Mornings in the Land of the Sun
As a young adult and adolescent I, naturally, was inclined to sleep late on every morning that I had the opportunity and no one would wake me. I recall, however, that the mornings in the Caribbean somehow beckoned me to get up and get going. They were more inviting and, it seemed, there was always more to do.
I can recall several mornings in particular that I enjoyed especially well. The first one was during my fist week in St. Croix (STX). I was awake before the dawn but waited until there was enough light out. I went walking and exploring up the mountain over the town of Christiansted. There was a trail at the end of the road that continued upward and, although I never hiked up there again after that day, it was a beautiful place to watch the sunrise over the island and watch the waterfront island city awaken for business. I listened as I heard more cars and people, chickens, and dogs. I felt as if I had had an experience that morning that gave me an edge to my day. Besides having started with a good workout by climbing a mountain, I had witnessed the beauty of the morning, alone, as if only I knew how magnificent it had been and everyone else was clueless.
The sea is always calmest in the mornings, even on the windward side. The harbor in Christiansted was in a somewhat sheltered bay inside a barrier reef and with a small island to block the wind and surf. Mornings were especially calm and quiet there and the sun shining on the boats in the morning brightened them before it even hit the docks and waterfront shops. This affords each boat the contrast of color that makes a boat on the sea such a memorable and delightful image to see. The quiet of the morning is only slightly broken by the movement of boaters coming to shore in their dinghies, the sounds sometimes carried away on the breeze. One can be startled by the approach of a dingy, or its driver climbing out, unheard, onto the dock.
The apartment I shared with a roommate in STX was only three blocks from my first few jobs in town. I enjoyed the morning walk. I love the breezes and birds song, the wonderfully cool and comfortable temperatures, and sounds of the sea and its seagulls and seamen.
On the leeward side of any island the surf barely moves most of the day but in the morning it is as still as a pool with the slightest sway of surf on the sand. I did not spend much time there on STX, other than a few evenings, but really enjoyed its serenity on the occasions that I was there. It was the same on the mornings I went to work at the beach shack, calm and quiet. I always enjoyed being the first and only person on the beach, which I was on Salt Cay.
The sailors have a saying; red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in mornin, sailor take wornin. There were many red sky sunsets. All were beautiful. I remembered this saying on mornings that looked pink or red and watched for changing weather patterns but can’t recall if they all panned out with bad weather or not.
There were many times when I was at sea in the morning, mostly aboard the Sea Dancer. I recall getting up early on many mornings to see a small flock of flamingos flying in close formation or single file across the top of the water. The first time I saw them I had now idea what I was looking at but quickly realized that the long, thin birds were the only local inhabitants who were that large and grouped together. They were always seem flying in, toward the island where we spent the night on a mooring and I wondered where they had been and if they had regular routines, why there were so few of them, and how far they would fly between islands.
Mornings on Sea Dancer were also a good time to go for a swim and some of our guests did this on occasion. They had been informed to let the crew or captain know, however, because we sometimes moved the boat to a new site for our first dive. Morning snorklers were often gifted with the sightings of rare or unusual sea creatures including dolphins, sharks, and palagics like the whale shark or humpback whales. I once went out early, first on the site, and saw the largest old turtle I have ever seen or seen since. It was hard to jump in the water too early in the morning but the rewards were there for those who did.
We spent the most amount of time in the islands on the island of Salt Cay. There, we felt we had so much time and were never in a rush to get things done or experience everything on the island. There were many days that I slept in but I was still always interested in experiencing the mornings. They were what they were and it was a waste not to get out and enjoy them. I walked down the beach many days with five cats and along the shore where I saw my barracuda friend but I‘m regretful that did most of that in the evenings rather than the mornings. If I had, I may have seen more ospreys catch fish, more sea creatures jump out of the water or approach the shore, more early morning sunrises of which I was the only observer.
The Caribbean morning sun was so easy to enjoy. It was not too hot yet warm and energizing. I always enjoyed starting my day with at least 20 minutes of just sitting in the sun while I sipped my coffee. I had a terrific little patio on St. Martin where I did this each morning at 7 am. I miss this now, living in the Ozarks, more than anything. I love my home in the bluff lined hollow but the sunshine does not hit our home until after 10 am. I must go out to the end of our driveway to catch the morning sunshine and this I do. The dogs, cat and I have a morning ritual, me in my fold up lawn chair and them at my feet all with the glorious morning rays of sunshine warming us and giving us a charge to carry through the day.
Daylight savings did not occur in the Caribbean. There was no need and the sun rose and set at the same time each day, year after year with only slight variances with the seasons. This agreed with me. I think it makes much more sense than changing the clocks. Perhaps, mornings were easier for me because of this consistency, or maybe it was because I got to bed earlier, after having had a full day in the sun. Nah, it was because they were just beautiful. There have been a few days here, in the Ozarks, where I commented that it felt like a Caribbean morning and Steve agreed. Mild temperatures, sunshine, and a strong breeze, that’s all it takes.
Cookin in the Caribbean
The first meal I ever cooked for Steve was in St. Maarten right after we both got off of the Sea Dancer. We had a little rent-free apartment that was owned by the Divi Resort. We went out and bought a few items to cook with and dishes to eat on. The first thing he wanted me to cook for him was fried chicken. Since I was female, he assumed I was capable of doing this and that it would be delicious. It was his favorite meal and he had not had it in a while. I knew not a thing about frying chicken or anything else. I knew you had to bread it and put it into oil so that is what I did. I didn’t know that the oil needed to be very hot before you put it in and I had no clue how to season or get the flour to stick to the chicken. It turned out very greasy and a little bloody on the bone but he ate it anyway. He learned that day that he had not married a woman but a girl and this girl did not learn from her older generation how to cook the old fashioned Southern way that so many others had. I learned that day that the man I was with would eat anything!
Steve didn’t ask me to cook too many other specialty dishes after the chicken. I don’t recall how or what we ate after that but I’m sure it was mostly simple. We did enjoy buying from the local markets and using what was available. We weren’t in St. Maarten for very long. From there we went to Norman, Oklahoma for a few months while we prepared to return to the islands and run a B& B on Salt Cay at the salt raker plantation house that Steve had lived in before embarking on the Sea Dancer as a stow away.
We stayed rent free in an apartment in Norman that was rented by the owner of the Brown House, Howard Williams. He and his son, Dale, were neighbors of Steve’s in Tulsa when Steve and Dale were in grade school. Howard called Steve Hunk and liked to put him to work. It was Howard’s suggestion to send him to Salt Cay to fix up the old plantation house for him and Steve was glad to have the offer because it was winter and he was freezing his tail off doing construction near Beaver Lake in Arkansas at the time.
Steve and I were only in Norman for a short while. We went there in the summertime and I thought we would only be there a few weeks but it turned into a few months. I worked on the B & B and marketing but got a part time job waiting tables for a while because we had no cash flow. Howard put Steve to work on things he needed done for his radio station but for the most part we didn’t work except on putting things together for our trip and running the B & B.
