Illustrated by Bela Almeida
(It is an advantage when visiting exotic places such as Canouan, Mayreau, and Wallilabou to pronounce the name as the locals do. Quiaquia is pronounced “kway-kway” – rhymes with Bequia.)
Were it not for Sarah, there would be no legend of Sailorman.
Sarah and Bill discovered him while vacationing on the tropical island of Quiaquia. Bill overheard a man out of sight behind a bush telling his friend a most remarkable adventure. The friend had called him “Sailorman”. Sarah returned to the table in time to record the friend retelling the tale to another friend.
When they put Sailorman online he shot to stardom. Bill’s Blog is an amazing and fanciful retelling of Sailorman, single-handed and unarmed, defeating three armed pirates on the high seas using an unbelievable trick sailing maneuver. It is one of those things you forward to everybody on your list – “Hey, check this out!” The blog links to Voices From the Bush (which has a factual account of the incident) and to Sarah’s Search, which out-clicked them both.
The fruits of Sarah’s Search are where the soul of Sailorman is found. Sarah’s world-wide search of the web revealed Sailorman to be a serial hero, not just a one-timer. He has been thwarting evil in the world’s ports and on the Seven Seas for many years. A signature trait is his secrecy – nobody knows who did the deed. Sometimes the deed itself is unknown. Sarah’s long, tireless, dedicated, imaginative, and, in the end, passionate research presents a real-life superhero with qualities of character that compare with the best in the pantheon.
Sarah has returned to the small island of Quiaquia in search of her hero. Even now she is hard at work. At her table in the flowered grounds of the Old Frangi overlooking beautiful It We Bay; her eyes are fixed on her screen. Her finger occasionally slides and bounces the touch pad. She doesn’t hear the tropical mockingbirds, is unaware of the grackles eating her banana bread, and is oblivious to the continuous roar of a voice out-shouting everyone at the Crab Pot, a hundred meters down the beach. Oblivious until the voice roars the words “SHEKIMA CREEK”. That is the name of Sailorman’s hideout! But neither Don Street nor Google can tell Sarah where it is.
Sarah packs, pays, and runs. The voice roars on.
There are four at a table in the Crab Pot when she comes in, and two at the bar. The four at the table fall silent, and notice her eyes are fixed on Tom, holding forth at the bar. Then Tom sees her.
“WELCOME TO QUIAQUIA!” he roars. “I’M TOM SWIFT, MASTER OF THE ENTERPRISE! YOU’LL HAVE HEARD OF ME! WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?!” Now that Tom is part of the story, I’ll turn him down some. “Where you from?! Where you staying?! You need to visit the Enterprise! What’s your name?!” And on.
The four at the table, Crab Pot regulars always hungry for anything new, quietly speculate on Tom’s odds of getting her aboard. They’ve got it wrong this time.
Aboard the Enterprise, Sarah states her case. She has heard the call of the sea and wants to learn all that she can and feel the freedom. As a first step, to confirm her vision, she must sail to a place that nobody has heard of.
Tom knows just such a place, Shekima Creek. He names a charter fee to which she readily agrees. So, he adds half the cost of provisioning, as well. Since she wants to start right away, that will cost more, some kind of port fee. She winds up paying for all of the provisioning – apparently his half is already aboard. When she comments on the amount of beer and rum she is buying, Tom replies, “Where we’re going, money doesn’t work!” Then he “borrows” some money to settle his accounts well enough for him to leave and return.
Sarah can afford the cost. It is the Enterprise that tests her resolve. A survey would condemn her, to which Tom would reply, “I ain’t lost her yet!” He knows how to sail her, which is good – the engine hasn’t run for years. But Sarah, a total landlubber, has no eye for such details. It is the state of the Enterprise downstairs (“Below!”) that is the test. Visions of Sailorman harden her will.
