To the Tobago Cays by Catamaran...
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Scharlaken Rackem |
This was maybe week four. We loaded
up the catamarans Blauwbaard and the Scharlaken Rackhem with camping equipment and scuba gear, and set sail for Union Island. Blubard and Scharlaken Rackhem are the Dutch (Flemish) names for the
pirates Bluebeard and Redbeard. Usually we departed from Tyrell bay but I recall this
morning our skippers, Frank and David, had risen early and moored in Manchineel
bay, just below Camp Carriacou. Once aboard, we headed west, then turned north to
pass Petite Martinique, and very soon we were docking at Union Island, where
David ran in to take care of customs. We
had now left the territorial waters of Grenada and had entered those of St.
Vincent. I remember the dark green wall of a mountain face lifting up steeply
from the sea. We saw no people and it struck me as a rather dreary place, and I
couldn’t imagine how people here might make a living. David returned, and in quick
order we hoisted the flag of St. Vincent and carried on. It was a short cruise
to the Tabago Cays, but at the age of twelve time passes differently. Our headlong charge across the waves in the
Blauwbaard and the Scharlaken Rackhem, which in
proper conditions could make an astonishing 12 knots, exercised our expectations
for the journey ahead—all very typical and very appropriate to the heroic spirit
of us rugged Carriacou campers.
We moored just south of the central islands
in the Cays, which on the map are called Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau. The former is to the north, the latter to the
south, and our bivouac was to be on this southern island. There was room for the two cats to anchor
between the islands but perhaps it would have been a difficult place to
maneuver from when we left. The distance between the two islands was less than
a hundred yards. It was a unique situation. The channel between the two tiny
islands was 30-40 feet deep, and this underwater grotto between them, enhanced
by the proximity of the islands, struck us as a unique place for a dive. As I said, we chose the south island for our
camping, and we used the inflatable Avons with their 6 hp outboards to shuffle
our gear off the cats. For some of us,
however, the first order of business was to run into the trees and look at the
place. The island was typically dry with
lots of grass, brush, gnarled trees, and palms. We noted a number of holes in
the ground—the island was evidently a land-crab metropolis, and this would
become the focus of our activity after sunset, as explained below. Responding to the calls of the staff, we
returned to set up a sort of base at the northeast corner of the island, facing
the channel that separated us from the northern island. I cannot recall precisely who was there. Present were several of the campers and probably
all of the marine biology students, and most of the staff relevant to our
purposes: the two skippers, the SCUBA instructors, the two marine biology
instructors, maybe one or two others. I don’t recall Tuna, a popular staff
member, being there. Also, I don’t
remember any women being with us: no female staff, marine biology students, or
campers. That’s odd—we were always together—but I think that on this occasion our
being without women was actually the case.
Very unusual. Do I vaguely recall that the women had gone off together elsewhere
on another adventure, sans men?
A few people donned snorkeling
equipment and explored the narrow channel between the two islands. I think we
were munching on sandwiches as they emerged from the water—and they were
bearing conch shells, or "abalone" as people were calling it. This was going to be on the menu
for supper. A few of the abalones were
the helmet variety, and those in-the-know were full of praise for our good
luck, and we were promised that we were in for a rare treat as we got the fire
going.
Otherwise, we were under the typical
Caribbean spell that characterized our mental state; and, on reflection, this accounts
for the staccato character of my memories of the trip—everything is either
starkly, indeed photographically vivid, or completely unmemorable. That is
certainly something to ponder over.
We returned to exploring the island,
and a small group of us Cabin One pirates began tearing down palm fronds and
constructing a shack. Others were setting up tents, but for the two or three
nights we were to be there, my group from Cabin One would sleep in this hut.
The sun began going down and someone
called us back to the base for dinner. I
think we had a table set up, and a number of chairs. Actually, I can vaguely picture
that Frank had dragged a work bench ashore. We definitely could carry a lot of equipment
on those cats…
The abalone was cooked in a stew
with vegetables and other meat—pork I imagine—in a big pot. Did we pick food out of the pot with our
fingers or did we have bowls? I think
the latter. Anyway, we began eating and
everybody was remarking positively about the abalone, and then someone in-the-know
announced that he had just found a piece of helmet conch, and in the next few
minutes people were discovering bits of helmet abalone in their own bowls, and
remarking how good it was. I was excited to experience this, and I think Frank
fished a piece of helmet conch out of the pot and gave it to me, and yes indeed
it was amazingly good. There were lots of happy campers around that fire!
Next order of business was to
explore the island in the dark. Why not?
Nothing else to do. A pair of the staff,
perhaps our marine biology instructors, went for a night dive. Probably
snorkeling at this point. As I think about it, I am quite sure they went for a
dive with tanks and lights the following night.