We bought a large orange cooking pot just to make popcorn in while we lived in Norman. We ate a lot of popcorn then, while we lived in Salt Cay, and we still do today. That pot was with us for a very long time. We had brought it back with us from all of our travels and sadly had to replace it when the handle fell off several years after we had been in Arkansas. No other pots have been as good. We never washed that orange one and it became difficult to tell it was orange after a while. Our daughter used it many times before it was retired. We threw it out but now I wish we had made a planter out of it or kept it somehow.
Maria from The Dominican Republic came to work for us at the Brown House B & B on salt Cay. She was fantastic! She worked very hard and produced some incredible meals for us and our guests. I found her after one disastrous day when I had hired a very large girl named Manuela to help me. I told Manuela I did not know how to make rice and asked her to get it started before she had to leave but tell me what I needed to know after she was gone. I gave her a large, three gallon size aluminum pot and asked Manuela to get the rice started in this.
In the islands they serve peas and rice with just about every meal and each island did it a little differently. I learned later to do it all myself and do it well and this day with Manuela taught me a lot. She had put so much rice into that huge pot that when the rice swelled, the pot couldn’t hold it! I had no idea what to do other than get some more pots and scoop it into them, add more water and hope for the best. I recall some of it never getting cooked enough and the bottom getting scorched but I think we had plenty of rice to eat for a while from that one pot that Manuela started for me. I think she used an entire bag of rice! I didn’t have enough containers to put it all in the refrigerator and I ended up dumping some of it in the sea, which was just outside the kitchen door.
So, Maria came to the rescue the very next day! I was so thankful to have her even though she laughed at me for not knowing anything about cooking, the kitchen, or preparing meals for our guests. She was sweet to show me how she did things. I especially enjoyed the meats she cooked by steaming. I still use that technique and everyone loves it when I do.
Maria came to work for me again at the Windmills later. She was pregnant and doing housekeeping there rather than cooking but would sometimes do lunches. It was a very small place and we had few guests so the work was easy. The evening menu was preset for each night of the week and would rotate. This simplified shopping and inventory and insured a consistency in the foods and their quality. It was all planned out by the owners of the resort who actually sent the groceries down there on a plane from West Palm Beach, FL. I didn’t have to do any of the cooking for the guests myself. We had Cecelia for lunches and Doreen to cook the dinners when we had guests. I learned a thing or two from them also, especially how to fry chicken! In fact, I became very good at frying conch, fish, and chicken, pork chops, and once a squid. We kept a big pot of oil on the stove for frying. Thank goodness, we had an open air kitchen and the tile countertops were easily cleaned.
We ate a lot of lobster, conch, and fish. It was there for the taking and we did. Our favorite fish is the hog fish. They are white and flaky like grouper or other sea bass but even more tender and tasty. Sadly, the fish themselves were very cute and inquisitive. They swam rather slowly and would almost always come to us rather than us having to hunt them. We always felt like it was no sport at all because they were too easy to kill and were most likely to be over fished because of it. I hope they are still in abundance and protected.
Our other favorite fish was red snapper and grouper. Steve speared grouper but we relied on the local fisherman who would go offshore in their boats for snapper. They would drive out to sell us some and knew we were always good to buy most of what they had. The snapper would be from 4 or 5 lbs to up to 20 lbs. Sometimes we also bought tuna and young shark. There is nothing better than fresh tuna marinated and grilled except maybe fresh shark marinated and grilled. Grouper is delicious no matter how you fixed it. We often enjoyed it pan fried and served with sautéed onions peppers and tomato on top.
I learned many ways to prepare lobster. My favorite was the lobster salad with peppers, onions, pasta and mayo. The lobster is quickly and easily cooked in the microwave or boiled then chopped into pieces. This was also good for using the smaller pieces of meat that are on the body and legs of the bug but usually that was more hassle than it was worth and we only used the tail meat. The baby lobsters, the size of jumbo shrimp or a little bigger, are the most delicious. We often had them sliced in half and grilled. They are delicious with drizzled butter! Yum!
Conch are some strange and nasty muscles that have to be beaten repeatedly before they can be fried. Sometimes we would beat it out until it appeared shredded and in too many small pieces to cook but when you put it in the heat it would pull back together again and could still be tough if you didn’t beat it enough. Frying it after beating it out is, by far, the tastiest way to eat it but we also cooked it in a pressure cooker and I tried ceviche with it a few times but it was still tough. If you over cook it in the pressure cooker it would be squishy and smelled gross, I couldn’t eat it then but it could be mixed into stews and curried dishes. The ceviche required lemon and lime juice and to marinate for days before you could eat it. I had to chop it up into tiny little squares. Once I mixed purple cabbage with it that turned the conch pinkish purple and it was very pretty.
Doreen Bean cooked our dinners at the Windmills when we had guests. We loved all of her cooking. Our favorite was her pork chops. She would brown them with a table spoon of tomato paste and oil. I think she also caramelized a little sugar in the pan too. The chops were a delicious brown color and tender as they can be. She made gravy from the pan and we ate them with mashed potatoes, of course! Yum! I have never been able to make them exactly like she did, but I always try. I learned from the island girls to rub the meat, prior to cooking, with lemon or lime. This they learned to do years ago, most likely, to kill any germs or bacteria but it also has the added benefit of breaking down the proteins in the meats which makes them much more tender and adds a little zest of flavor. I recommend it for all meats.
On the Sea Dancer we didn’t have to cook, we had Stanley. Stan served on that boat for over 15 years as its chef. He made the best food and more money in tips than any of us. His fried conch was a favorite as was his chicken and any fish he prepared. We had to eat the same rotation of meals each week so got used to them but were always so hungry we appreciated how good his island cooking was, especially his conch. He served us a Thanksgiving meal every Thursday. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing and vegetables. It was always good. I could not recommend his coffee however. I don’t know why I never bought my own French press to use on the boat. We loved coffee but Stan hated it and didn’t care that it was thick, strong, and sat there all day. We drank it like that all the time.
I really miss some of the foods we ate while in the islands. I wish it was more affordable to enjoy them here. When I get to go visit the tropics I make a point of finding my favorite meals. I was so disappointed when we visited the Cayman Islands in Dec 1995 while I was pregnant. It was strange but at times I could not put food into my mouth. I was hungry and wanted to have a delicious fish dinner. I looked forward to it until it was placed in front of me on the table and I could not put the fork to my mouth. This has never been a problem for me before or since, only while I was pregnant with my first child. So I cried in Cayman because I got car sick and couldn’t dive or eat the foods I wanted to eat, except the avocados.
I got some great avocados in the islands. Large perfectly ripe ones. I would shop on the crude pier in Salt Cay when the Haitians brought their goods over on their handmade boats. This was an experience I wish I had video taped. I don’t think I could relay it here in any way that can represent it as it truly was at the time. Being an outsider, unaccustomed to their ways and not knowing everyone, I was given special opportunities to purchase what I wanted whereas the locals just shouted their way into the melee and seemed to fight for what they wanted but it was all shopping. The island women scared me. They were all large and powerful on Salt Cay but once I got to know them I learned they were not so scary, just conditioned to survive. Of course, the men had to run the show at the pier shopping but the women got things their way. I will never forget seeing the children sucking on mangos. They just bit into them and sucked the juicy meat out, scraping the skin with their teeth and tossing the seed and skin when finished.
