was broken, and Ed was in no shape to travel to St. Thomas. 

Ed saw these men for five "adjustments."  He had so little muscular control, both the pelvic bone and the hipbone could move around loosely.  The chiropractor would pop the pelvic bone back into place, but by the time that Ed got back to the boat, and climbed the steep ladder to the deck, it would have popped out again.  Ed learned to pop it back in by himself, while lying on his back.  One interesting aspect of Ed's recovery was that the muscles "came back" one at a time, starting at the bottom of his leg, and working upward.  Each muscle pained him for several days, and then he'd have a day or so of relative comfort before the next one would act up.  I have no idea how many muscles there are in a leg, but this went on for weeks.

1980 (19) - Future Plans

Dolphins.  Polymer Clay with Silver Charm.  Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

Ed and I had been talking about leaving the Caribbean and sailing Tropic Moon up to the States.  A passage from the Virgin Islands to New York would have taken us two-three weeks.  The optimum months for making this passage were May and June – sandwiched between winter in the States, and Hurricane Season in the islands.  We were already looking at the end of May, as we sat in St. Maarten.

Ed decided it was time to replace the front stay, which is a wire that runs from the bow of the boat to the top of the main mast.  We attached the wooden bosun’s chair (looked like a swing seat) to the main halyard.  I used a winch to crank Ed up the mast.  While he was up there, he discovered a large section of wood rot, and the beginnings of delamination in the mast.  We realized we’d have to have that taken care of before heading to the States.  As we’d probably been sailing around that way for a while, we chose to continue on to the Virgin Islands, and have the work done there.

We ended up staying in St. Maarten for almost two weeks.  We left there on May 23rd to do an overnight sail to Tortola, another 100-mile trip.  What should have been a pleasant downwind run turned out to be a real drag of a sail.  There was very little wind.  We spent the first 14 hours crawling along, averaging about two knots.  Around 4:00 a.m., after the wind died completely, we started the engine and motored for the next 14 hours.  With no breeze, the sun that day was unmercifully hot.  Because we were traveling downwind, we were breathing nauseating fumes from the exhaust. 

When we reached the Virgin Islands, everything looked so crowded to us because it was almost a year since we had seen that many islands grouped so closely together.  Several boats wended their ways up and down the Sir Francis Drake Channel.  It felt like coming home.

After clearing customs in the British Virgin Islands, we contacted Tortola Yacht Services where we had hauled Tropic Moon the previous year.  We wanted to have the mast pulled out of the boat and repaired.  They couldn't help us because their crane was broken.  We then called Nanny Cay Yacht Services, which is also on Tortola, and scheduled a haul-out date with them.  Since we had to wait for the rotted section of the mast to be repaired, Ed decided to haul the boat to pull out the propeller shaft, where we had a leak.  And as long as we were going to do all that, we figured we might as well patch and paint the bottom, and weld on our new zinc anodes. 

I was really pleased we ended up at Nanny Cay.  They had far superior living facilities than Tortola Yacht Services, which - in those days - had virtually none.  Nanny Cay had a small short-order restaurant where we ate all our dinners, a gourmet grocery where I could pick up bread, cheese and salad fixings, a Laundromat where they did my laundry for me, and really beautiful bathroom and shower facilities.

1980 (18) - St. Maarten

Collaged postcard.  Hand-painted silk.  4" x 6"  by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

Mother’s Day had fallen on the weekend we were in Antigua.  On Saturday, we went to the Cable & Wireless building to call our mothers.  For one thing, I wanted to check on my sister, Lynn.  She’d been due to have a baby two days before.  I knew my Mom was planning to help her, so I put the call through to my sister’s home in Virginia.  Reaching my Mom, I learned that Lynn had delivered her second son, Danny, on the day he was due. 

Now for a bit of back-story.  In 1960, when I was in the 7^th grade, and Lynn was in the 5^th grade, my father, a sergeant in the Air Force, was transferred to Selfridge Air Force Base in Mt. Clemens, Michigan.  When we moved there, base housing wasn’t available, and we looked for a house in town.  We rented a house owned by Dorothy and Bill Noellert – whom I’ll now refer to as Bill (1).  They had three children – Sunnie, Bill (2), and Ray.  Dorothy was pregnant with their fourth child.  Liking my sister’s name, they called the new baby girl, Lynn – now referred to as Lynn (2).  Our families were close, but little did anyone imagine that when we grew up, my sister, Lynn (1), would marry their son, Bill (2).  That made Lynn (1) sister-in-law to Sunnie, Ray, and Lynn (2).  When Lynn (1) and Bill (2) were expecting their first child, Bill (1) died of a heart attack.  Thus, they decided to name their first son, Bill (3). 