Meanwhile, some of the Cabin One
lads and I were shuffling through the brush with our trusty flashlights. Out
beyond the perimeter of illumination we heard some shuffling. Small little legs
by the sound of it. The rustling was
vaguely suggestive of mischief. What we
heard of course was the sound of land crabs.
The sun being down, it was time for the crabs to wake up and begin their
rounds. They were hard to spot because
whenever our flashlight beams fell upon the crabs, they scurried down the
nearest hole.
We cut our lights. The land crabs, emboldened by the darkness,
crawled back out and once more all around us we heard the scurrying of
multi-legged creatures. A small branch was snapped off—someone had a capture
tool—and then a light flashed on, singling out a crab, who raised his claws as
the stick came down and pinned him to the ground.
“I wonder how many crabs live here?”
someone asked.
Perhaps these words were enunciated
innocently, but it was not a hypothetical question. We were scientists. We didn’t just ask questions in the spirit of
poetic wonder. We asked questions… and we answered them!
There were very few words. Our methodology emerged telepathically, and
in an instant someone (me, in fact!) was running back to the base camp for
magic markers. Other campers, too,
caught on to our plan, and the next thing you know fifteen or twenty of us were
walking around in the dark, clicking on flashlights when we heard scurrying
sounds, trapping crabs under sticks, and bending down to write numbers upon their
backs. “One,” was the initial cry. Then fifty feet away someone else flashed on his
light, pinned down a crab, wrote the number on its back, and cried out, “Two!” And so on all across the island voices were
calling out numbers. “Three!… Four! Five! … Ten! Eleven! … Fifteen! … Twenty! … Forty! … Seventy! Seventy-one! ...” and so on. I
think in less than five minutes we were in the 90s. The process began to slow
then, but we were well into the upper-one-hundreds before we were at last
unable to find a crab that hadn’t already been numbered. The excitement and spontaneity of our
organized communication was nothing short of amazing, and I felt disappointed—very
disappointed, in fact—that the process of catching crabs and calling out
numbers to each other didn’t go on longer into the night.
I suppose we must have all met by
the camp to report our success to the staff, who, sitting around the fire and listening
to us—I can only imagine—must have been very pleased. Really, were they even there? I seem to
recall a number of them had returned to sleep on the cats. The other campers of
course went to their tents, but my companions and I slept that night, and the
next, in our palm leaf shelter.
The next morning the camp had
visitors. Two natives in a marvelously crafted open boat, painted almost
luxuriantly in black, had arrived sometime in the early dawn. Later, Frank, the skipper of the Slackham Rackham (who was one of the
builders of the cats, and no mean shipwright himself) was pointing out the
fine construction work the men had done on their boat. In particular, Frank admired
the fit of the keel and the gunnels around the stern. These members were not
only very precisely cut and neatly fitted, but were cleanly carved so as to
fasten together absolutely seamlessly, flowing in the most admirable lines you
care to picture; albeit said there was nothing ornamental about it. The design
was pure modernist, the aesthetic being the craftsmanship itself. Frank said
this was the old way of building, and you didn’t see much of it anymore.
I should remark that when we
discovered this boat its owners were not to be seen. And on the ground not far away, lying on
their backs with their flippers pierced, evidently with a punch, and wired
together—it was two sea turtles. Our new visitors were poachers, serving the black
market for the turtle shell used to fashion trinkets for tourists. Altogether, these facts produced some long
faces, especially when several of the staff exchanged knowing glances and told
us to keep quiet about it. It was
quickly explained that we should be wise to stay on good terms with the two
men. The situation didn’t sit well with
any of us, but we did as we were told.
This was my first encounter with sea
turtles. They were beautiful creatures, and my goodness what hard hearts we must
have had to be able to gaze down and admire them. Forty-three years later, their features are
as clear to me as if I was viewing them right here before me. One was dark
brown with a light grey belly, and about three feet long. The other, about two feet long, was a bright
yellow emerald and marvelously spotted like a leopard frog… They suffered
passively with the wires looping through the tiny holes in their flippers. Both
had faces as endearing as babies.
Later that day we took one of the
Avons and drove west about a half mile to the edge of the reef to dive along
the drop off. The water above the sand
was typically warm, but as we kicked closer to the reef and the breakers, the water
became cool, and there was a strong current.
As usual, Frank’s muscular form was gliding nearby, and he held his long
shark pike that was equipped with a CO2 cartridge. One sharp jab with the tip of that fearsome
lance, a yank on the chain, and the shark would inflate and float off
harmlessly—at least that was the theory. I never saw it in action. The rest of us carried shark bills, which
were yard-long sticks of pine, perhaps two inches square, at one end rounded, and
drilled and fitted with a loop of clothes line through which we passed our
wrists.