One day, I was so excited by the size and quality of the avocados I bought a bushel and invited everyone to come over and eat guacamole. Well, the islanders like to eat avocados on Salt Cay but they didn’t want anything to do with guacamole. No way, uh, uh. I made enough for a party of 20 and had to eat most if it myself. It was like that there. They didn’t enjoy being introduced to new and strange foods and weren’t too sure about me for offering it. Oh well. Do you know what happens when you eat too much guacamole?
Steve didn’t ask me to cook too many other specialty dishes after the chicken. I don’t recall how or what we ate after that but I’m sure it was mostly simple. We did enjoy buying from the local markets and using what was available. We weren’t in St. Maarten for very long. From there we went to Norman, Oklahoma for a few months while we prepared to return to the islands and run a B& B on Salt Cay at the salt raker plantation house that Steve had lived in before embarking on the Sea Dancer as a stow away.
We stayed rent free in an apartment in Norman that was rented by the owner of the Brown House, Howard Williams. He and his son, Dale, were neighbors of Steve’s in Tulsa when Steve and Dale were in grade school. Howard called Steve Hunk and liked to put him to work. It was Howard’s suggestion to send him to Salt Cay to fix up the old plantation house for him and Steve was glad to have the offer because it was winter and he was freezing his tail off doing construction near Beaver Lake in Arkansas at the time.
Steve and I were only in Norman for a short while. We went there in the summertime and I thought we would only be there a few weeks but it turned into a few months. I worked on the B & B and marketing but got a part time job waiting tables for a while because we had no cash flow. Howard put Steve to work on things he needed done for his radio station but for the most part we didn’t work except on putting things together for our trip and running the B & B.
We bought a large orange cooking pot just to make popcorn in while we lived in Norman. We ate a lot of popcorn then, while we lived in Salt Cay, and we still do today. That pot was with us for a very long time. We had brought it back with us from all of our travels and sadly had to replace it when the handle fell off several years after we had been in Arkansas. No other pots have been as good. We never washed that orange one and it became difficult to tell it was orange after a while. Our daughter used it many times before it was retired. We threw it out but now I wish we had made a planter out of it or kept it somehow.
Maria from The Dominican Republic came to work for us at the Brown House B & B on salt Cay. She was fantastic! She worked very hard and produced some incredible meals for us and our guests. I found her after one disastrous day when I had hired a very large girl named Manuela to help me. I told Manuela I did not know how to make rice and asked her to get it started before she had to leave but tell me what I needed to know after she was gone. I gave her a large, three gallon size aluminum pot and asked Manuela to get the rice started in this.
In the islands they serve peas and rice with just about every meal and each island did it a little differently. I learned later to do it all myself and do it well and this day with Manuela taught me a lot. She had put so much rice into that huge pot that when the rice swelled, the pot couldn’t hold it! I had no idea what to do other than get some more pots and scoop it into them, add more water and hope for the best. I recall some of it never getting cooked enough and the bottom getting scorched but I think we had plenty of rice to eat for a while from that one pot that Manuela started for me. I think she used an entire bag of rice! I didn’t have enough containers to put it all in the refrigerator and I ended up dumping some of it in the sea, which was just outside the kitchen door.
So, Maria came to the rescue the very next day! I was so thankful to have her even though she laughed at me for not knowing anything about cooking, the kitchen, or preparing meals for our guests. She was sweet to show me how she did things. I especially enjoyed the meats she cooked by steaming. I still use that technique and everyone loves it when I do.
Maria came to work for me again at the Windmills later. She was pregnant and doing housekeeping there rather than cooking but would sometimes do lunches. It was a very small place and we had few guests so the work was easy. The evening menu was preset for each night of the week and would rotate. This simplified shopping and inventory and insured a consistency in the foods and their quality. It was all planned out by the owners of the resort who actually sent the groceries down there on a plane from West Palm Beach, FL. I didn’t have to do any of the cooking for the guests myself. We had Cecelia for lunches and Doreen to cook the dinners when we had guests. I learned a thing or two from them also, especially how to fry chicken! In fact, I became very good at frying conch, fish, and chicken, pork chops, and once a squid. We kept a big pot of oil on the stove for frying. Thank goodness, we had an open air kitchen and the tile countertops were easily cleaned.
We ate a lot of lobster, conch, and fish. It was there for the taking and we did. Our favorite fish is the hog fish. They are white and flaky like grouper or other sea bass but even more tender and tasty. Sadly, the fish themselves were very cute and inquisitive. They swam rather slowly and would almost always come to us rather than us having to hunt them. We always felt like it was no sport at all because they were too easy to kill and were most likely to be over fished because of it. I hope they are still in abundance and protected.
Our other favorite fish was red snapper and grouper. Steve speared grouper but we relied on the local fisherman who would go offshore in their boats for snapper. They would drive out to sell us some and knew we were always good to buy most of what they had. The snapper would be from 4 or 5 lbs to up to 20 lbs. Sometimes we also bought tuna and young shark. There is nothing better than fresh tuna marinated and grilled except maybe fresh shark marinated and grilled. Grouper is delicious no matter how you fixed it. We often enjoyed it pan fried and served with sautéed onions peppers and tomato on top.
I learned many ways to prepare lobster. My favorite was the lobster salad with peppers, onions, pasta and mayo. The lobster is quickly and easily cooked in the microwave or boiled then chopped into pieces. This was also good for using the smaller pieces of meat that are on the body and legs of the bug but usually that was more hassle than it was worth and we only used the tail meat. The baby lobsters, the size of jumbo shrimp or a little bigger, are the most delicious. We often had them sliced in half and grilled. They are delicious with drizzled butter! Yum!
Conch are some strange and nasty muscles that have to be beaten repeatedly before they can be fried. Sometimes we would beat it out until it appeared shredded and in too many small pieces to cook but when you put it in the heat it would pull back together again and could still be tough if you didn’t beat it enough. Frying it after beating it out is, by far, the tastiest way to eat it but we also cooked it in a pressure cooker and I tried ceviche with it a few times but it was still tough. If you over cook it in the pressure cooker it would be squishy and smelled gross, I couldn’t eat it then but it could be mixed into stews and curried dishes. The ceviche required lemon and lime juice and to marinate for days before you could eat it. I had to chop it up into tiny little squares. Once I mixed purple cabbage with it that turned the conch pinkish purple and it was very pretty.
Doreen Bean cooked our dinners at the Windmills when we had guests. We loved all of her cooking. Our favorite was her pork chops. She would brown them with a table spoon of tomato paste and oil. I think she also caramelized a little sugar in the pan too. The chops were a delicious brown color and tender as they can be. She made gravy from the pan and we ate them with mashed potatoes, of course! Yum! I have never been able to make them exactly like she did, but I always try. I learned from the island girls to rub the meat, prior to cooking, with lemon or lime. This they learned to do years ago, most likely, to kill any germs or bacteria but it also has the added benefit of breaking down the proteins in the meats which makes them much more tender and adds a little zest of flavor. I recommend it for all meats.
