Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine - December 2017

DECEMBER 2017 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 30
My Knight in Shining Armor Would Let Me Eat My Grilled Cheese!
or,
CRUISING WITH A PROBLEM COUPLE
All of the names in this article have been changed to
protect the… well, you’ll see.
After a couple years of living on a sailboat, earning
my master captain’s license and sailing with tourists
and friends around the islands as often as possible, I
used to think that everyone would have a blast chartering
a sailboat in the Caribbean for a week.
I was wrong.
I learned this soon after receiving a text from my
friend Ben, who sails his 47-foot Leopard catamaran,
S/V Starshine, in the Virgin Islands. In the text, he
sounded a little desperate.
Could I be his smiley first mate for a weeklong cruise
with, as he put it, a “problem couple”?
One of Ben’s old high school friends found him on
Facebook, and she and her husband, a professional lobsterman
from Maine, wanted to celebrate their 30th anniversary.
Ben’s instincts were correct. He needed backup.
I arrived in Road Town, Tortola, to find a very worried-looking
Ben. As I threw my bag aboard and
pushed off the mooring ball en route to Jost Van Dyke,
I met Darlene. She was a gentle woman who spoke in
sotto voce — one of those harsh whispers — because
she had just survived throat cancer.
“I’m a hundred-percent cancer free!” she proclaimed
as she took a drag from her Marlboro Red cigarette.
She smoked a pack a day.
Darlene was also sucking down on a weak mix of
Kahlua and milk from a plastic shaker cup. Her legs
and shoulder were badly damaged from a car wreck
she had been in a few months ago. Quite rotund, she
could barely walk and did not have much use of one
arm. She was wearing a blue lacey one-piece bathing
suit, and she looked at me.
“Do you think I got some color?” she whispered harshly.
Her skin was turning a neon shade of red, perhaps
as red as the lobsters her husband caught in Maine.
“Um, yes,” I replied, uncomfortably. “Maybe you
should get out of the sun and get some aloe.”
Darlene’s husband, Bob, was in the stateroom. He
evidently hadn’t been feeling well for the last three
days, and he had yet to emerge. Darlene explained to
me that he only had 25 percent function of his heart
after multiple heart attacks. Originally, he wasn’t even
going to come on the trip, since two doctors told him
that it probably wasn’t going to be a good idea. But a
third doctor gave him clearance at the last minute, so
here he was.
“He is my knight in shining armor,” Darlene whispered
sweetly, looking wistfully toward their closed
cabin door.
It didn’t seem Bob was having a very good time. In
the two days before I arrived, he had only eaten a hot
dog. He never removed his white sneakers and tube
socks, and he wore nothing but jean shorts and XXL
T-shirts. He had never flown in an airplane before, or
had even left Maine. He was simply overheated.
With Bob staying hidden, we anchored outside
Foxy’s on Jost Van Dyke and the three of us — Ben,
Darlene and I — headed ashore. It was the perfect
opportunity to get the party started, Darlene said. We
all enjoyed a Friggin’ in the Riggin’ cocktail at Foxy’s
before walking down the waterfront.
Darlene whispered that she wanted to buy some
by Suzanne Wentley
weed. Ben suggested approaching one of the friendly
Rastafarians or taxi drivers. We hung back as Darlene
looked around.
A white van appeared on the road, and Darlene
flagged it down. I noticed a church logo on the door and
shook my head. The driver rolled down his window.
“I’m not a taxi driver,” he told Darlene.
“That’s okay, I don’t want a taxi,” she whispered. “I
want to buy some pot!”
“You should be careful whom you ask,” the driver
told her.
“Why?” she whispered. “Are you a cop?”
“Yes I am,” he said.
Ben and I watched thankfully as the police officer
shook his head and kept driving slowly down the street.
Relieved, we arrived at Corsair’s, another open-air bar.
Darlene ordered her Kahlua and milk, Ben ordered a
Carib and I eyed up the larger-than-life bottle covered
with stickers in front of me on the bar. It’s a strong
concoction of many different kinds of rum. I looked over
at Darlene. I ordered it in a Painkiller, please.
At dinnertime, Darlene offered to buy us a vegetable
Above: White Bay on Jost Van Dyke in the BVI —
who wouldn’t enjoy being here?
Left: Sun poisoning can ruin anyone’s vacation
pizza. But she didn’t eat it. Since the throat cancer,
she only eats spaghetti, she explained. So we took the
pizza to go so we could check on Bob back on
Starshine. Ben and I ate it on the trampoline of the
catamaran as the sun set; it was delicious.
The next morning, Bob appeared — and he was
pissed. He discovered the US$90 bar tab from the previous
night. He was also mad about something else:
Sprite. Turns out you can’t buy 7-Up on Jost. His
drink of choice is white rum and 7-Up, not Sprite.
Sprite, he explained, is disgusting.
It’s worth mentioning that I only saw Bob wearing
two shirts the entire time I knew him. One read, “I’m
not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right”. The
other one read, “Nope, not today”.
He gagged down a sip of Sprite and grimaced.
“Welcome to Paradise…” he said bitterly, looking out
over the crystal blue seas surrounding the boat,
“where you can’t get nothing!”
Meanwhile, Darlene was in misery. Her red, puffy
eyes were under an ice pack, hiding from the sun
thanks to what looked like an increasingly painful
case of sun poisoning.
We sailed around to White Bay on Jost and secured
a central anchor spot, right in front of the Soggy Dollar
Bar web cam.
—Continued on next page