Sometimes vacations are not pretty. This was a very pretty place but not pretty in the organizational sense. We had a plan A where we were going from island to island by sailboat together as a family for my parents 50th anniversary. We went with plan B, which turns out, is an island thing. On Tuesday my mom went to the small clinic on Jost Van Dyke and the nurse and doctor there rushed her to the ferry to bring her to the larger island, Tortola, and the hospital in the city of Road Town. She was diagnosed with pneumonia. She spent 4 nights there without us. She wanted the kids (me, my brother, and sister-in-law) to have fun. With my dad at the hospital taking care of his sweet heart, us "kids" battened down the hatches and winged it on our 41' sailboat. We did say "batten down the hatches" several times out of context. Without our captain, we fell into rolls and figured out how to trim the sails and catch mooring balls from YouTube videos.
This was our first time operating a boat of this size in the British Virgin Islands. It was my parents' fifth time in the islands. Last time they went it was 25 years ago. Things had changed since they last went. There was this little hurricane called Irma that wiped out all their favorite spots 18 months ago. We went into Soper's Hole, a one time bustling harbor of pastel shops and restaurants, and it looked bombed out. We snapped our metal boat hook like a tooth pick in a mooring ball mishap the first day on the water so we went to the marina to buy a new one. We met a man, an old salt, at the marina who told us about that day in September.
The Old Salt described it as a monster that made a high pitch screaming sound. He had just purchased a new flat screen tv, a luxury in the islands, and he was watching the weather report. The hurricane was a giant, 420 miles wide. He turned to his cat and said, "This doesn't look good, does it?" His cat and his new tv survived but the signal towers and cable broadcasting stations were leveled so he didn't have a picture. That was the least of it, the roads were scattered with boats, trees and debris. It relentlessly took roofs and sucked every possession and piece of clothing out the windows. As he spoke, he was in awe of it as if it were a thing of fables – unbelievable. Our taxi driver one day told us he was taking cover in his bedroom closet huddled next to his wife and child and just kept telling them don't move. "That bitch was in my bedroom! Then she took my roof." It was daylight when it happened but all they could see was a white foam in the sky. The Old Salt said the British sent in the Navy with 2000 body bags expecting everyone to be dead. Had it been night time, he thought, many more people may have died. A woman at the clinic just shook her head recounting how tragic it was. "It was horrible." She said it lasted about 6 to 7 hours. There are areas that still do not have clean drinking water. Many residents moved away and have not returned. Each island is responsible for their own clean up and repairs. Puerto Rico provided relief until they got hit with hurricane Maria. And yet everyone we talked to had an easy smile and the best sense of humor.
It was rubbing off on my Mom too. When we went to visit her at Peebles Hospital, she was smiling and had color in her face again. She was joking with the staff, introducing us to her nurses and saying goodnight to the staff like she worked there (my mom was once a med tech in a hospital).
“batten down the hatches”
My Dad was a real hero taking ferries from island to island to meet us or mom in the hospital. Meanwhile me and my brother were left to our own sibling devices on the boat to argue about who had more sailing experience. When we were kids we raced our own cub boat on an inland lake in Wisconsin. Being the older brother, I was the skipper and Andy was my crew. But too many last place finishes always resulted in yelling and sometimes crying. Those old ghosts haunted us and we had our own things to work out. Andy now took on the roll of captain and I was first mate and we worked well in those rolls. The seas were rocky with 20 mph wind and swells that would make a rollercoaster fanatic ill. It made climbing the mast to pull down the main sail a little more dangerous. My sister-in-law, Sara, stayed very calm through all this and only got seasick once. At night, with my mom staying in the hospital, I only had to worry about the boat. I would get up frequently to investigate creaks and moans. The boat seemed to be alive and made sounds like a cooing baby, a surprised debutant, a moaning lover or a feral cat. We made two more stops in the Road Town harbor than we had planned (4 total); every time eyeing up Peebles Hospital on the shore and thinking of Mom.
All in all, we saw some good nature, made and ate good meals in the galley of the boat, and had two peaceful sunset sails. In the caves of Treasure Point, tiny silver fishes in a school hiding out like pieces of pirate booty. On Virgin Gorda, boulders piled on a beach with pools under them that you could splash around in. On the last day, we broke our Mom out of the hospital (she had passed her tests and was on antibiotics) and we sailed to Cooper's Island. We had the luck of seeing a sea turtle so gentle and chill it made me want to become a vegetarian and take up surfing. We did nothing. And by nothing I mean kayaked, paddle boarded, sat on the beach, ate ice cream, made and drank Pain Killers, snorkeled and had dinner in the open-air Cooper Island Beach Club. We watched an amazing sunset of pastel pinks and blues over a calm sea as we celebrated my old parents and their love. It was a beautiful end to a hurricane of a vacation.
Thank you to the beautiful people of the BVI especially Nurse Alice, Doctor Paula, Nurse Jack-Gordon (aka Miss Jackson), orderly George for taking such good care of my mom, and Sassy at the front desk of Sunsail who gave me a hug.