On the Sea Dancer we didn’t have to cook, we had Stanley. Stan served on that boat for over 15 years as its chef. He made the best food and more money in tips than any of us. His fried conch was a favorite as was his chicken and any fish he prepared. We had to eat the same rotation of meals each week so got used to them but were always so hungry we appreciated how good his island cooking was, especially his conch. He served us a Thanksgiving meal every Thursday. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing and vegetables. It was always good. I could not recommend his coffee however. I don’t know why I never bought my own French press to use on the boat. We loved coffee but Stan hated it and didn’t care that it was thick, strong, and sat there all day. We drank it like that all the time.
I really miss some of the foods we ate while in the islands. I wish it was more affordable to enjoy them here. When I get to go visit the tropics I make a point of finding my favorite meals. I was so disappointed when we visited the Cayman Islands in Dec 1995 while I was pregnant. It was strange but at times I could not put food into my mouth. I was hungry and wanted to have a delicious fish dinner. I looked forward to it until it was placed in front of me on the table and I could not put the fork to my mouth. This has never been a problem for me before or since, only while I was pregnant with my first child. So I cried in Cayman because I got car sick and couldn’t dive or eat the foods I wanted to eat, except the avocados.
I got some great avocados in the islands. Large perfectly ripe ones. I would shop on the crude pier in Salt Cay when the Haitians brought their goods over on their handmade boats. This was an experience I wish I had video taped. I don’t think I could relay it here in any way that can represent it as it truly was at the time. Being an outsider, unaccustomed to their ways and not knowing everyone, I was given special opportunities to purchase what I wanted whereas the locals just shouted their way into the melee and seemed to fight for what they wanted but it was all shopping. The island women scared me. They were all large and powerful on Salt Cay but once I got to know them I learned they were not so scary, just conditioned to survive. Of course, the men had to run the show at the pier shopping but the women got things their way. I will never forget seeing the children sucking on mangos. They just bit into them and sucked the juicy meat out, scraping the skin with their teeth and tossing the seed and skin when finished.
One day, I was so excited by the size and quality of the avocados I bought a bushel and invited everyone to come over and eat guacamole. Well, the islanders like to eat avocados on Salt Cay but they didn’t want anything to do with guacamole. No way, uh, uh. I made enough for a party of 20 and had to eat most if it myself. It was like that there. They didn’t enjoy being introduced to new and strange foods and weren’t too sure about me for offering it. Oh well. Do you know what happens when you eat too much guacamole?
Barracudas
Barry Barracuda
Everyone is afraid of barracudas. They have very long, sharp teeth and seem to stare at you as if they want to eat you. They are known to open and close their mouth while they do this so it looks even more frightening, especially when they follow you around, staying very close.
We saw barracudas everywhere we went in the islands, especially when we were diving. There was almost always guaranteed to be one on every site, and sometimes there were more. Some we got to know, somewhat, or at least recognized each time and there were a few of those who were named.
The largest one we remember was on a wreck dive in St. Kitts. He was always there, especially on our night dives. We usually found him stalking around the bow and there were many times we heard he had scared the you know what out of someone. He got Steve one night. He said he had peaked up over the side of the boat and there he was just a foot or so from his face. This barracuda was thick and battle scarred. He looked like he had been there and seen the worst and you were nothing to him. He sometimes became annoyed with the divers and would make sudden moves which unnerved many but was perfectly in his nature to do. He took advantage of the reef fish being preoccupied by all the activity on his boat to catch a meal while they weren’t paying attention.
This was a hunting method, we witnessed, of many barracudas. One, in particular, in Salt Cay, was not very large but had learned to follow me around as I snorkeled around the reef just offshore from the hotel we managed. He would stay quite close and shadow me, remaining at my side, parallel, and keeping me between him and his prey. On several occasions I saw him move at lightening speed but never actually saw him catch a fish. This isn’t to say that he didn’t, just that he moved too fast for me to see it. I don’t recall feeling it happen, however.
When a fish is struck by another it sends a shock wave through the water and anyone near can “hear” it. Sometimes a critically injured fish will emit a series of thumps or ticks which are also distinctly identified in the water world as death. It seems to be a warning to others in the vicinity that a predator is in the neighborhood and has struck. This signal is also reached by other predators who home in on a feeding and hope to get some of the food for themselves. This is how feeding frenzies can begin. Weather the fish’s vibes are a warning or a last farewell, I’m not entirely sure, but it is definitely part of the water world language.
I recall hearing this death thump when Steve speared fish. He was sending out a signal every time he hit one and inviting the sharks to come investigate. They did. He saw plenty and, as I mentioned before, ditched his bag, on occasion, to save his skin. I felt the loud “thwap” of a barracuda striking a fish once or twice as well and will never forget that!
We were diving off the gorgeous walls of San Salvador at a dept of near 100 ft. There was a steep drop here with a sandy bottom at a deceptively deep level below us. We had to watch our depth and not gravitate toward that sand, which we often did. I was leading this dive, there were perhaps three others with me. There were few fish on the reef that we could see. Most hid in the shadows when they spotted us coming. I saw a mid sized barracuda and a trigger fish. The fish was following us, very curious, and looking at us with his eye rolling around in our direction. He was beautiful, playful. I recall thinking that he had better pay attention to his surroundings, rather than us, but as soon as I had that thought, I turned my gaze in another direction and felt the hit. I immediately jerked my head around to look in the direction from which I felt the vibration, where the triggerfish was, and saw him. He was still swimming but seemed totally unaware that his rear end had been removed.
The sound and vibration seemed to hit me all at the same time. It really is hard to say if it was a sound or just a vibration. I knew exactly where it came from by the jolt. It told me. This is an incredible sensation. We are so accustomed to our hearing to guide us like this, it is not natural yet it was entirely natural and easy to understand. That barracuda took off with the back end of the trigger fish. I didn’t see him when I turned and saw the fish, he must have gone under the reef wall, into a crevasse. I wanted to stay and see what became of the front half of the fish but the people I was with did not want to hang around. It frightened one of them but I don‘t think the other two even noticed what had happened. They quickly moved further down the wall and I had to keep up with them. I was perplexed at how they could have missed it, or not felt that strike. I suppose that was the difference between my experienced comfort level in the water and their amateur, vacationing diver awareness.
That barracuda who followed me around the reef outside the hotel also had another peculiar behavior that I could never get used to. He followed me when I walked down the beach! I would walk the beach nearly every day and go one direction or the other. I didn’t see him every time but he did it often. He would stay in the shallow water very near shore and swim along as I walked. Now, this is obviously not a hunting method. There were no fish distracted by me for him to catch. Why did he do this? What purpose did it serve? Did he just recognize me? Was it a learned behavior? Was he just trying to make me nervous or was he glad to see me? I would love to have some animal behaviorist explain this to me. He made me nervous but not afraid. I always felt we had some connection but also asked Steve to spear him because I was just so nervous that I stopped going snorkeling and I missed the water. That is the effect a barracuda has on us. They make us nervous. We don’t know their intentions and they are creepy looking.
