Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home

This is the third chapter from my book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home. The introduction, first chapter , and second chapter, can be found here.

Critters in St. Croix


The other boat in the Caribbean 1500 Rally with a family on board is a catamaran crewed by John, Po, Jaimie, and Skyler Martin, who reunite in Roadtown, Tortola, after John sails from Virginia with other crew to help.

One of the first goals of both our families is to leave the marina. I'm sure it could be a beautiful place, but Roadtown witnessed record rainfalls just before our arrival, and the harbor is a blond mud color from the runoff.

When we leave, we sail to the Baths--batholiths are massive rocks--on Virgin Gorda, then to the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, where Greggii and Jaimie decide to get married when they grow up. We explore the Virgin Islands together for two weeks. Hearing of a Thanksgiving Buffet at a resort in Francis Bay, St. John, we celebrate our first of many holidays abroad.

After Thanksgiving, the crew of Faith explores St. Croix (See end of this post for map). We test our sailing skills by sailing through the first couple of channel markers at Christiansted, but I get nervous, so we drop the sails and motor the rest of the way. While we circle the anchorage, and run Faith aground more than once, a guy on a boat leaving hollers, "You can use this mooring if you like. Just run into Stixx and tell Woody that Ingo told you it's okay to use his mooring."

We shop in one of the few stores open on Sunday, where Emily finds some sandals she's been looking for. We ask the woman who sells sandals what we should see in St. Croix, and she tells us not to miss the beer-drinking pigs at the Domino Club. She and everybody else we meet at Stixx--a waterfront restaurant--are friends of Ingo and all promise to relay our message to Woody.

To tour the island, we rent a Jeep Wrangler convertible. Lorrie knows we could have something comfortable, but we four kids think the Jeep is cooler.

Arriving at the Domino Club, we're told we need to get there earlier in the day. The pigs get a lot of beer and go to bed around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Lorrie has been reading in a guidebook some good reviews of the Lobster Reef Restaurant, just east of Cane Bay. With us looking like tourists, a couple pulls alongside to tell us we look lost and to ask if they can help. I ask, "Where's Cane Bay?"

"You turn right at this light, and you'll come straight to it."

Then I ask, "Where are you heading?" because I have a hunch where they're heading is more interesting than where we think we want to go.

"There's a dam that's been dry for years. It's flowing from the recent rains and we want to see it!"

I've never been able to shake that kind of curiosity, so we follow to where a bunch of cars are parked in the road. Many people are washing cars, doing laundry, and bathing. In Michigan, we never concern ourselves much with where our water comes from. Here in this corner of America, we learn a different look.

Continuing, we arrive at the west end of St. Croix and see that the sun has already set.

The map in the Jeep shows another road back to Christiansted. On the map, it's a solid line, depicted as no less a road than the one we came on. Since this route looks shorter, we take it. We're soon surrounded with lush greenery and doubts about being on the right road. The vegetation, recently watered to a heightened vitality, encroaches on parts of the road that I consider traffic zones; two-lane highway, then two-lane country, then maybe a lane, then a bike path, then we barrel through and hope we don't hit anything. Occasionally it widens to give us hope, but narrows again and again.

We regret not stopping to put the top up earlier. Deepening dusk brings critters we aren't used to seeing, and things rain on us from the vegetation we plow through. A lizard lands on our windshield-wiper, wondering how he could one minute be peacefully snagging bugs from a comfortable limb of new life, and the next having a chaotic vision of a bunch of laughing kids, one hysterical woman, and a crazy man looking at him on the motion picture screen that just abducted him. The hysterical woman thinks we should turn around, but the crazy man resists. Then, the crazy man feels a feeling he's not accustomed to, as if somebody's finger is wiggling around between the arch of his foot and his sandal. Since everybody's sitting upright, and nobody can reach his sandal to put their finger in it, he decides the issue needs to be addressed. Soon.

We break out of the underbrush and overbrush and end up on a real road. In a well-lit gas station, the critter is released, a four-inch-long, hard-shelled worm with a bunch of legs. He went from sniffing around in my sandal to the rigorous wilds of the pavement in a heartbeat, my heartbeat. The sensation I felt wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as the one he's going to feel if he doesn't move those legs to get off the parking lot. We don't wait to see. The girls think it's gross. Greggii interrupts the hysterical woman's "I told you so," with "That's cool!"

We eat at the Lobster Reef Restaurant where Frankie, the island's best chef, prepares our dinner. Life is good, and we're back on Faith by 9:00.

In the morning, we arrive early at the Domino Club.


Norma, big, black, and pleasantly brusque, charges ten dollars for three beers, escorts us out, and beats on the side of a shed, bellowing, "Time to get up--JJ--GET UP!!" and the biggest, ugliest creature I've ever heard called a pig puts his front legs up on the gate to his stall. Norma tells Greggii, "He won't hurt you," and instructs him to put his whole, unopened can of beer in the monster's mouth. JJ pops the can with his teeth to an explosion of foam, guzzles the beer and spits out the empty in the dirt near Greggii's feet . Emily and Amanda follow with the same dramatic results. I have doubts about yesterday's bedtime; today's beer is non-alcoholic.

We spend our last evening in St. Croix at Tito and Sue's Crab Races. Tito is emcee, Sue is scorekeeper. They're busy selling rights to a hundred or so hermit crabs, and Greggii, in a fit of five-year-old creativity, names his crab Gregg. Gregg can't be coaxed out of his shell and winds up losing. Greggii reaches into a consolation grab-bag for something forgettable.

As we leave Christiansted, we catch a three-foot wahoo--a pretty silver fish with charcoal-colored tiger-stripes. We learn that five miles away is Buck Island Reef National Monument, where plaques are laid on the seabed next to the more prominent corals, telling what each is. This underwater park is supervised by my favorite US government agency, The National Park Service. Our family road trips before Faith saw us in many US Parks. Public space, dwindling as it is and socialist by definition, is a true asset of America.



We return to St. John in the afternoon and hang around with John and Po, planning to sail to Sint Maarten together when the weather allows. Early one morning, John bangs on our hull and tells us the outlook is good, get ready, and let's get going. In a crisp breeze and the comfort of following seas--as opposed to having the waves coming at our bow--we make Simpson Bay by 10:00 at night and into the lagoon during the 9:00 AM drawbridge opening.

After several days, John and Po want to go to Marigot, on the French side of the island, then to St. Barths for Christmas (Sint Maarten is Dutch, Saint Martin is French). We go to Anguilla. Without knowing it when we depart, we won't see each other again. Their plans are to cruise the Caribbean for six months; ours are to go through Panama and take the long way home.