Palm Trees.  Digital Art by Jean Baardsen

Now back to May 1980.  During the course of the conversation with my Mom, she mentioned that Lynn’s mother-in-law, Dorothy, and Lynn’s sister-in-law, Lynn (2), were visiting Sunnie in St. Maarten.  Yes, the Sunnie who visited us in Grenada, and whom I’d worked with at International Supply during our stop in St. Maarten the year before.  Dorothy and Lynn would be in St. Maarten for most of the next week.  After that, they’d be flying to Virginia to visit Lynn (1), Bill (2), Bill (3), and newborn, Danny.  My parents would still be at my sister’s house.  (Okay, I’ll drop the numbers…)

I told my Mom I was sorry we weren’t going to be able to meet up with Dorothy and Lynn.  We wouldn’t reach St. Maarten in time, since we were planning to stop at St. Barths first.  Back on the boat, Ed and I decided it would be fun to buzz straight up to St. Maarten to see them.  That way, when they reached Virginia, they’d be able to tell my Mom they’d seen Tropic Moon and us.  We had bought Tropic Moon in Grenada in 1978, and had yet to leave the islands, so none of our family had seen our boat.

We left Antigua on May 11^th at 6:00 p.m., and reached Philipsburg, St. Maarten, at noon the next day.  We had another uneventful sail; I was starting to feel quite optimistic about the whole sailing business.  Once on shore, we walked to International Supply, where we surprised Sunnie.  We also saw James, Sunnie’s boyfriend (and future husband).  James’ parents owned a vacation home on St. Maarten.  While Sunnie and James usually lived on Sunnie’s houseboat, they were spending that week with Dorothy and Lynn at the villa in the hills.  Sunnie called Dorothy to say she was bringing us home for dinner, and James invited us to stay for the night.

When the family wasn’t using the villa, it was rented out to vacationers.  The house came with two cars, and a maid.  It was high in the hills, overlooking vistas of bays and ocean, with the island of St. Barths visible off to the south.  The house was beautiful – a long, one-story building, with ocean views from the living room, kitchen, and the three bedrooms.  A balcony ran along the ocean side of the living room.  A swimming pool was located in a secluded garden area off the end of the house.  Backing the living room and the hall was an outdoor shuffleboard court.  There was an indoor rec room with billiard table, and a cupboard full of games.  The living room had a stereo, a record collection, and four large bookcases filled with a variety of reading material.  All the rooms were furnished in rattan and bamboo.  There was an oriental rug in the living room, and ceiling fans in all the rooms.  The kitchen was decorated with three-foot tall ceramic animals perched above the cupboards. 

Fabric postcard, 4" x 6", Hand-painted silk, by Jean Baardsen

Dorothy and Lynn wanted to see Tropic Moon, so we invited them for lunch the next day.  Sunnie, who was bopping back and forth from work to provide chauffeur service, took us to the dock in the morning.  Dorothy and Lynn liked our boat, but the very (very!) gentle rocking at anchor bothered them.  They both got queasy, but wanted to stick it out – and even managed to eat lunch.  They were very glad to get back on shore again. 

Dorothy’s comment to me:  “I can’t believe how well you’ve adjusted to this life!”

Loose translation:  I can’t understand how you can live like this!  (So much for a good report to my Mom…)

Sunnie showed up, and we barreled back through the hills to the house.  Ed had decided to stay on Tropic Moon, but I wanted another night in the villa.  Sunnie dropped us off at the house and went back to work.  Dorothy and Lynn napped through the afternoon to sleep off their seasickness, and I had the house to myself.  I accepted a delivery of chlorine for the swimming pool, did the breakfast dishes, which we’d left in the sink, then stretched out on a chaise lounge.  I chose a John D. MacDonald mystery from the bookshelf.  One could really get used to living like that all the time.

(2017 Update:  Bill (3) turns 40 this year.  He and his wife, Cate, have two young sons.  Happily, neither of the boys is named Bill.)

1980 (17) - Pirates?!?