I have one more barracuda story. On the same beach, further down, toward the point, Steve and I went out to collect conch in the turtle grass. On this particular day, we didn’t see any fish or wildlife other than the conch in the grass and one barracuda. This one was larger than the one that followed me and he had come around to feed on the conch mantles we were cutting away and dropping as we swam along.
We had a brilliant system of collecting conch. Steve carried a bag, a little hammer, and a knife. I would swim down all around and collect the conch I found into a pile on the bottom. He swam down and picked up a conch, knocked a hole in it with his knife and cutting it from the shell. He would then take his knife and remove the mantle which was a fleshy skirt around the body of the conch muscle and was not an edible part of the animal. He usually managed to do all of this and bag the meat by the time he reached the surface. The mantles would simply float away and be eaten by whatever fish found them.
On this day it was this barracuda and Steve decided to have some fun and hand feed him. He held the mantles out for this fish, who was already following us very closely to get his bites, and would let go just before he grabbed it. The barracuda didn’t try to strike quickly. He knew this was easy and he just sucked it up. He kept begging for more and we fed him every bite we had until we were done and then he followed us to shore. It was interesting and fun but he still made me nervous.
Steve never did spear the barracuda who followed me while I walked on the beach. He just never got around to it and I’m glad he didn’t. Perhaps there were others who swam there after me who also got nervous by his following them and perhaps someone came along to study him or trained him to do tricks. I never named him but wish now that I had. If he had a name I suppose it would have been Barry. It is a kind name for a scary fish who never did anything to hurt me.
Everyone is afraid of barracudas. They have very long, sharp teeth and seem to stare at you as if they want to eat you. They are known to open and close their mouth while they do this so it looks even more frightening, especially when they follow you around, staying very close.
We saw barracudas everywhere we went in the islands, especially when we were diving. There was almost always guaranteed to be one on every site, and sometimes there were more. Some we got to know, somewhat, or at least recognized each time and there were a few of those who were named.
The largest one we remember was on a wreck dive in St. Kitts. He was always there, especially on our night dives. We usually found him stalking around the bow and there were many times we heard he had scared the you know what out of someone. He got Steve one night. He said he had peaked up over the side of the boat and there he was just a foot or so from his face. This barracuda was thick and battle scarred. He looked like he had been there and seen the worst and you were nothing to him. He sometimes became annoyed with the divers and would make sudden moves which unnerved many but was perfectly in his nature to do. He took advantage of the reef fish being preoccupied by all the activity on his boat to catch a meal while they weren’t paying attention.
This was a hunting method, we witnessed, of many barracudas. One, in particular, in Salt Cay, was not very large but had learned to follow me around as I snorkeled around the reef just offshore from the hotel we managed. He would stay quite close and shadow me, remaining at my side, parallel, and keeping me between him and his prey. On several occasions I saw him move at lightening speed but never actually saw him catch a fish. This isn’t to say that he didn’t, just that he moved too fast for me to see it. I don’t recall feeling it happen, however.
When a fish is struck by another it sends a shock wave through the water and anyone near can “hear” it. Sometimes a critically injured fish will emit a series of thumps or ticks which are also distinctly identified in the water world as death. It seems to be a warning to others in the vicinity that a predator is in the neighborhood and has struck. This signal is also reached by other predators who home in on a feeding and hope to get some of the food for themselves. This is how feeding frenzies can begin. Weather the fish’s vibes are a warning or a last farewell, I’m not entirely sure, but it is definitely part of the water world language.
I recall hearing this death thump when Steve speared fish. He was sending out a signal every time he hit one and inviting the sharks to come investigate. They did. He saw plenty and, as I mentioned before, ditched his bag, on occasion, to save his skin. I felt the loud “thwap” of a barracuda striking a fish once or twice as well and will never forget that!
We were diving off the gorgeous walls of San Salvador at a dept of near 100 ft. There was a steep drop here with a sandy bottom at a deceptively deep level below us. We had to watch our depth and not gravitate toward that sand, which we often did. I was leading this dive, there were perhaps three others with me. There were few fish on the reef that we could see. Most hid in the shadows when they spotted us coming. I saw a mid sized barracuda and a trigger fish. The fish was following us, very curious, and looking at us with his eye rolling around in our direction. He was beautiful, playful. I recall thinking that he had better pay attention to his surroundings, rather than us, but as soon as I had that thought, I turned my gaze in another direction and felt the hit. I immediately jerked my head around to look in the direction from which I felt the vibration, where the triggerfish was, and saw him. He was still swimming but seemed totally unaware that his rear end had been removed.
The sound and vibration seemed to hit me all at the same time. It really is hard to say if it was a sound or just a vibration. I knew exactly where it came from by the jolt. It told me. This is an incredible sensation. We are so accustomed to our hearing to guide us like this, it is not natural yet it was entirely natural and easy to understand. That barracuda took off with the back end of the trigger fish. I didn’t see him when I turned and saw the fish, he must have gone under the reef wall, into a crevasse. I wanted to stay and see what became of the front half of the fish but the people I was with did not want to hang around. It frightened one of them but I don‘t think the other two even noticed what had happened. They quickly moved further down the wall and I had to keep up with them. I was perplexed at how they could have missed it, or not felt that strike. I suppose that was the difference between my experienced comfort level in the water and their amateur, vacationing diver awareness.
That barracuda who followed me around the reef outside the hotel also had another peculiar behavior that I could never get used to. He followed me when I walked down the beach! I would walk the beach nearly every day and go one direction or the other. I didn’t see him every time but he did it often. He would stay in the shallow water very near shore and swim along as I walked. Now, this is obviously not a hunting method. There were no fish distracted by me for him to catch. Why did he do this? What purpose did it serve? Did he just recognize me? Was it a learned behavior? Was he just trying to make me nervous or was he glad to see me? I would love to have some animal behaviorist explain this to me. He made me nervous but not afraid. I always felt we had some connection but also asked Steve to spear him because I was just so nervous that I stopped going snorkeling and I missed the water. That is the effect a barracuda has on us. They make us nervous. We don’t know their intentions and they are creepy looking.
I have one more barracuda story. On the same beach, further down, toward the point, Steve and I went out to collect conch in the turtle grass. On this particular day, we didn’t see any fish or wildlife other than the conch in the grass and one barracuda. This one was larger than the one that followed me and he had come around to feed on the conch mantles we were cutting away and dropping as we swam along.
We had a brilliant system of collecting conch. Steve carried a bag, a little hammer, and a knife. I would swim down all around and collect the conch I found into a pile on the bottom. He swam down and picked up a conch, knocked a hole in it with his knife and cutting it from the shell. He would then take his knife and remove the mantle which was a fleshy skirt around the body of the conch muscle and was not an edible part of the animal. He usually managed to do all of this and bag the meat by the time he reached the surface. The mantles would simply float away and be eaten by whatever fish found them.
