A Trip to the Beach (21 page)

Chapter 12

In early July Shabby had invited Bob to help build the new boat in Blowing Point. Bob's skill as a carpenter coupled with his collection of tools made him a valuable asset to an Anguillian boatbuilding crew. After loading his table saw and various toolboxes into the back of the truck, he followed the directions Shabby had given him and pulled in next to a little building called Generation Bar, where the new boat was going to be built. A group of men were congregated in the shade of a big mahogany tree, and two of them were engaged in a heated argument. As Bob got out of the truck he tried hard to grasp what they were saying.

“No, man, we ain' gonna do it that way,” the first man shouted.

“I done race these boats more years than you,” said the second man as he downed the remainder of a Heineken. As Bob saw the man reach into a cooler for another one, tossing the empty off into the bushes, he wondered how they could drink beer at nine in the morning. All the men were barefoot except one, who wore a pair of rubber thongs. The ground under the big tree was strewn with nails, empty paint cans, gobs of epoxy, and bits of wood from years of boatbuilding. Off to one side, two hammers and a rusty hand saw lay on the ground next to a big stack of pine boards.

Shabby came over to meet Bob and peered into the back of the truck at the tools.

“What are they arguing about?” Bob asked, still trying to pick up on the conversation.

“They tryin' to decide how to shape the hull,” said Shabby. “Errol say it should be like
Stinger,
but Chix say he wannit like
Bluebird.
Errol the captain a this boat,” Shabby explained, “an' Chix his brother.” Chix was the one drinking beer, and Bob recognized him from the Easter Monday boat race.

“You go ahead, build it like
Stinger,
”Chix yelled. “You ain' gonna win nothin'.”

“Chix been captain on lotta boats,” Shabby said to Bob. “This Errol's first boat, and we all the crew. Chix kinda mad cause he ain' the captain.”

Now it was clear: Chix was jealous and had come over to cause trouble.

“Once they decide on the hull, do you have a set of plans for the boat?” Bob asked.

“Kee Kee gonna design it,” Shabby answered proudly. “He the best when it come to workin' with wood.”

The argument continued. “Okay, I ain' gonna help then,” shrieked Chix as he polished off his beer and flung the empty bottle into a group of squawking chickens. He picked up his cooler, tossed it in the back of his car, and made a dramatic departure, blue smoke coming off the tires.

“Okay, guys, the man with the tools here,” Errol announced, looking at Bob. As they unloaded the table saw and toolboxes Shabby introduced the men to Bob, and they all bumped fists—the classic Anguillian handshake. Bob felt he had just joined the Blowing Point Yacht Club.

“Leff we go,” Errol said once everything was out of the truck. “Rigby, you watch the tools.” Rigby was asleep on the ground, and Errol went over and poked him with his foot. Rigby rolled over, opened his eyes, and stared up at Errol.

“You watch the tools,” Errol repeated to Rigby, who rolled back on his side, closing his eyes. Several of the men climbed into the back of Bob's truck, but there were a few who hadn't moved yet. They remained on the ground with Rigby, sprawled out under the tree, apparently uninterested in the project but willing to help watch the tools. Errol and another carload of men followed.

“Where are we going?” Bob asked Shabby, who had climbed into the front seat with him.

“Goin' to
Stinger
so Kee Kee can shape the hull. Turn above,” he instructed, pointing to a dirt path through the sea grape. Bob maneuvered over the deep ruts, finding that the path came out at a beach east of the ferry terminal.

“See,
Stinger
there.” Shabby pointed to a boat lying on its side at the far end of the beach. When Bob pulled up, the men climbed out of the truck and wandered over to where the glossy yellow
Stinger
lay on the sand. Kee Kee led the group, holding six pieces of rusted steel rod each about eight feet long, the kind used for reinforcing concrete. Sam and Kee Kee began at the bow and bent the first piece of rod to fit the gentle curve of
Stinger.
They held it against the hull, bent it a little more, held it against the boat again, and readjusted the curve again and again until it matched
Stinger
exactly. Satisfied with the first rod, they moved down the hull about four feet, and bent another rod to duplicate the shape at that point. Bob realized they were going to use six simple pieces of rusty steel to form the graceful curve of the new boat.

After about an hour of bending, adjusting, and discussing whether it should be a little trimmer here and a little wider there, everyone piled back into the truck. Bob glanced in his rearview mirror at Kee Kee, who was proudly clutching his new patterns for the boat.

Nothing had changed under the tree. Rigby was still asleep, and Bob's tools were right where they'd been unloaded. Errol ran an extension cord from inside his bar over to the table saw.

“Leff we rip this pine,” he said to Bob, who got out his tape measure and leveled the saw as best he could in the dirt.

“What's the pine for?” Bob asked.

“We nail it over the ribs that Kee Kee gonna make outta that plywood over there. It like the skin a the boat. We gotta rip these boards down to two or three inches so that we can bend 'em around the frame.”

“So,” Bob said, “do you want them two inches wide or three inches wide?”

“Don' matter. Somewhere in there.”

Bob set his saw for two and a half inches, realizing that Anguillian boatbuilding was not a precise science. While Bob ripped the pine boards into long, skinny strips, Kee Kee traced the bent rods onto the plywood. After each shape was drawn, another man cut it out with Bob's jigsaw. Sam and Errol mixed epoxy and glued the plywood shapes together, doubling them up for strength.

By the end of the day, Bob had ripped the entire pile of pine boards into strips, and the others had cut and laid out the ribs in order. The result looked like a huge fish skeleton splayed out on the ground.

“Gotta lay down the keel now,” Errol announced the next day, and three men carried a long, heavy timber over to where the ribs had been placed. They set the timber on two cement blocks and put a level on it. Bob wondered briefly how they would have done this without his tools. They shimmed one end of the timber up a little until Errol was satisfied it was level. “There,” he said. “Keel ready for the ribs.”