Great Iguana Island is over the horizon from everywhere, and a day-after-day passage from Quiaquia. The Enterprise becomes a world of its own, bounded by its horizon, full of sights, sounds, and sensations Sarah never imagined. She begins to learn the motions and sounds of a small ship under sail, begins to see the sky, the sea, and the set of the sails. Sarah is in Sailorman’s world now, and enthusiastically receptive
Such is one of her realities. Another is Tom Swift – Tom Swift III, actually, third in a line of seriously famous role-model heroes about whom books have been written, of which Sarah was previously unaware. Furthermore, the Enterprise is one of many distinguished vessels of that name. Tom and his Enterprise seem to have shared in the famous adventures of them all. Tom himself might be Sailorman except that neither he nor the Enterprise resembles the computer models. Also, Bill had actually heard Sailorman’s voice – had it been Tom’s, surely more would have been said.
Despite being in pretty good shape already (she belongs to a gym), the passage to Great Iguana begins hardening her body, particularly the long sessions at the bilge pump. “A wooden boat has to leak! Otherwise she’d sink!” Tom maintains that sailing aboard the Enterprise is an “Authentic Experience!” With a moment’s reflection, one readily sees that it follows, “A captain never does ship’s work!” Which seems confirmed by the state in which Sarah found the Enterprise, and the fact that all ship’s work since then has been done by her. One might question this vacationing account executive’s sanity, but once aboard, it was that or mutiny. And some of the work needed to be done. As for her recklessness in trusting Tom Swift in other matters, Sarah has a practical and determined competence when her mind is in control. Yet the driving force evoked by “Shekima Creek!” is spurred by her heart... which, of course, can explain anything.
They have good weather, a nice passage, and wait off the Creek for high tide. Shekima Creek lies in a blown-out volcano crater at the spectacularly rugged south end of Great Iguana.
Even for a shallower vessel with a working engine, the extensive shoals off lying the invisible entrance and the maze of mangrove creeks within require good light, local knowledge, and keen pilotage. Sailing in significantly increases the challenge. So Tom’s loud boasting to his crew as they sail into Reach Bay under Hog Island is well earned.
“Swift’s back,” says Bar, lying in his hammock at The End of the Beach. “End of quiet hour.” Gizmo, who’s come in for a cold one, groans in reply.
As at Quiaquia, Sarah rows, captain in the stern sheets. She’s learning nicely, and with determination. When she finds Sailorman, she wants to prove worthy – there’s the heart thing again. Her mind has already grasped the importance of dinghy competence now that she has been smuggled into the unknown harbor where Sailorman hides. Is he captain of those who are here or just one of them? Do they know of him or is he a secret here as well? Firmly fixed at the top of her strategy is that no hint of Sailorman can come from her until he is discovered, maybe not even then. And she must not seem inquisitive except in nautical matters, must be seen only as an eager newcomer.
They land at the other end of the beach from The End of the Beach. Tom loads her with a case of rum and one of beer and takes a case himself – he’ll send her back for the rest. “Making our deposit!” Tom says at a nearly normal volume. A subtle change has overcome him. In Quiaquia, he can get thrown out of bar after bar and still have someplace to go. Here, there is only Bar’s place, The End of the Beach... which isn’t really a bar. At a small pile of rocks, a hundred meters from The End of the Beach, he mutters, “Hundred metres, Tom, hundred metres!”
Bar takes Sarah’s story at face value. Tom gives updates on Quiaquia and a tale of the passage here while Sarah fetches the rest of the “deposit”. Then Bar gives a rundown on who is in residence, in which Sarah is keenly interested.
Tamiko is here, of course, and Peggy and Samantha. Also, Trident and Jezebel. Captain Tony is still alive. Ian’s said to be here some place, maybe Smugglers Creek. Max and Minnie on Rolling Stone are still waiting for their “weather window”... been over a year now. Gadget’s here. Sam sailed out several days ago – said north, but the wind favored south. Phil, Madeira, came and went. No mention of Sailorman.
