BOATS, BEACHES, BOOBS AND BUFFETT gots who have a big villa," he said in a loud voice at a crowded bar. "I sand and varnish, sand and varnish — the stuff I do is so bright I have to wear sunglasses! But the guys keep asking me if I can't put on another coat and make it even brighter. I'm going crazy!" People on St. Barth say all kinds of politically incorrect things about sexual orientation, race, age, and every other taboo. But it doesn't seem to be indicative of any underlying prejudice. For example, we once heard this same Antonio rise in a spirited of defense of gays in the Spanish military. "Of course! Why the hell not?" he shouted. Indeed, one of the charms of being on St. Barth is that the people seem so much less judgemental than in the States. People on the island say what they want, pursue a wider variety of interests, dress more individualistically — and by our observation mix a lot more. For example, everyone sits around big tables at Le Select at night, and despite the different languages, colors, and ages, everybody is saying ça va, kissing each Spread; The Swan 68 'Chippewa' beats toward the finish in ideal conditions. Inset; Young Yan works at a beach concession — but has sailed around the world 2.5 times already.
other, and introducing new people to everyone else in the group. When it comes to our riffraff friends, St. Barth is about the least insular place we know. One of the big problems we had on the little island was finding a place to watch Texas play USC in the Rose Bowl, because the island bars couldn't care less about sports. We eventually asked Julian, a typically atypical kind of guy you're likely to find on the island, to see if he could help. Julian lives in Orinda, and up until recently owned Acme Amusement — jukeboxes and pinball machines — in San Francisco. For the next three years, however, he's also rented a little place on the island where he stays when he's not working. His current gig is providing and setting up the snooker table for the Rolling Stones while they're on tour. Seriously. He gets the South America part of the tour off because the Stones don't see the necessity of flying a snooker table to another continent. Julian, who has been kicking around St. Barth since the early '70s, told us not to worry, he'd find a villa where our group of eight could watch the game — which wasn't going to start until 9 p.m. St. Barth time. True to his word, Julian's friends Brian and Melanie Honeysett, who sailed to St. Barth from South Africa 30 years ago aboard a Piver trimaran, were inexplicably delighted to welcome our group of strangers to their villa with a spectacular view of the Caribbean. St. Barth is such a small island, that it's easy to become friends. The next night we saw Brian at the little Bête à Z'ailes bar, where his friend Jimmy Buffett asked him to hold back the crowd so he could keep playing. And when we saw Brian at the airport the next day, he confessed to an itch to do a little more sailing. While walking past Med-tied boats in front of the classy Hotel de Ville in Gustavia, we heard our name called from one of the motoryachts. It was San Diego's Donnie Anderson, who we'd known from the late '70s when he was taking care of Bill Clute's San Francisco-based Peterson 41 High Noon. In the interim, Anderson has run chaseboats and such for Raul Gardini's Italian America's Cup campaign, Paul Cayard's America's Cup campaign, Larry Ellison's America's Cup campaign, and generally
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done it all on the water. He told us he was now running a 90-ft Cheoy Lee expedition type motoryacht "for a great owner" who bases the boat out of Sag Harbor in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter. What friends later told us Anderson had neglected to mention is that the "great owner" is Jimmy Buffett. Right next to Buffett's boat was the Privilege 62 cat Best Revenge V, owned Jimmy Buffett seemed a little embarassed about his ancient lyric ". . . going for younger women. . ."