Pirate Ship.  Art quilt by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

After settling in at Deep Bay, we spent a day resting up for our 100-mile, overnight passage from Antigua, north to St. Maarten.  In the middle of the afternoon, we were startled out of our bunks by loud pounding on our steel hull.  We came up on deck to find three men climbing on board.  (A definite no-no; you never board another boat without permission.)  My first thought was that we’d been caught by Customs.  We had decided to save a little money by stopping at Antigua illegally, and not clearing in.  Considering the grubby appearance of these three middle-aged men, my first thought should have been that they were pirates, and that we were being hijacked - but I never worried about stuff like that.  

Ed was by the ladder, trying to stop the lead man from coming on board, but this man gently pushed Ed back to the cockpit, while he unwrapped something rolled up in a newspaper.  My second thought was that he was going to try to sell us a fish.  These men probably hadn't waited for an invitation, because they wouldn't have understood us anyway, as they only spoke Spanish.  With Ed still attempting to protest, the first man reached the cockpit table, and unrolled the newspaper to reveal a chart. 

I said, "They probably just want information on where to anchor in St. John's Harbor."  We had had trouble over the location of the anchorage the first time we had taken Tropic Moon into the harbor.  Expecting to see a chart of Antigua, I was surprised to see a chart that covered the whole Caribbean Sea. 

The first man, with many smiles, pointed at the chart, and then pointed toward land.

"San Marteen?" 

We just looked at him, then pointed at the island and said, "Antigua." 

He frowned, pointed again and said, "San Marteen?" 

We responded, "No, Antigua!" and pointed to it on the chart. 

He looked to his two friends, who had also gathered in the cockpit, "Antigua!"  They all frowned over the chart. 

Ed's four years of high school Spanish came in handy when the leader asked him, "Where is San Marteen?"

Ed pointed to the northwest and said, "Cien milas" (100 miles).  That brought a lot of muttering, and one man with a straw hat nodded in an ‘I told you so’ manner.  

The three men were from a large, ancient-looking motor yacht named Dona Concepcion, which they’d anchored near us.  We gathered, through sign language, pointing at the chart, and hesitant Spanish, that they were traveling from Puerto Rico to Venezuela.  They had wanted to make a stop at St. Maarten.  They explained they’d been north of Anguilla early that morning.  As St. Maarten is south of Anguilla, they had motored for three hours out into the Atlantic, then turned southwest and traveled the rest of the day, till they found themselves at what turned out to be Antigua.  

The man asked Ed how many miles it was from Anguilla to St. Maarten.  They all looked rather pained when Ed said it was only five miles - you could see from one island to the other.  They obviously couldn't read the chart, and had no idea of the relative distances between the islands.  Ed tried to explain that one degree on the chart equaled 60 miles.  They all nodded, but didn't really seem to understand. 

Then one man uncovered our compass, and asked for the reading to St. Maarten.  Ed told him, and he carefully wrote down the number Ed was saying.  Then he asked the compass direction from Saba (another island) to St. Maarten, and Ed showed him how to read it off the chart.  Again the blank nodding, because he next asked for the reading from St. Maarten to Saba, which, of course, was the opposite number on the compass from the Saba-to-St. Maarten direction. 

The man tried explaining something to Ed, but Ed couldn't follow his Spanish.  The man wrote "Japan" on his paper.  I looked at it, and said it looked like Japan.  Ed said, yes, but he didn't get the connection.  I suggested, "What about that big fleet of Japanese fishing boats in St. Maarten?"  Ed tried "fishing boats" in Spanish, and got smiles and nods of agreement.  

Pirate Ship.  Detail

Our visitors sat around in discussion for quite a while, finally getting up to leave.  We had told them we were sailing to St. Maarten that night.  I said to Ed, it was a wonder they weren't going to try to follow us.  Ed said they’d discussed it, but decided they were too tired, as they'd been traveling since the previous day. 

As the men were shoving off in their dinghy, I waved, making use of my limited Spanish vocabulary, "Adios!" 

Grinning, they replied, "Mañana! San Marteen!" 

Since they couldn't understand me anyway, I called out, "We'll be there, but I doubt if you will!" 

Dona Concepcion did show up in St. Maarten two days later, and anchored near the Japanese fishing fleet at the entrance of the harbor.  