On this day it was this barracuda and Steve decided to have some fun and hand feed him. He held the mantles out for this fish, who was already following us very closely to get his bites, and would let go just before he grabbed it. The barracuda didn’t try to strike quickly. He knew this was easy and he just sucked it up. He kept begging for more and we fed him every bite we had until we were done and then he followed us to shore. It was interesting and fun but he still made me nervous.
Steve never did spear the barracuda who followed me while I walked on the beach. He just never got around to it and I’m glad he didn’t. Perhaps there were others who swam there after me who also got nervous by his following them and perhaps someone came along to study him or trained him to do tricks. I never named him but wish now that I had. If he had a name I suppose it would have been Barry. It is a kind name for a scary fish who never did anything to hurt me.
Life at Sea
I learned early on my Caribbean adventure that boats were work and they can wear you out. Sea Dancer was a great boat to be working on. There were long days and weeks on end without a break but we had a lot of fun with the passengers and especially diving each day. We were very comfortable in the water and enjoyed our status as seasoned, experts aboard the boat. Steve had much more experience than I but there was a lot that I was getting used to. Neither of us logged our dives any more. I think I only logged about a dozen then just saw no point in writing each one down since we did the same ones repeatedly.
The guests on the boat always enjoyed the chalk board I put up on the door to the galley and I enjoyed being creative with it each day. The first day it usually read: Today's schedule: eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, sleep and it was absolutely true. Before each dive we would introduce the passengers to the dive site by giving a briefing. We drew interesting pictures on a whilte board for each site and told them what to look for and where to go to find it. One crew member usually accompanied the guests on each dive. We took turns. Sometimes it was great to go diving just to get off of the boat and it wasn't really like work except for being the one watching over everyone.
In the later days aboard the boat I had not been diving much due to an injury so I did a lot more snorkeling and free diving. I became quite good at it and could dive to 40 or 50 feet and take photos. On a few occasions I know I went as deep as 70 or maybe 90 but never knew for sure. Once I dove just off the wall and fell into formation with three giant eagle rays. I flapped my arms like they flap their wings and flew right above and behind them until they spotted me and took off deeper. Another time, we had a visiting group onboard who were teaching Zen diving and getting closer to the fish. I swam down to the top of the wall where this Zen instructor was setting up a photo with an angel fish. He didn't see me until I settled right down next to that fish in his photo. He got the shot and gave me thumbs up and big smile but I never saw the photo. I sure wish I could get a copy of it. I do have one of me and a turtle. It was great fun breathold diving and getting so close to the wildlife!
Once, I went snorkeling while the divers were between dives and I had a reef shark come swimming up to me and check me out. It was invigorating, to say the least! I kept my eye on him and he swam a couple circles around me as I started back peddling toward the boat, then he headed down to the reef. I looked down and saw two more sharks on the reef below me that were just circling in one area but as I headed back to the boat, scanning all around me, I noticed a huge shark over toward the shore. It looked like 12 feet or more! Luckily, he didn't seem to nitice more or inclined to check me out and didn't move. When I got back to the boat I was so loaded on adrenaline! It took me more than an hour to calm down.
Each week I gave a reef conservation presentaion with a slide show. We did this on the first night after our first day of diving and observing our passengers and their skills/comfort levels. Many divers have no clue about their impact on the coral reef or any awareness that they do. Our presentation was eye opening for many, annoying for some, but very informative and I was always proud of the job I did with it. It was considered necessary educational material for our guests. Diving is a complicated sport. There is always something to learn.
The guests on the boat always enjoyed the chalk board I put up on the door to the galley and I enjoyed being creative with it each day. The first day it usually read: Today's schedule: eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, sleep and it was absolutely true. Before each dive we would introduce the passengers to the dive site by giving a briefing. We drew interesting pictures on a whilte board for each site and told them what to look for and where to go to find it. One crew member usually accompanied the guests on each dive. We took turns. Sometimes it was great to go diving just to get off of the boat and it wasn't really like work except for being the one watching over everyone.
In the later days aboard the boat I had not been diving much due to an injury so I did a lot more snorkeling and free diving. I became quite good at it and could dive to 40 or 50 feet and take photos. On a few occasions I know I went as deep as 70 or maybe 90 but never knew for sure. Once I dove just off the wall and fell into formation with three giant eagle rays. I flapped my arms like they flap their wings and flew right above and behind them until they spotted me and took off deeper. Another time, we had a visiting group onboard who were teaching Zen diving and getting closer to the fish. I swam down to the top of the wall where this Zen instructor was setting up a photo with an angel fish. He didn't see me until I settled right down next to that fish in his photo. He got the shot and gave me thumbs up and big smile but I never saw the photo. I sure wish I could get a copy of it. I do have one of me and a turtle. It was great fun breathold diving and getting so close to the wildlife!
Once, I went snorkeling while the divers were between dives and I had a reef shark come swimming up to me and check me out. It was invigorating, to say the least! I kept my eye on him and he swam a couple circles around me as I started back peddling toward the boat, then he headed down to the reef. I looked down and saw two more sharks on the reef below me that were just circling in one area but as I headed back to the boat, scanning all around me, I noticed a huge shark over toward the shore. It looked like 12 feet or more! Luckily, he didn't seem to nitice more or inclined to check me out and didn't move. When I got back to the boat I was so loaded on adrenaline! It took me more than an hour to calm down.
Each week I gave a reef conservation presentaion with a slide show. We did this on the first night after our first day of diving and observing our passengers and their skills/comfort levels. Many divers have no clue about their impact on the coral reef or any awareness that they do. Our presentation was eye opening for many, annoying for some, but very informative and I was always proud of the job I did with it. It was considered necessary educational material for our guests. Diving is a complicated sport. There is always something to learn.
Sea Dancer Days
Although is was a non-stop job, I had a lot of fun working on the Sea Dancer. It was a 110' motor vessel outfitted to accomodate 18 passengers and 6 crew. It was a live aboard dive boat with onboard compressor, video, and slide film processing. I had several jobs that I did each day and the days were long.
Steve and I did two different tours together on the Sea Dancer. The first was when first I got on the boat in St. Martin and the other was after we had been living on Salt Cay for a couple of years. Steve actually began his Sea Dancer days in Salt Cay which is part of his story. He was there for four years before he left on Sea Dancer as a stowaway.
When I first arrived, the boat was taking passengers from St. Martin and going to Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Kitts each week. The passengers were with us from Saturday to Saturday and we had no break in between. The only time off was when, by rare chance, the flights couldn't make it down due to snow or ice. Even when the boat remained in the shipyard for repairs and service we were onboard working even harder than usual but would get to enjoy a dinner on shore or other evening excursions.
My job title was the guest services crew member. I started each week by checking the guests dive certifications and experience. During this process I learned the names of each guest, where they were from and something interesting about them. I usually did this within the first couple of hours they came on board and would later introduce each one to the rest of crew and passengers. Everyone was amazed at my memory and one crew member liked to call me Creskin.
