One of the fund-raisers I organized for the Junior Sailing Club was an excursion to the Falls of Baleine. I had been there once before and was eager for a return visit, the falls were stunningly beautiful and the swimming hole cold and refreshing. It would not be hard to sell tickets, by then word was out that the Bequia Sailing Club offered fun excursions. My problem was what on earth I was going to feed everyone once we got there! The pig roasts at Isle de Quatre had been fairly easy, there had been flat land on which to build fires. The falls were located on a rocky hillside and the access by sea was a challenge, so I decided that a simple picnic lunch would have to suffice
The night before the trip I stayed up late to bake several loaves of bread, something I could do pretty much in my sleep by then! I had already roasted and sliced a turkey as well as a large ham, and I made a big tuna salad while the bread was in the oven. I organized lettuce and tomatoes, mayonnaise and mustard, and boiled a huge set of eggs. I made two kinds of cookies for dessert and decided that was good enough. It was simple food that would be appreciated by everyone after a morning spent frolicking in the falls, and I packed everything carefully in containers to be loaded onto Wave Dancer.
When we left Port Elizabeth bound for the Falls of Baleine the boat was overflowing with people ready to have a good time. With Orbin at the helm of Wave Dancer we made our way across the choppy Bequia Channel. It didn’t take long before I started feeling queasy, it never failed to happen when I sailed towards St. Vincent, so I drank a nice cold beer to settle my stomach. I wasn’t alone drinking beer at 9:00 A.M., Lyston and Cecil were quite busy selling Heinekens to a boisterous bunch of passengers.
As Wave Dancer approached the north-west point of St.Vincent I heard Orbin mutter something about the tide, but assumed he was talking about the “piece of tide” we had to sail through to get to our destination. As we approached the falls I realized that his mutterings about the tide had to do with the surge that was pounding the shore, and my heart sank as I realized that the usual anchoring spot was not going to be an option. Orbin had a dinghy, but it was going to take forever to get everyone ashore, not to mention the food and drinks!
How fortunate that the excursionists that day were a fit and enthusiastic bunch of people. Not only did most of them swim ashore, many did so with containers of food and loaves of bread held up in one hand! When I saw how precarious it was to be rowed ashore (the dinghy literally surfed in on a wave and was caught and held while people jumped out) I opted to swim as well, holding the cookies above my head as I did so.
The falls were as beautiful as ever, and once ashore I was glad we had come. My work as food-provider was done, other than slicing the bread at noon I could relax and enjoy the day. I watched as the older children dove from a ledge near the top of the falls into the deep pool below, never realizing that Vanessa had disappeared. She had tried to find the top of the falls and lost her way, and when she arrived back to where I lazed on a slab of rock she was crying pitifully. She cried even harder when she realized that no-one had noticed she was missing, I guess she felt pretty neglected!
Everyone had a great time that day, even Vanessa! Getting back to Wave Dancer when it was time to leave was a challenge, but at least no-one had to carry the lunch over their heads, the crowd had eaten pretty well every scrap of food. We had raised quite a lot of money, enough to finish the third Bequia dinghy for the Juniors, and I figured that the trip to the falls had most likely been my last fund-raising excursion. What a pity THAT was! People talk about those Sailing Club Excursions to this day, they were pretty memorable.