On the Kindness of Strangers

Years ago, back in the Noughties, I spent a season on a boat in the Caribbean.

It was a beautiful Bowman 48, fresh out of the packet, and sailed like a dream.

It was owned by my ex-employer-from-office-days and friend Richard, and he wanted help to sail the boat across the Atlantic.  I’d just taken my Yachtmaster exam and was looking for work, so I was delighted to join him and his wife in the Canaries.

We sailed to uneventfully, enjoyably, to St Lucia as part of the ARC rally.  We then sailed north to the British Virgin Islands, enjoying the vigorous sailing and beautiful islands on the way.

Richard & his wife left me and the boat in the BVIs and flew back to the UK for work and family commitments, planning to return for a few weeks here and there.  Richard is a kind and generous man, and a great employer.  He knew I’d be bored on my own for too long, so suggested I invite family & friends to come and keep me company.

To use the boat as my own.  Oh yes please!

I spent months based mainly around Tortola, moving around occasionally to other islands including Jost Van Dyke and St Thomas in the USVIs.  I was lucky enough to have various people come and stay including my dad and brother and mum.

I have such happy memories … snorkelling with my dad … spending time on my own at Beef Island and making friends with the owners of the little beach shack cafe there … my brother Jon arriving, climbing on the boat at anchor, seeing a turtle swimming by, and diving straight in …going to the famous Foxy’s at Jos Van Dyke with mum … a girlfriend from Nevis joining me for a week and us crewing in the BVI Spring Regatta …  diving through the fuselage of (an intentionally wrecked) plane with mum … going into Nanny Cay Marina for a while and making friends there … sailing over to St Thomas to pick up Dad from his flight, and Jon not being allowed ashore as he didn’t have the right visa; when we anchored off, Jon dove down and touched the sandy bottom of the USVI anchorage in defiance … many happy times spent at the Willy T floating bar … the list goes on and on.

Everywhere we turned, I met genuine, down to earth people and made many friends.  I had great times when people visited, but also spent a lot of time on the boat on my own.  I’m a gregarious soul and like people around, so I really appreciated the welcoming openness of the people I met on the island, black and white.  Helped alleviate the loneliness.

Towards the end of the season, the owner suggested putting the boat on transport and shipping it back to the UK.  I was keen to take my Yachtmaster Ocean, which requires planning and executing an ocean passage as skipper, then taking a written and oral test on the passage plus celestial nav.  I talked Richard into letting me sail the boat back, and found some crew for the 4,000 mile passage to Southampton via the Azores.

The passage back was uneventful (bar the autopilot breaking two days in, but that’s another story).  The boat was laid up as she wouldn’t be used for a while, and I was offered another job on a Swan 51 – a season in the Med, then over to the Caribbean again.

I didn’t go back to the BVIs again, but have always treasured my happy memories of that season.

So I’ve been devastated to see the horror of Hurricane Irma unfold over the last few days.  The islands, and many around them, have been decimated.  There is just nothing left.

People have been left homeless.  There’s no phones or internet.  No power.  No water.  No food.  I watched slack-jawed, the news last night, showing sobbing people begging to be evacuated.  And the strangest thing is, there’s hardly any news coverage, at least, not in Australia.  There are stories on some islands of looting, of people being forced from still-standing homes being taken over at gunpoint.  Wars between blacks and whites, prisons being blown down and the criminals at large.  It’s horrifying, sickening.

I’m aware that a lot of people equate the Caribbean with privilege, and I know that parts of it are very exclusive.  But what I saw when I was there, was a lot of perfectly ordinary people, living ordinary lives, whose main business is reliant on the tourist trade – just like the Whitsundays in fact.

I can’t help but relate after going through Cyclone Debbie only a few months ago, in April, here in the Whitsundays.

We were battered by wind and rain for days, ripped apart, traumatised, and now, months later, we’re getting ourselves back together.  But we still have friends with tarps over roofs and businesses that will never recover.  This is in a country where our homes are built very strongly and it’s a first world economy.

Please help.  We have to look after each other.  We just have to.

Have a look at this page here – this is collating all the different ways to help.  The below is an except:

“The most reliable and legitimate ways to help right now are through Virgin, whose overheads are being covered by Richard Branson leaving 100% of donations to go directly to the community, and VISAR (Virgin Islands Search and Rescue) who are supporting the emergency team running out of Peebles Hospital on Tortola.”