1980 (16) - Mail Stop in Antigua

Waiting for the Bus.  Art quilt by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

We had intended to make our mail stop in Antigua a short one, yet I was surprised when we managed to keep it down to four days.  We put in at St. John's Harbor, Antigua's capital, which is about halfway up the western coast.  Our main order of business was to get across the island to English Harbor, and collect our mail. (It was May, but we still had some Christmas mail waiting.) I was all set to go by myself till Ed started writing out a long list of marine supplies, including six feet of wood for new battens.  These items were to be purchased at the English Harbor marine store, and brought back on the bus.  With such a sizable list, I wanted Ed to go with me, but he wasn't sure he could make the trip.  We decided we would both walk the quarter-mile to the bus stop, and if Ed were still okay, he would go with me to English Harbor.  His leg gave out about halfway to the bus stop, and I went on alone.  He later told me he had stopped six times on the way back to the boat.  

Waiting for the Bus.  Detail

I really enjoyed taking the cross-island bus - it was always an experience.  There was no way to get lost, so long as you stayed on the bus.  The two ends of the line were the open market in St. John's, and English Harbor at the other end.  The buses were a major means of transportation for many of the local people.  The taxi drivers advised tourists against taking a bus, claiming that people often brought livestock, like chickens or goats, on the bus with them.  Of course, the main reason for their advice was self-serving.  A round trip ride from English Harbor to St. John's cost $20.00 by taxi, whereas it was only $1.00 by bus!  The closest thing to livestock I ever traveled with was a tub of fish.  I did once grab a van at English Harbor that was carrying a load of lumber.  Before we went on to St. John's, we drove up into the hills to a construction site to unload the wood. 

Most of the "buses" were old school buses or vans, that had lived out their better days in the States or Britain, and had been resurrected for this cross-island run.  An individual owned each bus, so there was no schedule.  When you wanted to leave St. John's, you wandered around the market area asking "English Harbor?" till someone flagged you on board.  Then you patiently waited till the driver had enough customers to make the run worth his while.  The buses stopped anytime someone yelled, "Stop!"  You could tell people didn't like to walk any further than necessary; often the bus would just be groaning its way forward again when someone else would yell "Stop!"  Typical delays: the driver wanted to say hello to someone he knew; a woman had the bus wait at a gas station while she had a jerry can filled with kerosene; the engine broke down.  I took one bus from English Harbor to St. John's that broke down three times on the way.  The passengers groaned and moaned each time we stopped, and cheered loudly when we were going again.

Waiting for the Bus.  Detail.

After my successful trip to English Harbor, we moved Tropic Moon out of St. John’s Harbor, and around the point to Deep Bay.

1980 (15) - Ocean Sunset - a Poem

Photo taken at sea from Tropic Moon

The bright orange ball
In the sky will fall,
And drop slowly toward the sea.
Meanwhile all around
There's naught to be found,
But the endless water round me.

The sun shouldn't set,
Well, at least, not yet,
Bringing the coming of night.
For I'm filled with fears
As light disappears,
And sit alone with my fright.

When the sun has sunk,
I long for my bunk,
And the comforting escape of sleep.
Then darkness sets in,
And the stars begin
To populate the sky like sheep.

And I gaze above
With feelings of love,
At the diamond-studded sky.
Then think of the dread
That just filled my head,
And I kiss my fears good-bye.

Jean Baardsen
Yacht Tropic Moon

1980 (14) - Heading North

Night Sail.  Art Quilt by Jean Baardsen

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

It was time to head north again.  I had been a little (??) apprehensive about the sail to Antigua, because it was going to take us two days and nights.  I'd never gotten fond of the long passages.  The trip was, if anything, anticlimactic.  We left Bequia May 6^th, at 8:00 a.m., and were anchored at Sandy Island, Antigua by 10:00 a.m. on May 8th, having covered 220 miles.  Our standard procedure was for Ed and I to alternate watches, two hours on and two hours off.  On a long sail, we made an entry in the log each time we came off watch, usually just noting the time and mileage, with an occasional comment.  The sum total of comments for our 50-hour trip to Antigua read as follows:

St. Lucia Channel

Abeam Pitons

Off St. Lucia

In the middle of nowhere (guess who wrote that one?)

Off Dominica

Becalmed

Ditto

Almost abeam Les Saintes

Abeam Guadeloupe

Passing Montserrat

Abeam Antigua 

The most interesting parts of the day on passage are dawn and dusk.  I got a little nervous as night closed in on us.  I found myself straining to continue to make out the horizon ahead, or the island to starboard, as all subsided into inky darkness.  I would take a deep breath, adjust my mind to the blindness, and tune in to watching for distant lights to indicate the possibility of approaching ships.  I felt I kept a more careful night watch than Ed.  They say that from the time you spot a ship on the horizon, till that ship reaches your boat, would be about fifteen minutes.  Not very long if you have to take evasive action.  My recurring childhood nightmare was of being in the water at night, with a large black hull bearing down on me.  I decided that if that were ever going to happen, it wasn’t going to be on my watch.  (Famous last words…)

Night Sail.  Detail.

