Photo: Mermaid of Carriacou
Even ocean sailors make lists! Detailed notes of repairs, projects, stuff to buy, places to go, people to see. We keep ours short. And this year’s list was pretty simple:

1. Move the boat safely and sanely from Gig Harbor, Washington, to the Sunny Caribee.
2. Transit the Panama Canal uneventfully.
3. Find John Smith in the Caribbean. (John is Bruce’s older, notorious, one-of-a-kind brother.)
4. Haul Woodwind out in the British Virgin Islands for some much needed rest and repair.

That was all we were out to accomplish, and by the time we got to Antigua … after a brush with Hurricane Sergio, surviving several other storms and rescuing several people at sea … we had the two hardest missions behind us and were down to the last two goals.

We thought John Smith might show up for the Antigua Classic Race, since his boat, Mermaid of Carriacou, is as classic as it gets. She’s a 44-foot, engineless sloop built on the island of Carriacou for the first regatta held there some 30 years ago. There were four other Carriacou boats racing in Antigua, so it made sense he would appear there.

Our eyes scanned the sea beyond the entrance of the harbor dozens of times each day, sure we’d spot his dark sails on the horizon, but to no avail. So we called the boatyard in Virgin Gorda, made a reservation, and headed in that direction.

A few weeks later we pulled into the rolly anchorage off Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, to confirm our spot for the hurricane season and check out the yard’s amenities. Woodwind would get a double ride to her summer resting spot, first hauled out by a 60-ton travel lift, then transferred to a boat-moving truck that would sort of parallel park her a foot and a half away from dozens of other vessels. The theory is, if a hurricane should hit and attempt to knock the boats down, they will hold each other up simply by their close proximity. The whole thing makes me nervous and I have to remember that these are boats, not dominos lined up to break a world’s record.

After finishing our preliminary business with the boatyard, I wanted to walk up to the Little Dix Bay Hotel, one of the Caribbean’s oldest and finest establishments, to see if the murals Bruce had painted years before in the Children’s Pavilion were still there. Once there, we were about to give the guard at the gate a long and convoluted story so she’d let us in, but since it was sweat-dripping hot, she made an effort to lift her arm and waved us in. We meandered past a landscaper’s dream of antique tropical plants before finally reaching the Pavilion. No children there, but inside were two West Indian ladies, one of whom remembered Bruce and the two weeks it took to paint three large walls featuring an underwater scene (complete with a protruding barracuda) a West Indian kitchen and a tiny piece of Spanish Town. All of the work was there, but half was on one side of a newly constructed wall and the other half was in an office.

Satisfied, we headed “back to the ship.” Just as we stepped onto the beach that held our dinghy, I looked up to see a lone boat, slowly tacking into our line of sight. “Bruce, it’s your brother!” It was as if we were in a movie and the director had told the boat to sail in on cue. We dropped our belongings, leaned on a wooden spool and watched as John brought his boat slowly into the anchorage. These two brothers, who at one time worked together, had not seen each other in at least 12 years. Distance and circumstance had kept them apart. Irony and chance were about to bring them back together.

We threw our El Toro dinghy, Ruby, into the surf and rowed hard out to the anchorage. Alongside Mermaid, we held off for a few moments, savoring the moment, the scene, the magic of two long-separated siblings reuniting. “Womb mates” Bruce calls them. The hugging and laughing segued into one story after another into the wee hours of the night. We all had a few to share.

Jan