The wind was strong, the sea rough. I noticed that we all walked around on deck as if on land, a big difference from when we started two weeks before. I guess we’d developed what they call sea legs. The Namaste closed the distance to Saint Thomas about an hour after we sighted land. John was below checking the charts. Ireland and I joked about island girls and whatnot. We were free of worry. We had nothing to hide, nothing on board anybody wanted. The trip down was like a rich man’s cruise. From now on, things would be different. Saint Thomas was the initial point on the sortie to Colombia. That’s how I saw it. Part of a mission. With teamwork, timing, strategy, luck, it could work. Just getting to Saint Thomas, through those storms, was impressive to me. The Namaste was tough and so were we. Two weeks in a rough sea will tighten up every loose muscle you have. My stomach was steel outside, jelly inside.
John checked his chart and pointed out the channel markers as we motored close to land. He used the spotlight he’d bought for the trip to sight the channel markers. The thing lit up half the world when he switched it on. He said we’d come in on the west side of the island, get out of the wind. The wind diminished to lazy breezes as we sailed into the island’s lee. We dropped sail and, with fingers crossed, cranked the engine. Started right up. We cruised into a cove near David Point, far from the lights we’d seen on the north side. Bob went forward and got the anchor ready. When John gave the word, Bob tossed in the anchor. John switched off the engine. The anchor line tightened. The Namaste swung around, aligning herself with the breeze. She rocked gently, contented, I thought.
We dragged out the inflatable dingy. Bob pronounced it stressing the g. Din-GEE. “Blowing up the din-GEE,” he said. “The dingers blow up the din-GEE.” Didn’t take long: we had a foot-powered air pump. Got the thing inflated and threw it overboard. John said Ireland should stay on board while he and I went ashore to get provisions. He meant he wanted to get some beers. He’d been out for two days. He was sober, joked around less, talked less doublespeak.
We were only a couple of hundred yards off, and it didn’t take long to row ashore. John rowed. “Tomorrow we go around to the south side, to the main harbor. I don’t like to come in around all those boats at night,” he said, stroking.
“There’s lots of boats there?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“What’s here?” I said, pointing to the moonlit beach.
“I don’t know. Never been this side of the island before. But I think those lights are maybe a marina or something. Maybe they have some cold fucking beer.”
“Say, John, do you mean, ‘cold fucking beer’ or ‘fucking cold beer’?” I said, laughing.
“Yes,” John said. “That’s what I mean: Budweisers with ice sticking to the cans; brew so cold your scrotum will shrivel.”
We saw a dock, a big house, but no marina. John rowed up to the beach and we jumped out and pulled the dingy up on dry land. The ground felt like it was moving and I almost fell over. When we let go of the dingy, I stood up with my arms out, like I was balancing on a tightrope. I laughed. “They’re right! Sea legs,” I said.
We stumbled across the sand and came to the house. I was laughing. I just couldn’t get over it. I could not convince my body that I was on land. The ground seemed to pitch and roll, like the sea. I walked stooped over, like I might fall off the earth. The house was a clubhouse, I think. We walked all around it. Nobody there. We walked through the club’s landscaped grounds until we came to a gravel road. We stood on the road and looked toward the only lights around, about a quarter mile away. The trouble was, neither of us had thought to bring shoes, and the gravel hurt. “John, you really must want a beer, to go through this torture.”
“Ice cold, freeze your nuts off,” John said, laughing. “Besides, isn’t this fun? Shore leave. Wanting; having.”
The lights were at a garage and it was closed. We seemed to be in a part of the island that closed up early. John was pissed, “Dammy! Wanting; but no having?” John was picking up Ireland’s manner of speech; so was I. I was saying din-GEE as soon as I heard it. John shrugged and said he’d make up for it tomorrow. We tenderfooted back down the road to our dingy.
There had to be two hundred sailing yachts in Saint Thomas Harbor. I was astounded. Where’d they all come from? What were they doing here?
“Some of them—a lot of them—are here for the same reason we are, Bob,” John said.
I think he was right. As we threaded our way among the anchored boats, I saw mostly men on board. Mostly three men on each boat, just like ours. They waved, we waved. When we got within six hundred yards of the docks, we found a spot big enough to anchor the Namaste. I went forward and dropped anchor at John’s command. The Namaste settled back against the anchor line. John stood up on the deck and looked at our neighbors. “Good. We’re clear all around. When she swings around with the wind, and they swing around with the wind, she won’t hit anybody.” Glad he thought of that; I sure hadn’t.
We put on clean clothes. A note Patience had stuck in the crotch of my underwear said: “Use it and lose it!” The little girl smiled, holding a knife. Damn, Patience, I’m not like that… then I remembered she had every reason to believe I was. We flopped the dingy overboard and jumped in. Bob and I decided I’d row in; he’d row back out. As we passed by the boats, we got questions: “Where you from?” “Jacksonville?” “Got some weather, eh?”
We passed a houseboat, or rather a house on floats. It was a rundown two-story shanty. You could see that it was built to be a cheap place to live; there was no fee to anchor off in the harbor. A woman on the front porch was hanging up clothes. “Lots of these people live in the harbor,” John said. “See that guy out there with the big windmill on his boat?” I looked and nodded. “He was here last time. Lives there, generates his own electricity with that windmill, distills his own water in a solar still, catches fish to eat; only comes ashore to sniff out women when he gets tired of jerking off. Neat guy, Mason. You have a lot in common with him. Oughta go meet him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You make him sound real glamorous, John.” Actually, I did want to meet the guy. This was just a tourist stop, wasn’t it? I wasn’t a pot smuggler yet.
The docks where we tied up the dingy were shared by the Islander, an island-rustic bar and restaurant, and the Harbor View, a large, modern hotel. We blended into the tourist traffic—mostly people sightseeing off cruise ships—looking in the shops that ringed the plaza between the hotel and restaurant. They sold tropical T-shirts, palm frond hats, conch-shell lamps, ice cream—tourist geegaws and whatnots. I was looking for a pair of sandals and a place to develop some slides I’d taken. I found a photo shop and asked the guy where I could use a phone. He said the hotel had pay phones. We found the phones. John and I called our wives; Ireland called his girlfriend.
“I miss you,” Patience said.
“Me, too. How’s Jack?” Jack thought I was just working as a sailor.
“Oh. He came in second. Cross-country race.”
“That’s great,” I said. I’d seen Jack run in two races. A lot of fathers were at every race. Now one of the fathers was on a pot run. There was one way out of this trip, but Patience hadn’t mentioned it. I asked anyway. “Heard anything from Knox?”