Sam and Errol applied epoxy to the bottom of each rib and stuck them onto the keel, clamping them in place. Three long strips of pine were glued and nailed across the ribs, stretched lengthwise from bow to stern. One was nailed at the top, one in the middle, and one more toward the bottom.

As the men bent the pine over the ribs, the lines of the boat were suddenly defined. At the end of the second day everyone stood back as Kee Kee and Errol walked around the frame, checking to see if they liked the shape.

“Yeah, man,” Kee Kee said. “She look sweet. Tomorrow we plank 'er.”

It took two days to plank her; several men had made a rudder, and two more had shaped and fitted strips of wood to the top of each side to make the gunwales. Next was “epoxy day.” The thick, gluey mixture was troweled over the entire outside of the boat, along with fiberglass cloth, filling in all the cracks between the pieces of pine, sealing the wood and forming a waterproof skin. Then came sanding day, and by midafternoon the boat was smooth and shiny and ready for paint.

In less than two weeks these men had built a twenty-eight-foot sailboat with nothing more than six pieces of bent, rusty steel rod for patterns.

By the end of the second week the boat had been finished with several coats of glossy light green paint. The group christened it
De Tree
in honor of the mahogany tree under which it was built, and they painted the name proudly on each side.

“Now we jus' need a sail,” Errol said, looking hopefully at Bob. “We could put ‘Blanchard's Restaurant' on it,” he offered, “as a little advertising.”

“How much is a sail?” Bob asked.

“Maybe two thousand U.S. dollars,” Sam said.

“Okay,” Bob said, “where do we get it?”

“St. Martin,” Errol answered. “They make them in the Sail Loft in Cole Bay.”

“How do I tell them what size and shape you want?”

“Get a piece of paper. I draw it,” Errol said.

Bob found an envelope and a pen in his glove compartment, and Errol proceeded to draw the sail. He drew a triangle and put the measurements on two sides, labeling one “boom” and one “mast.” He studied the simple sketch as if it were a set of blueprints and then handed it over to Bob, saying, “Give this to the man at the Sail Loft. Tell him we wants it tight, tight, tight.”

Bob realized at this point that he was in charge of
getting
the sail as well as paying for it. “Jus' tell the man to cut it tight for an Anguilla racing boat,” Errol added. “Sometimes they cuts 'em too loose.”

The next day Bob took the ferry to St. Martin to order the sail. After the owner of the Sail Loft turned Errol's measurements into a scale drawing, Bob gave him a check for $2,400.

Back in Anguilla, Bob pulled off the road at the Generation Bar and got out next to
De Tree,
where a large herd of goats had gathered in the shade of the boat. They watched placidly as Bob walked past the boat and around the back of the bar looking for Errol. He found him sitting on a stump cleaning a fish.

“Hey, Errol, how you doing?”

“Okay, Blanchard,” he answered. “Y'alright? How the sail?” he asked without looking up from his fish.

“He's hoping to have it done the day before the first race.”

“Cool,” Errol answered.

“Don't we need to try the boat out before the race?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, man. We gonna do that. I got a practice sail from the
Stinger.
We gonna launch her Sunday down Sandy Ground.”

“Great. Can I come help?” Bob replied.

“Yeah, man. You part a the crew now,” Errol said as he tossed a fish head into a big pot. Bob felt he had just moved a little closer toward being accepted into Anguillian life.

Several of the goats had moved over to the shade of Bob's truck, and as he walked around to get in, they jumped up and trotted back over to the boat.

It seemed to be a day of goats. That night at the restaurant two babies wandered into the bar as if holding a seven o'clock reservation. Wobbly-legged, they looked as if they were only hours old, though their mother was nowhere in sight. Bob and Miguel stared in disbelief as the two tottered past the bar and into the dining room, made a left down the hall, and walked directly into the kitchen.

Without hesitation Bug said, “Hi, baby goats. You come to wash dishes with me?”

Attention in the kitchen temporarily shifted from dinner to our little visitors. I asked Ozzie to check with the neighbors to see if anyone knew whom they belonged to, but he predicted nobody would claim them. “Too mucha goats in Anguilla,” he said. “Nobody gonna know who goats these is.”

The two little newborns, one black and one brown, proceeded around the pickup counter and made a beeline for my legs. They nuzzled warmly against my ankles and stayed there all night, not seeming to mind that I moved back and forth as dinner orders came and went. Garrilin and I worked side by side, and she spent the evening trying to feed them milk from a spoon.

An American friend who had a house on the island said she'd look after the two kids until their owner was located. A week later we gave up the search, and she formally announced that she had adopted the babies. Their names were Blackie and Star. Those two little goats lucked into the good life when they wandered into our bar. Rather than forage for food in the bush like most goats in Anguilla, they were nursed from a bottle, and each had its own lounge chair by the pool. Blackie and Star had landed in the lap of luxury.

Sunday morning Bob was at Sandy Ground by nine for
De Tree
's practice sail. He walked up the beach and spotted Errol and five or six of the crew wrestling with a flapping bright yellow sail on the beach. The practice sail was rolled out on the sand with a mast that looked like a telephone pole lying next to it.

A rope was tied to an eyebolt at the top of the mast. Errol threaded it through a grommet in the sail and wound it around the mast, through another grommet, and again around the mast, the whole time barking orders at the crew.

“Blanchard, haul on that rope,” he said. “We ain' want no slack in the line.”

Bob obediently pulled on the rope, keeping it tight, working it along behind Errol, until they reached the bottom of the sail. Then it was tied securely around the mast.

“Okay, boys, roll it up now,” Errol ordered, and the sail was rolled and tied against the mast.