I had fun meeting new people each week and being their "get it" girl while on board. I handled many things, among them; I was their waitress, their housekeeper, their gift shop girl, their slide film developer, their hostess, their reef fish identification instructor, their all around crew person, their dive-master, deck hand, dive buddy, and their underwater photographer. By the end of each week I had taken several photos of each guest and made a delightful slide show and video as a souvenier of their trip. I laundered all the towels each day, cleaned the boat, stocked the cooler, assisted where needed, and kept the ship's log. I also kept the books, sales records, took the money, and divided the tips. They were pretty good too. We averaged around $400 + each week and got a fair salary and a place to live. We were able to save most all of our money (about 30k in 9 mos). Not a bad gig but hard work.
Steve and I shared his small cabin on the Sea Dancer when I first came on board. It was only the size of a twin bed with a small area to turn around in where the door opened. He had built a shelf on the wall over the bed and the wall at the end of the bed had a very small sink and mirror. Believe it or not, we smoked in this little room. We were both smoking when we met and most of the SD crew smoked too. It was disgusting. Some passengers commented but not many complained. Steve and I decided we didn't like it any more so quit together when we took a rare week off to vacation in Dominica.
I had always wanted to go there and when I told this to Steve he was amazed and delighted because he had always wanted to go there too. It was where he wanted to go the first chance he got and when he asked me where I wanted to go on vacation the first thing I said, without hesitation, was Dominica. He wanted to go there because he had heard there was a last remaining population of the Carib indians who once lived all over the Caribbean. I wanted to go because it was the setting of a romance novel I had read years before and I thought it sounded like a romantically dreamy place to go. I knew nothing about indians.
Dominica is a large and beautiful island where coconuts roll down the roads and bananas, papayas, and other tropicals grow wild, it seemed, and everyone there could easily have plenty to eat by just foraging. Sadly, there isn't much industry there, very little tourism, and the tobacco and cocoa business was not doing very well. The Carib community that we saw was a little scary. They appeared to be very poor and had that inbred look, strange looking people. We only drove through, peering at them from our car, and did not feel welcomed to stop or visit.
We drove all over the island and stayed in a different place each night. Our luggage never arrived (we learned that this was the norm there) so we had to buy some cheap clothes to wear. We staying in one old boarding house one night where the bed was so old in was sagging to the floor and mosquitos were coming in through a large hole in the screen and eating us alive. We enjoyed seeing the waterfalls and rainforests. We didn't climb the extinct volcano. I wish now that we had because it is the most famous landmark on the island. We just decided at the time that we didn't want to work that hard.
The very best part of working on the Sea Dancer was the diving. I did so much diving and saw so many things in the sea! We were very comfortable with the gear and being under water. Steve was an instructor and I became a dive master under him. We had to be tuned into each of our guests, their gear, experience level, fear/anxiety, and how well they watched after their own buddy in the water. We saw too many couples who, even though they traveled and dove together all the time, were not the best dive buddies to have looking after one another under water. Many were seen kicking their partners in the head as they went in another direction, oblivious to where or what condition their dive buddy was in. They would go on vacation and, many times, leave their intelligent thinking behind them. This cost one attorney his life and it was the worst week we ever had.
It was on Easter Sunday and the first day of diving for our new group. I had rented this man and his son diving computers the night before and instructed them on their use. He was tired and did not want to sit for my instructions, he said he was on vacation and didn't want to work that hard at learning something. I was concerned. His friends and son said they would help him and make sure he understood it. The computer was a useful tool for keeping up with how much time you had left at certain depths.
This group was from Brazil and seemed to be ready to have a lot of fun. We were really looking forward to the week. The attorney and his son were to be buddys but his son got into the water before him and stayed with another couple as his dad was on the surface for some time trying to relax and descend. He asked for extra weights which our dive instructor, Kimberly, gave him. I'm not sure how much or if it was too much but anyone who is overweighted on a dive will use more oxygen because they spend a lot more energy trying to keep from sinking too deep.
Anyway, this man told his son he was going back to the boat while they were on the dive. His son said he signaled to go with him but he made him stay with their friends. The father was not on the boat when the son returned and we all looked for him for an hour or so. Steve took the dingy down wind and around a corner of the island we were near and found his body. It was a terrible incident to have happen and reminded us of just how serious diving is and there is no room to be careless or foolish. This man was relatively innexperienced, nervous, tired, and he had left his intelligent, hard working mind at home when he went on vacation. Don't do this!
We had a lot of fun on Sea Dancer and very few incidents and only that one death. I really enjoyed working with the people in such an exciting environment. We were always sharing fun experiences together. I got to be the girl who informed everyone of what was going on, where to go and how to find it. I started each day with a chalkboard filled with the days agenda and it usually just read Eat, Dive, Dive, Eat, Dive, Dive, Eat, Dive, Sleep because that is really what we did but we had a lot of fun in between during our surface intervals too!
I became quite a chalk board artist during this time. I was creating beautiful fish and coral scenes. I enjoyed drawing a map of Saba because it is such a steep and jagged island jutting out of the sea and the lowest town, at elev 800' is called The Bottom. Saba had good diving, wild goats, friendly people, and a rain forest. We would take our guests there each week for a dinner on shore which everyone enjoyed.
We docked at Saba or tied up to another large boat which was docked there and crossed their deck to get on shore. When we went ashore at St. Eustacious or Stacia we had to achor out and take the dingy back and forth to deliver the people. Sometimes they would drink too much and it was very intertaining to see them get wet.
The only thing we didn't get much of on Sea Dancer was beach time. There weren't any on the St. Marting route and I only recall us going once while we were in Provo.
The St. Martin Sea Dancer days ended when the owner of the boat decided he was going to move it to the Turks and Caicos Islands and I was not to remain on board as crew. So, I got off the boat and stayed in St. Martin while Steve went with the boat to it's new destination but we were not happy to be seperated. We really didn't consider at the time that I could have traveled to Provo and found work there somewhere. We just knew that we wanted to be together and I was in St. Martin so he got off of the boat, quitting his job there, and returned to me in St. Martin.
We stayed there together for a few months just living in a rent free apartment owned by the hotel and spending what money we had saved. We started snorkeling out and collecting sea fan coral and making earrings out of it at this time. We enjoyed traveling around and exploring all the beaches and communities on the island. St. Martin is half French and half Dutch so it had two very distinct sides. The center of the island was rolling farmland and a beautiful country setting.
Steve called his friend in the states who had originally sent him to Salt Cay and asked what was going on and he wanted us to come to Oklahoma and prepare to open his place on Salt Cay as a bed and breakfast. So this is where we went and spent the next 4 or 5 months.
Steve and I did two different tours together on the Sea Dancer. The first was when first I got on the boat in St. Martin and the other was after we had been living on Salt Cay for a couple of years. Steve actually began his Sea Dancer days in Salt Cay which is part of his story. He was there for four years before he left on Sea Dancer as a stowaway.
When I first arrived, the boat was taking passengers from St. Martin and going to Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Kitts each week. The passengers were with us from Saturday to Saturday and we had no break in between. The only time off was when, by rare chance, the flights couldn't make it down due to snow or ice. Even when the boat remained in the shipyard for repairs and service we were onboard working even harder than usual but would get to enjoy a dinner on shore or other evening excursions.