Sam, who might have gone north or south, had been several months on the Creek recovering from an armed pirate attack on his little cutter, Monad. A combination of clever sailing, bad judgment, and amazing luck gave him the victory. None of that is mentioned. Bar is one of four who know the full story, all sworn to secrecy bound by friendship.
Well into the evening, Peggy and Samantha come in. Peggy is dressed as she will for the arduous hike to Hard Bargain tomorrow, except barefoot, and has come for the shopping list. Sarah has barely met them when Bar tells Tom to leave. So it is time for Sarah to row the captain home. Samantha invites her by in the morning – Lotus, anchored under the crater wall in the north basin, Maho Bay.
Sarah quickly does her morning chores, then calls down to Tom, who is sleeping it off, about using the dinghy. He grumbles something and rolls over.
The quarter hour row to Lotus takes an hour. Sarah is okay with the rowing and getting better, it is the experience that slows her, alone in a small boat, in a bright tropical morning with a gentle breeze, in the stillness of a mangrove creek. Only during a black-out has she heard such quiet, but that was sterile. Here there is the occasional squawk of a heron, or thrashing flight of a pigeon, and a nearly perceptible rustle of breeze through the leaves. High in the sky from a speck soaring over the walls of rock towering above Shekima Creek’s north shore, comes a single “peep”. Sarah ships her oars when a tropical mockingbird starts, and drifts until it is finished. “Messing about in boats.” The line comes to her from childhood, along with a vague memory of Water Rat mesmerizing Mole.
Lotus is only the second yacht Sarah has ever been aboard, after the Enterprise – what a contrast! Samantha keeps a beautiful home below, but the cockpit, under a big shade, is the living room. There they spend the morning talking, and Sarah samples Samantha’s laissez-fare interpretation of Shekima Creek society.
Samantha expands on names Bar mentioned, adds a few, then, as an afterthought, mentions Ian, who is a loner even by Creek standards. Hard to tell if he’s here or gone, tucks his boat into remote corners of the Creek when here. Seldom aboard, “lives in the trees.” She and Peggy met him while rowing the many creeks of Shekima Creek.
“In the trees?”
“Spends his time climbing around on the crater or crawling through the mangroves. Has a jungle hammock for nights. Maybe the name of his boat says it: Go Mad.”
Sarah’s cup slips from her hand. “Oh!” she exclaims as her drink spreads on the deck and Samantha reaches for a rag.
Bill’s Blog had called Sailorman’s boat Gonads. In the recording, Voices From the Bush, one of sailorman’s friends said a name that sounded like Nomad. Sarah wants to shout, “Is Ian between 5’ 8 1/2” and 5’ 11” tall, 153 to 178 pounds, and 43 to 57 years old? Is he Aquarius or Pisces?” That is Sailorman’s computer model. “Is he clean shaven and a pipe smoker?” That from an artist’s rendering of Sailorman’s encounter with the pirates. Does his boat fit its computer model?
“Uh, you say he comes and goes, might I have seen his boat at Quiaquia?”
“Possible. It’s a J/30...” seeing Sarah’s blank look, “a thirty foot go-faster sloop.”
“White hull?”
Samantha nods.
Jackpot! Sarah is numb.
“You okay? Touch of heat exhaustion? Time for a swim anyway.”
Diving into tropical waters from a yacht is to be experienced, not described. It’s as much of the mind as of the body.
Refreshed and back aboard, Sarah asks, “If Ian doesn’t stay on his boat, do you suppose he might rent it for a few days?”
“Pretty rough aboard Enterprise? I’ll ask Gollum if Ian’s here, and where. But I think not. Your best safe house is Lotus.”
“Gollum?”
“Sorry – slip. Winston. Kind of a local version of Ian, only no boat. Great guy, fairly shy. He and Ian are friends. ‘Gollum’ because he’s short, skinny, and dark, and lives in the shadows. But a friend, not a foe. In my experience, Winston is a hundred percent. Don’t know Ian well enough to say, he’s kind of a phantom.” Sarah’s heart races.
