A vacation story

When I was 19, my family went on vacation in December to a little island in the Caribbean called Bonaire, which is part of the Netherlands Antilles. This is a very small, very friendly island, only a couple of hotels on it at the time, and it’s shaped like a banana. They have some of the best scuba diving and snorkeling in the Western Hemisphere, though. On the side of Bonaire that curves in was our hotel and about a half mile off the coast is an even smaller island called Kleine Bonaire (Little Bonaire), which is uninhabited. Every afternoon at this time of year, around 4:00 in the afternoon, a very quick but intense rainstorm comes through for about 15 minutes. One other piece of setup information: when I was 11 and 12, I went to sleep away camps for the summers and had a few lessons on how to sail a very small (one person) boat called a Sailfish.

One afternoon in Bonaire, I decided I would like to rent a Sailfish and take it for a ride. The boatman offered to give me a lesson but of course I did not need that! So I took off and boy did I need that lesson. I could not keep the boat upright and kept capsizing it. Finally, after about 40 minutes, I tried to turn around and head back to the hotel’s beach but I got myself farther away from the shore when I did this. And still the boat kept turning over. Then out of nowhere the afternoon storm came in and I couldn’t see the beach, the rain was too hard, but I could see that I was over half the way to Klein Bonaire. I gave up trying to keep the boat right side up and just sat on it. I was not too afraid of drowning but I was afraid of the boat’s centerboard or my glasses (I forgot to pack a spare pair and without them I’m nearly blind).

Back on shore my parents where having a great big laugh watching all this, up until the time the storm came. When my mother realized she couldn’t see me, she went looking for the boatman. He was in the beach bar, out of the rain. She asked him to go get me but he said not until the rain ended. She was insistent but he just kept saying no. Then the rain ended and he got in a little motorboat and came out for me. I was just totally worn out by this point so when the boatman got out to me and took hold of the centerboard, I slipped off the boat and grabbed on to his boat.

But the boatman would not let me in! He said I had to flip the Sailfish back over first. I told him to do it himself but he said no and literally kept me from climbing into the motorboat. I went back and flipped the Sailfish over, and climbed into the motorboat with the last of my energy. I was crying, I was so exhausted. This guy was laughing! Of course, it was my own fault for not taking the lesson he had offered me in the first place. I have never tried to sail a boat myself ever since.