WIZARD UNDONE IN JET DUEL

Caribbean charter sailing is meant to be about relaxing on deck, savouring pina coladas and reconnecting with your soul. But things don’t always go to plan...

We liked to think of Gandalf as the charter queen of the Caribbean. From the tip of her graceful bowsprit to the end of her stern platform, she measured about 24m. Her staysail schooner rig spread five, tan sails and towered over the teak decks where 30 or 40 winter-weary Americans sprawled every day as we took them between St Maarten and Anguilla. Gandalf evoked the Caribbean’s pirate past but instead of a crew of swashbuckling, cutlass-swinging ruffians, her decks teemed with overweight, pallid tourists wielding bottles of sun screen and glasses of complementary rum punch.

High-speed catamarans ferried people from St Maarten to St Barts in the east but none of them could touch Gandalf for pure relaxation and character.

Every morning we’d collect our guests from The Pelican Resort and idle gently out of the bay while we hoisted sails and served the first round of drinks. Myself

and crew Bobbi (Canadian) and Bobby (South African) had worked together for several months and Gandalf’s daily routine was as regular as the trade winds.

As people slathered themselves with sun screen, we’d slowly round the point into Airport Bay where the airport runway terminated just a road width away from the beach and large hotels lined the seafront.

People liked to take photos of their hotels, so we gently sailed around the bay, 50m or so beyond the beach, while cameras set up a staccato of clicking and people waved from where they sat on the sand.

During the summer season we’d found that our morning run often coincided with flight take-off times. We could set the sails for a broad reach, warn our guests to hang on and wait. The planes took off with an ear-splitting roar and about 20 – 30 knots of warm, jet fuel-scented breeze would hit the boat. Gandalf’s 30 tonnes would bow to the jet stream and sail gracefully out of the bay.

It became our party act, complete with a big build up for the guests, to enhance their anticipation of the impending blast. We jet sailed out of the bay almost every morning for months, oblivious to the changing seasons.

But then the northern hemisphere winter arrived with a vengeance. Within weeks the hotels were packed, and so was Gandalf, her decks crammed with 40 – 50 guests, hell-bent on having a good time.

One morning, we ghosted around Airport Bay, the keel centimetres off carving a furrow in the soft sand bottom. The cameras were clicking and cold beers being ferried forward from the big chiller mounted just behind where I stood at the wheel.

On the runway, it looked like just another aeroplane, jockeying for take-off into the warm, soft trade winds. I didn’t remember any of the other planes having a third jet engine on their tail fin, but didn’t think much of it.

Suddenly there was a violent roar, like a volcano in full eruption and the plane began moving down the runway. The jet thrust behind it hit Gandalf at what seemed like 40 – 50 knots, and smacked her flat on her beam ends, the masts almost parallel with the water.

A horde of yelling and shrieking Americans slithered across the deck and piled up in the lee scuppers along with flying sunhats, beach towels, handbags, bottles of sun screen – and bottles of rapidly emptying cold beer – into the melee. Sand from the beach blasted the boat like a camel-killing Saharan tempest.

I stood, transfixed at the wheel for several seconds, before it occurred to me to dump the fisherman sheet. The big sail which hoisted up the back of the foremast and sheeted to the front of the main mast, ran loose with a resounding crack. I imagined a charter jet full of American lawyers turning up to file 50 psychological damage claims and what that would do to our cruising kitty.

Slowly – ever so slowly – Gandalf swung upright and people began to crawl back across the deck.

A young guy felt his way aft to where I slumped, knees trembling, at the wheel. “Hey man, that was soooo cool – can we do it again?” he asked.

We milled around collecting floating sun hats for a while then sailed Gandalf back to her mooring. Later we took our masks and snorkels back to the beach and located the line-up of beer bottles that had fallen from the cooler to the sea floor while Gandalf had lain on her beam ends. We opened one each and sat on the warm sand for a debrief, eyes on the horizon.

It was the end of just the sort of day you’d be likely to see the elusive green flash. B