My Knight in Shining Armor Would Let Me Eat My Grilled Cheese! or,
CRUISING WITH A PROBLEM COUPLE
DECEMBER 2017
CARIBBEAN COMPASS
PAGE 30
by Suzanne Wentley 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
“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
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?”
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