The more perceptive readers among you, well aware that Ed could hardly walk, might wonder what the hell we were doing on a 50-hour sail, standing two-hour watches.  The simple fact was that Ed learned to sail laying down.  With a cushion propping up his head, Ed stretched out along one side of the cockpit, and handled the wheel with one hand.  Since he couldn't see the compass from that position, he followed John Masefield's advice and used "a star to steer her by."  Here’s the first stanza from "Sea Fever."  The poem didn't mean much to me when I was a landlubber, but it means quite a bit now.  

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking. 

Dawn breaking on that last day was especially sweet because we had been approaching the south shore of Antigua in the dark.  We could see a smattering of lights along the coast, but as Antigua didn't go in much for lighthouses, there was nothing to indicate the western edge of the island.  But, just in time, dawn first sketched the dim outline of the island, and then filled in the details with mountain peaks, beaches and palm trees - a familiar, and very welcome sight. 

1980 (13) - Bequia Revisited

Postcard - The National Bird of St. Vincent

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

After our three-day stopover in St. Lucia, we bypassed St. Vincent and sailed to the island of Bequia, 55 miles south of St. Lucia.  We left at 7:00 a.m. and arrived in Bequia at 8:00 p.m.  We had anticipated entering the harbor in the dark.  We felt confident doing this because we were familiar with Admiralty Bay from our stop there the previous year, when we’d been heading north with Tony and Joyce.  We anchored Tropic Moon after my unsuccessful attempt at running down a buoy.  Ed had pointed out two lights ahead of us, and told me to aim in that direction.  I incorrectly assumed that both lights were on shore.  After a bit, Ed signaled me to turn a little more to starboard and, when I did, we slipped past the large, lighted buoy that I hadn't realized was there….

In bed that night, I woke up around 1:00 a.m.  A little voice said, "Why don't you go take a look outside?"  It was common practice, if one of us got up during the night, to pop our head out the hatch and take a look around.  I tried snuggling deeper into my pillow but the voice seemed insistent, so I sleepily started out of my bunk.  I was startled to see Ed fly off his bunk, head for the companionway, and dash up on deck.  Our anchor had dragged, and we were quickly drifting out of the harbor.  Tropic Moon had managed to pass three sailboats, without hitting any of them.  We had open water till we either went out to sea, or ended up on the rocky coast we would have had to bypass.  I started the engine, Ed pulled up the anchor, and we motored back into the bay to reset it. 

It was an exceptionally windy night and, as we saw the next morning by the positions of the boats, we weren't the only ones who had dragged.  I thought it rather curious that I had woken with a feeling that something might be wrong.  I asked Ed what signaled him, because he knew before we got on deck that we’d dragged.  He said the sound of the water was different.  It was lapping against the side of the hull, meaning that we were crosswise to the wind, rather than pointing into it - as you do when you're safely anchored.  His antennae were working well that night. 

Bequia, a small island, is the northernmost of the Grenadines, a 50-mile chain of islands belonging to St. Vincent.  Bequia's official flag is the flag of St. Vincent.  The unofficial flag of Bequia (above) features three black waves, which stand for the Bequia Channel, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, as well as a black humpback whale, Bequia's main icon.

Bequia was one of the few inhabited Grenadines.  The town of Port Elizabeth in Admiralty Bay was the center of the island's population.  We’d wander down one road, and a couple branch streets, and we'd have covered Port Elizabeth.  The combination Police Station/Post Office also housed Customs and Immigration.  Tourist shops, grocery stores, a church, a bank, and a gas station lined the main street.  I was pleased with the "supermarket" which seemed very well stocked with several items, like peanut butter, that I hadn't been able to buy in the French islands.  

Postcard - Friendship Rose

While at the store, I asked for bread.  I was told the boat wasn’t in yet.  All bread and baked goods came from St. Vincent, five miles north of Bequia.  The food arrived, along with other supplies, six days a week, on a native trading schooner, Friendship Rose.  The bread was usually unloaded around 3:30 p.m.  The mob scene at the store was unreal.  I got caught in it my first day, and was trapped in a crush of about twenty people, all grabbing for the bread.  Taken with the mood of the crowd, I overbought by about three loaves.  Most of it molded before we could eat it.  That didn’t happen again, because I discovered that if I came in at 4:00 p.m., there was still plenty of bread left.