It is a lovely row back... until she hears Tom’s voice roaring from around the last point. Her morning of peace and quiet is over. But what a morning it has been!
Tom is Captain Bligh. He’s made his own breakfast! And ship’s work isn’t getting done! Sarah offers to leave, so he can find better crew.
That evening at The End of the Beach, Irene of Jezebel shows up. She is one of very few who can hold their own with Tom. Bar soon invokes the hundred metre rule on both of them, and they take their bottles beyond the pile of rocks on the beach.
“So, Sarah,” Bar says now that they can talk, “how is life aboard the Enterprise?”
“Hell.”
“Gonna jump ship?”
“Yes. Soon,”
“Got a place to go?”
“Maybe.”
“Ever sleep on the beach?”
“No.”
“Helps if you’re drunk – sand flies. There’s a better place up in the rocks,” he indicates the pile that The End of the Beach leans into.
Back aboard, before passing out, Tom orders that she is not to take the dinghy in the morning.
In the morning she is marveling at the peacefulness of her surroundings with Tom asleep when Peggy comes by.
“Care for a ride ashore?” she asks, “I’m taking some stuff in to Bar.”
“She ain’t going nowhere!” Tom roars from the companion way.
“Crew always gets Sunday off in port, Swift!” Peggy shouts back. “You know that!”
“She’s restricted to the ship!”
“Give me a minute,” Sarah responds, and ducks below to get her stuff.
“You leave now, you’re through on the Enterprise!”
“Sounds good to me,” Sarah answers as she climbs over the rail.
Peggy pulls hard to escape the following roar.
Notice that everybody seems to row on Shekima Creek. In part, that is because there are no cars on the island – thus, no gasoline. We have also not heard any ring tones or Windows start-up tunes. Great Iguana is entirely off the grid until its hundred-odd population becomes politically or economically important enough to warrant an underseas cable. Only radio and satellite work here, and much of that is blocked by the crater walls towering over the Creek. There’s not even a morning VHF net! The accepted ambiance is that no yacht has to listen to another – Shekima Creek isn’t for everyone. That is why Enterprise and Jezebel are alone, quarantined as it were, in Reach Bay, and on opposite sides of the bay, at that.
Sarah is enchanted. Not just by the beauty and peacefulness, but that she has found her way into Sailorman’s hideout. She would be showing symptoms of cyber withdrawal except that everything she would seek online is being found in Shekima Creek. Blogs speculating on Shekima Creek liken it to legendary Shangri-La, Brigadoon, or Bali Hai. Sarah’s sense is more like Wendy in Never Never Land, where she hopes to meet Peter Pan.
Peggy hands over the stuff she packed back from Hard Bargain. Then Sarah’s new freedom is discussed. Bar mentions the nest up in the rocks behind The End of the Beach again.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Peggy assures her. “Sam and I have stayed there. And Lotus can put you up for a while, until we can ask Ian about Go Mad.” Bar gives her a strange look. “Think Ian may be a problem?” Peggy asks.
“Ian and a woman? He comes and goes. Maybe he has a girl in every port and comes here to recover. Maybe he’s a monk. Or hangs out with the gay guys on Trident. Could be Jack the Ripper. I know less about Ian than anyone else on the Creek.”
This brings more thrills to Sarah. Secrecy is Sailorman’s trademark. Apparently even Bar doesn’t know. And Sarah, doubtless the web’s leading expert on Sailorman, must not breathe a hint of what she knows.
Peggy lets Sarah row back to Lotus. Nearly two weeks into her adventure, she is beginning to be in shape, and is eagerly learning the lifestyle that she presumes normal to yachting – her entire experience so far being the Enterprise and Shekima Creek.
