One year the neighboring Island of Canouan decided to hold a Regatta, and contacted the Bequia Sailing Club by letter asking for advice. For years Canouan had participated in Bequia’s Easter Regatta and wanted to know if our Club would help organize one at their end. It was decided that the entire Sailing Club, Juniors as well as Seniors, would sail over to Canouan on Wave Dancer to lend a hand.
At that point in time Canouan was still quite undeveloped. There was no electricity and very little in the way of stores and restaurants. We would need to provision carefully to ensure that our large group had enough to eat and drink over the long week-end. As usual I was put in charge of feeding everyone, Cecil and Lyston would take care of the drinks and hopefully a good time would be had by all! We had arranged to rent three houses on Canouan, but it was understood that many would be sleeping on the beach if the weather was fine.
The Junior members got the Club’s Bequia dinghies ready for the trip across the channel. Orbin got Wave Dancer organized and Lyston and Cecil readied the ice chest and cases of drinks. Having made up a tentative menu I gathered the ingredients I would need to feed everyone throughout the weekend. I seasoned chicken for pelau, meat for curry and even a whole pig for a beach party. I would be staying in the one (and I think only) rental house that had a kerosene refrigerator, a luxury on Canouan back then!
The Junior club members were excited, they were leaving Bequia for a whole week-end to race their new dinghies in a regatta! Spirits were high as we set off from Admiralty Bay in Wave Dancer, the deck piled high with sacks of flour, a whole pig, roasted hams and turkeys for sandwiches, containers of seasoned mutton and chicken, a sack of rice and much, much more. It was a fine day for the trip across the channel and the weather promised to stay fair throughout the regatta. This was a good thing, it meant the Juniors could sleep on the beach if there weren’t enough beds to go around, which there weren’t…..
We arrived at Canouan and went to our rental houses. My family shared a cottage with the Berlinghofs and several others, and pretty well everyone had to sleep on the floor. The giant ice chest took up most of the porch, and the drinks had to share space with the containers of food I had pre-seasoned. The kerosene fridge was awfully small and couldn’t hold very much but I was lucky to have one at all. The tiny kitchen was cramped, and I could see that I had a bit of frustration ahead of me. I would only be able to bake two loaves of bread at a time in the tiny oven and I had a lot of mouths to feed that weekend. At least I had brought enough loaves to see us through the first day, we would survive!
That was a party weekend to end all party weekends, the old-timers talk about it to this day. The bar was on the honors system; everyone was supposed to write down what they had taken from the chest, but as the week-end got under way I could see that particular system wasn’t going to work. Everyone got too wasted each night to remember what they had taken, including the two bartenders, and I decided we would just have to sort it out when we got back to Bequia.
I was up most of the night during the course of the weekend making cinnamon buns and muffins for breakfast because I could only do so many at a time in the little oven. It was quite a challenge to roll dough for sweet buns on a miniscule counter in the dark, I had only one kerosene lantern in that small kitchen. Once the breakfast baking was done I started on the bread, and then cookies to go with lunch. I stood in that kitchen throughout the day making curry, pelau, rice and peas, macaroni pie and the like, all of which was consumed with gusto. The pig roast on the beach was my one break, the regular “three piggies” roasted the beast over a fire during the day and it was SO good! Mac, Mackie and Hodge made a good team, that pig was cooked to perfection.
More than three decades later I asked my daughter Vanessa to share her memories of that trip to Canouan, and the only thing that stands clear in her mind was that I forgot to pack underwear for her and she was forced to go without. She was quite young, who would think that a lack of underwear when she had a bathing suit would stick in her memory bank? It’s funny what people remember about their childhoods…
Due to my cooking duties I didn’t see much of the Regatta but everyone from Bequia had a wonderful time. I’m glad that we experienced the Island when life on Canouan was still simple and uncomplicated, it was an incredible weekend that I feel fortunate to have been a part of.
I remember well your gallant efforts in the galley, the racing, the games ashore in Hillsborough like crab racing and greasy pole, the pig roast, and leading songs such as Brown Girl in the Ring on the beach at night on my guitar. Bret was little, and I don’t think Ross was born yet.