1980 (12) - St. Lucia

The Pitons, St. Lucia - Internet photo.

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

The next morning, with a favorable wind, we again headed for St. Lucia.  Tropic Moon was pointed southwest, with a southeast wind.  We had a beautiful beam reach, doing the 25 miles in 4-1/2 hours.  We sailed to Castries, the capital of St. Lucia.  Our anchorage was outside of town at the St. Lucia Yacht Services in Vigie Cove.  It was a Friday afternoon, so we hurried by taxi into Castries to take care of our business.  When a boat plans to stay at an island less than 72 hours, it can be cleared in and out of customs at the same time. 

Our afternoon in Castries was a good example of what it was like to take Ed anywhere.  By the time we finished at Customs, Ed was already limping.  We went a block down the street to American Express.  Ed plopped in a chair to massage his leg, while I took care of getting more travelers checks.  We then walked a couple blocks to a large department store.  I was picking out Mother’s Day cards; when I looked around, Ed was on the floor.  We moved to the book section, shopping for paperbacks, and did our selecting with Ed scanning the lower shelves from the floor.

The next stop was the supermarket.  I left Ed sitting on the front steps, writing out the Mother’s Day cards, while I did the shopping.  When I came out of the store, I piled the groceries around Ed.  He waited there while I walked to the post office.  I got there just after it closed, but ran into a helpful postal employee.  He told me about a stamp machine in the wall, and explained that 50 cents in local stamps would send a letter, airmail, to the States.  I fed quarters (EC currency) into the stamp machine – and emptied it.  I ended up with only two stamps – enough to mail one card.  The man came up to me, and I told him my problem.  I had two Mother’s Day cards to mail, one to my mother, and one to my mother-in-law, and could only mail one.  Which one should I send?  He threw up his hands, as if indicating this was a problem too difficult even for Solomon.  I opted to mail the card to my mother-in-law.  I explained I was on a sailboat leaving the island.  I asked him if he’d post the other card for me on Monday.  I gave him the card, and the fifty cents.  (Both Moms received their cards.) 

I headed back to Ed, and babysat the groceries, while he hobbled across the street to a hardware store.  A taxi driver had his eye on us.  When Ed came out of the store, we took the taxi back to Vigie Cove.

The motor yacht, Kalizma (Elizabeth Taylor’s old boat), was also anchored in Vigie Cove.  We talked with Sam, the boat’s agent.  We asked about Jonathan, Kalizma’s first mate, whom we’d known in Grenada.  Sam told us that Jonathan had died in a scuba diving accident, at the Pitons, on Easter Sunday.  Altogether, I think we heard three different versions of Jonathan’s death, but it seems he dove with only half a tank of air, and ran out.  He either suffocated, or had a heart attack, or maybe both go together.  As Sam said, the women were all crying - Jonathan was quite the lady’s man.  Jonathan’s body was sent to Trinidad, to be cremated, but then the government in Trinidad refused to release the ashes.  We gathered that the Trinidad folk didn’t like white South Africans, and claimed there was some problem with the passport….  A couple months later, we heard that Sam was still faring, unsuccessfully, in getting Jonathan’s ashes back from Trinidad.

Postcard

The only stop, other than Castries, that we had planned for St. Lucia was a visit to the Pitons.  We sailed there the next day.  The Pitons are a famous tourist attraction.  They’re a pair of impressive mountains, nearly 2700 feet high.  They seem to rise almost vertically when you’re close under them.  The bay, Anse de Piton, is tucked between the two peaks.  The water in the bay is very deep.  The method of anchoring is to go up close to the shore, drop the anchor, and swing the boat around, backing in, to tie a stern line to a palm tree on shore.  Some local kids were earning money by taking stern lines and tying them to palm trees.  We had two helpful young fellows who, when asked, provided their own version of Jonathan’s death.

Normally, Anse de Piton would have been packed with sailboats, anchored side by side.  But, as it was race week up north in Antigua, there were a total of three boats there that night.  Winds howled eerily down the mountain and through the bay.  I was very uncomfortable there.  While standing on deck that night, I felt like someone was looking over my shoulder.  I quickly turned, but only saw the dark mountain looming above me.  Perhaps it was the thought of Jonathan dying there that had me spooked.  I was very glad to leave the next morning.  We took several slides of the Pitons, but none of them came out.  The battery on our light meter also died at the Pitons.  Those were the only pictures from our travels that we lost.