Samantha reports she saw Winston having breakfast at the edge of the mangroves, eating oysters off the roots. She swam over to ask about Ian and whether he thought Ian would meet them at his boat if they brought lunch, a Sunday outing – Winston too, of course. Winston said he could find Ian but couldn’t guess the answer. They could take a chance. Samantha has everything prepared.
They have a swim. As they dress, Peggy comments on Sarah’s cute bikini. Samantha comments on her beautiful wrap. Neither is quite sure what to say when Sarah adds a touch of makeup.
Then follows an excellent session of messing about in boats. Peggy expertly rows them through a maze of basins and creeks, some so narrow that she sculls with an oar in the transom notch. Seeing Sarah’s interest, Peggy shows her how.
Winston is known to come out of the trees for an occasional meal in good company. Ian is not. Yet both are aboard Go Mad when they find her.
Sarah’s heart races as Ian invites them aboard. Ian nicely matches the robust end of Sailorman’s computer model, plus her favorite artist’s interpretation, which shows him clean shaven. If he smokes a pipe, that will clinch it.
“Glad we could tempt you with a feast,” Peggy says. “All Sam’s work, of course. Ought to be delicious!”
“I came out of curiosity,” Ian replies. “Is that why you’re here?”
“Got a friend in need, thought you might like to help,” Peggy answers as Samantha and Sarah lay out the fare. “Plus, I haven’t seen you for quite a while. How you been? You’re looking good.” Sarah thinks so too. In truth, Peggy has come out of curiosity – even with Ian living in the trees, she doesn’t think he’ll want Sarah staying on his boat. And so it goes, though all pleasantly said. Go Mad, Ian insists, has to be ready when he goes mad. Sarah clearly understands – a hero is always on call. Sarah fancies that Ian is trying not to stare at her too much.
Relaxed and fed, the talk wanders to mangrove crawling, which is useful to sailors for tying boats in for a storm. But for Ian and Winston it is a way of travel.
“Winston’s the expert,” Ian explains. “Says I’m too clumsy, always scaring the birds. That’s how he finds me.”
“It’s an interesting environment, Sarah,” Peggy says, “Want to see? But we move slow. These monkeys travel at a rate of knots, we mortals do furlongs per fortnight. Slow and easy – but don’t stop on ant trails! May we, Ian?”
As Ian pulls the bow into the mangroves, Winston springs from the rail and disappears into the trees. Peggy climbs into the trees, slow, careful, but competent. Sarah follows carefully, but steps too low on a root, where it is wet. Her leg slips down into the oysters. Ian sees it happen, grabs her, lifts her aboard, and quickly inspects the long gash in her calf. He clamps it with his hand to slow the bleeding. “I’m not a doctor,” he says. “The wound is deep. It must be cleaned and stitched. It will hurt like hell. Do you want me to do it?”
Sarah is both angry with herself and scared – it is a serious wound. “Yes,” she answers.
Ian quickly carries her aft and below, puts her on the bunk, and goes to work. Samantha comforts, Sarah resists the searing pain as best she can. By the time Ian is finished, the pain pills are taking effect. Peggy, intently watching, says, “You’ve done this before.” Ian nods.
Then the decision, what next. The island has a clinic and a nurse, the doctor makes a monthly visit on the mail boat. Infection is Ian’s concern. He starts her on antibiotics and wants to keep an eye on her for several days. A dinghy trip back to Lotus is possible, but not advised – she can stay aboard Go Mad. Samantha decides to stay with her. Peggy goes for what they’ll need from Lotus. Winston watches quietly.
Ian, all business until now, sits down beside Sarah, takes her hand, and looks long into her eyes. “Sorry about the pain,” he says softly. Her smile is weak, but her heart is glad.
Thus, begins the story of Ian and Sarah. Because of Sailorman’s extreme secrecy and Sarah’s resolve to honor it, it will be some time before she confirms whether Ian is, in fact, the superhero she sought. By then, it won’t matter.
Caribbean Compass, Sept. and Oct. '10