A childhood spent on the high seas
THINKING UP A HURRICANE
FRANK Stilwell, a Benoni electrician, hankered for the open seas so much that he named his daughter after a Caribbean island. Life was too short to live in a house and work. Eleven years after her birth, Martinique and her twin brother, Robert, her parents and the poodle would sail into the harbour of her namesake island. Stilwell was living his dream, even if his family found it a nightmare. Martinique’s story of this perilous voyage is a sparkling debut.
On acquiring the boat, Frank set the twins to work each weekend scraping, sanding and varnishing until it was ready.
They left Durban harbour in 1977, well before satellite navigation, undeterred by his negligible sailing experience, dearth of mapreading skills and minimal finances. The journey in Vingila, the 17-ton steel-hulled boat, was naively scheduled to take two years. The children, aged nine at their departure, were erratically home-schooled. Stilwell was a querulous captain; his discipline a combination of lacerating insults and canings from “the whistler”.
This tale of her parents’ wellintentioned blundering is both funny and heart-breaking.
If there is criticism of this book, it is one of understatement. One senses much has been left out from the storm warnings neither perceived nor heeded, unsuitable travelling companions taken aboard, an infestation of goosenecked barnacles not compre- hended soon enough, and her brother’s broken arm left untreated too long. Stilwell’s handling of the delights of the trip is deft, with descriptions of spear-fishing in azure waters, trading rare shells with island children and cello lessons in Australia.
At 16, exhausted by the vagaries of sailing under her father’s eccentric command, she returns to nurture her dream of becoming a doctor. The final stretch of the book encompasses her bid to reintegrate amid the confined strictures of Alberton High. Her itinerant existence has left her unprepared for a new series of ordeals.
Accused by her father of thinking up hurricanes, it is a startling imagination that enables Stilwell to fuse a solid sense of self as she navigates her hardscrabble childhood. Highly polished and convincing, this fine memoir is built on narrative integrity. Stilwell’s voice deserves a good hearing.
Liesl Jobson