The water was ten to fifteen feet
deep, and perhaps most striking of all were the formations of brain coral five
and eight feet in diameter. But the
teaming varieties of other coral were equally fantastic in all their explosive
forms and diverse colors. There were a number of trigger fish, often startled
and racing ahead of us. Then suspended in the water around us were a host of
small jelly fish—not any variety with pumping bells or any sort of tentacles or
medusa-like appendages. These were
oval-shaped transparencies, small—five or six inches in diameter—and strangley
lovely for their delicacy and stoical apathy. It was somewhat mysterious to
conceive that these were life forms, but they were, and even now as I think on
them I am moved to strange mediations and almost somnolent feelings of
astonishment, like shamanic insights into other worlds and new forms of
consciousness. They were nearly invisible, mere transparent envelopes containing
a few small filaments connecting orange and purple organelles than glowed with
an almost sullen brightness; these miraculous spots of light were not much
larger than a grain of sand or a pebble. The creatures hung in the space around
us. Despite the gushing sea, the moment was truly timeless. As for the nature
of the “contact” we made with these creatures, who is to say for sure?
As we kicked ahead towards the drop
off, the current became quite strong. Jeff,
a world-class bicycle racer from Ontario, and three others dared to plunge down
over the edge of the drop off. Their actions were very sudden. It was thrilling
for me, a twelve-year-old, to exercise an almost propriety satisfaction in their
heroic forms pitching down headfirst into the abyss. One might reflect here that in order to
produce men, young men need good models from which to conceive what will one
day be the images of their selves.
The bright light which filled the
water behind us contrasted strongly with the dark blue of the rock and the coral
before and beneath us, and gazing over the edge I was made to feel somewhat
circumspect about our situation, influenced no doubt by the cold water, the
almost wind-like current seeking to push us back, and the darkness below.
Jeff and the others emerged from the
void, and my dive buddy and I exchanged a few hand signals with the
others. OK signs, and the “thumbs
up.” We turned then and swam back into
the warm light, negotiated the garden of coral, found the Avon, and climbed out
of the water.
Later that day, or maybe it was the
next, we had another dive, this time exploring the little submarine gully
between the two islands. Notwithstanding the adventure out in the reef and along
the drop off, here also there was much to see.
Although the bottom was very sandy, we were surrounded by many varieties
of fish, and here and there were coral formations that caught our attention and
provided us with matter for examination.
We certainly looked for abalone, but found none. Evidently we had eaten the local population
the night before. Meanwhile, the marine biology students were collecting
various specimens.
I noticed my dive buddy had become
concerned. He was signaling to me with
no little animation. Then, and it seemed miraculous to me, he ascended several
feet amongst a swirl of exhaled bubbles, and then descended once more to join
me at my level. What did this mean? I
shrugged, oblivious. Then he produced
his dive slate and with a grease pencil wrote down something. The combination of shifting sea light and the
reflective nature of the slate rendered the marks of the grease pencil
indecipherable. I shrugged and shook my head.
He nodded and pointed forward, and we swam together along the bottom, following
the course of the slope until we were in five feet of water, where we amused
ourselves for several minutes with a small octopus. Growing tired of us, and after changing his
color and patterns several times, he was off in a cloud of ink, and last we saw
he was jetting down the slope when he suddenly stopped, spread his arms to
embrace the sand, and then changed patterns and color to vanish against the
bottom. A few moments later my dive
buddy and I were emerging at the edge of the island, sitting together in one or
two feet of water, and removing our masks.
I causally asked why he had become so animated below, and I wondered,
too, about the word that he had scribbled on the slate.
“Embolism,” he said, and he went on
to explain that when we were in the depths between the two islands I was not
exhaling properly when I ascended. Air
embolism is familiar enough to divers.
It is a dangerous condition produced when a diver ascends without
exhaling. The air in a diver’s lungs is compressed by the pressure of the sea
at depth, and if it is not properly exhaled during ascent this compressed air
will expand and tear the tissues of the lungs as well as invade the arterial
system. I certainly knew what an embolism was, and the revelation of the meaning
of my friend’s strange behavior raced through me like an electric shock. While
I merely thought we were enjoying a swim together, all the while he had been guiding
me up the sloping bottom, slowing me as we ascended because he had noticed that
I wasn’t being careful to exhale properly at those times during the dive when I
had been ascending. I took his brotherly admonishment very seriously, and I
think I was harder on myself than he was as I contemplated my error. I never made it again. And, in what I take to be a very grown-up resolution
about SCUBA that is as strong to me now as it was when I was twelve, I will
never cease to be vigilant with myself about diving safety. As for my watchful
friend, whose name is now long forgotten, what can I feel but endless gratitude
and a special sense of camaraderie that time and distance can never efface.
Photos by Bob Reid, via Bill Cameron.
Source.