My job title was the guest services crew member. I started each week by checking the guests dive certifications and experience. During this process I learned the names of each guest, where they were from and something interesting about them. I usually did this within the first couple of hours they came on board and would later introduce each one to the rest of crew and passengers. Everyone was amazed at my memory and one crew member liked to call me Creskin.
I had fun meeting new people each week and being their "get it" girl while on board. I handled many things, among them; I was their waitress, their housekeeper, their gift shop girl, their slide film developer, their hostess, their reef fish identification instructor, their all around crew person, their dive-master, deck hand, dive buddy, and their underwater photographer. By the end of each week I had taken several photos of each guest and made a delightful slide show and video as a souvenier of their trip. I laundered all the towels each day, cleaned the boat, stocked the cooler, assisted where needed, and kept the ship's log. I also kept the books, sales records, took the money, and divided the tips. They were pretty good too. We averaged around $400 + each week and got a fair salary and a place to live. We were able to save most all of our money (about 30k in 9 mos). Not a bad gig but hard work.
Steve and I shared his small cabin on the Sea Dancer when I first came on board. It was only the size of a twin bed with a small area to turn around in where the door opened. He had built a shelf on the wall over the bed and the wall at the end of the bed had a very small sink and mirror. Believe it or not, we smoked in this little room. We were both smoking when we met and most of the SD crew smoked too. It was disgusting. Some passengers commented but not many complained. Steve and I decided we didn't like it any more so quit together when we took a rare week off to vacation in Dominica.
I had always wanted to go there and when I told this to Steve he was amazed and delighted because he had always wanted to go there too. It was where he wanted to go the first chance he got and when he asked me where I wanted to go on vacation the first thing I said, without hesitation, was Dominica. He wanted to go there because he had heard there was a last remaining population of the Carib indians who once lived all over the Caribbean. I wanted to go because it was the setting of a romance novel I had read years before and I thought it sounded like a romantically dreamy place to go. I knew nothing about indians.
Dominica is a large and beautiful island where coconuts roll down the roads and bananas, papayas, and other tropicals grow wild, it seemed, and everyone there could easily have plenty to eat by just foraging. Sadly, there isn't much industry there, very little tourism, and the tobacco and cocoa business was not doing very well. The Carib community that we saw was a little scary. They appeared to be very poor and had that inbred look, strange looking people. We only drove through, peering at them from our car, and did not feel welcomed to stop or visit.
We drove all over the island and stayed in a different place each night. Our luggage never arrived (we learned that this was the norm there) so we had to buy some cheap clothes to wear. We staying in one old boarding house one night where the bed was so old in was sagging to the floor and mosquitos were coming in through a large hole in the screen and eating us alive. We enjoyed seeing the waterfalls and rainforests. We didn't climb the extinct volcano. I wish now that we had because it is the most famous landmark on the island. We just decided at the time that we didn't want to work that hard.
The very best part of working on the Sea Dancer was the diving. I did so much diving and saw so many things in the sea! We were very comfortable with the gear and being under water. Steve was an instructor and I became a dive master under him. We had to be tuned into each of our guests, their gear, experience level, fear/anxiety, and how well they watched after their own buddy in the water. We saw too many couples who, even though they traveled and dove together all the time, were not the best dive buddies to have looking after one another under water. Many were seen kicking their partners in the head as they went in another direction, oblivious to where or what condition their dive buddy was in. They would go on vacation and, many times, leave their intelligent thinking behind them. This cost one attorney his life and it was the worst week we ever had.
It was on Easter Sunday and the first day of diving for our new group. I had rented this man and his son diving computers the night before and instructed them on their use. He was tired and did not want to sit for my instructions, he said he was on vacation and didn't want to work that hard at learning something. I was concerned. His friends and son said they would help him and make sure he understood it. The computer was a useful tool for keeping up with how much time you had left at certain depths.
This group was from Brazil and seemed to be ready to have a lot of fun. We were really looking forward to the week. The attorney and his son were to be buddys but his son got into the water before him and stayed with another couple as his dad was on the surface for some time trying to relax and descend. He asked for extra weights which our dive instructor, Kimberly, gave him. I'm not sure how much or if it was too much but anyone who is overweighted on a dive will use more oxygen because they spend a lot more energy trying to keep from sinking too deep.
Anyway, this man told his son he was going back to the boat while they were on the dive. His son said he signaled to go with him but he made him stay with their friends. The father was not on the boat when the son returned and we all looked for him for an hour or so. Steve took the dingy down wind and around a corner of the island we were near and found his body. It was a terrible incident to have happen and reminded us of just how serious diving is and there is no room to be careless or foolish. This man was relatively innexperienced, nervous, tired, and he had left his intelligent, hard working mind at home when he went on vacation. Don't do this!
We had a lot of fun on Sea Dancer and very few incidents and only that one death. I really enjoyed working with the people in such an exciting environment. We were always sharing fun experiences together. I got to be the girl who informed everyone of what was going on, where to go and how to find it. I started each day with a chalkboard filled with the days agenda and it usually just read Eat, Dive, Dive, Eat, Dive, Dive, Eat, Dive, Sleep because that is really what we did but we had a lot of fun in between during our surface intervals too!
I became quite a chalk board artist during this time. I was creating beautiful fish and coral scenes. I enjoyed drawing a map of Saba because it is such a steep and jagged island jutting out of the sea and the lowest town, at elev 800' is called The Bottom. Saba had good diving, wild goats, friendly people, and a rain forest. We would take our guests there each week for a dinner on shore which everyone enjoyed.
We docked at Saba or tied up to another large boat which was docked there and crossed their deck to get on shore. When we went ashore at St. Eustacious or Stacia we had to achor out and take the dingy back and forth to deliver the people. Sometimes they would drink too much and it was very intertaining to see them get wet.
The only thing we didn't get much of on Sea Dancer was beach time. There weren't any on the St. Marting route and I only recall us going once while we were in Provo.
The St. Martin Sea Dancer days ended when the owner of the boat decided he was going to move it to the Turks and Caicos Islands and I was not to remain on board as crew. So, I got off the boat and stayed in St. Martin while Steve went with the boat to it's new destination but we were not happy to be seperated. We really didn't consider at the time that I could have traveled to Provo and found work there somewhere. We just knew that we wanted to be together and I was in St. Martin so he got off of the boat, quitting his job there, and returned to me in St. Martin.
We stayed there together for a few months just living in a rent free apartment owned by the hotel and spending what money we had saved. We started snorkeling out and collecting sea fan coral and making earrings out of it at this time. We enjoyed traveling around and exploring all the beaches and communities on the island. St. Martin is half French and half Dutch so it had two very distinct sides. The center of the island was rolling farmland and a beautiful country setting.
Steve called his friend in the states who had originally sent him to Salt Cay and asked what was going on and he wanted us to come to Oklahoma and prepare to open his place on Salt Cay as a bed and breakfast. So this is where we went and spent the next 4 or 5 months.
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