VOODOO IN THE ISLANDS
Long Ago and Far Away
copyright 2013 Edwin P. Cutler
spaceship79@hotmail.com
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS VOODOO IN THE ISLANDS
Each of the peculiar things that happened can certainly be written off to coincidence, for, even though the evidence is compelling, we know there isn't really such a thing as voodoo -- is there?
We told our kids, "It's your world, you take care of it," and cast off from Annapolis Maryland on the 4th of November, 1984, in our old wooden sailboat, the Romarin. We had the rigging checked by an expert and were told it was okay but don't take it out in the ocean. Although she creaked and groaned all the way down to Florida, we knew she loved it as much or more than we did. After all, we had to get used to sailing in and out of new harbors and venturing out onto the ocean, while she, having been built in 1938 was a collection of ocean lore and knew more about sailing than we did.
Did it get warmer as we trundled south down the Intracoastal Waterway heading for Florida? Not on your life! A cold front blowing frigid, arctic air across the continent overtook us and the farther south we sailed the colder it got. Off the coast of Florida, passing St. Augustine we saw our first arctic smoke. Arctic smoke rises from water which is 40 degrees warmer than the covering air, and the 35 degree air over the 75 degree water produced ghost-like pillars that left us sailing slowly through a forest of demented tree trunks. They had frost in Miami that morning.
On the 5th of January, 1985, we took the big leap and sailed east across the treacherous Gulf Stream to the Bahamas -- our first foreign landfall. Now the Gulf Stream really isn't treacherous, it's the sailors who crosses it ill prepared that tell grim and grisly stories. In our case it was engine oil in the bilge. All the way down the relatively flat Intracoastal Waterway tiny drips of engine oil had been accumulating, a sheen on the small puddle of water in the bilge. Was that a problem? Not until we got out where the north flowing Gulf Stream was running against a northeast wind. We found out later this was a classical Gulf Steam terror, and we rolled violently from side to side.
When we were over on one side, the water ran up the inside of the hull, and when we rolled the other way, some of it sluiced out onto the cabin sole. We rolled back and forth until the cabin sole and the soles of our shoes were well lubricated -- have you ever made a sail change wearing roller skates?
Do to a lack of poor planning, we arrived at Grand Bahama in the dark and backed our sails to hove-to to wait for daylight. Just as dawn woke the night sky, we were awakened by a "bump" -- while the person on watch was dozing we had drifted backward onto a lee shore and were aground, our first foreign landfall was a bump in the night.
Fortunately, someone up there has a forgiving disposition for novice sailors and the bump was on a sandy beach between two rocky headlands. We didn't panic, we just tore around starting the engine, and sheeting the backed sails -- maybe we could motor off if not maybe sail away. When a wave lifted us, we had the engine huffing, the full sails puffing, and the Romarin pulled away from that first foreign landfall without a scratch.
Sailing eastward through the islands and backward through time, we were told we should get below the hurricane belt, like to Venezuela by hurricane season. But it was still January so we bravely explored our way through the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos. After a shot out into the Atlanic to get around the mysterious Silver Banks, we visited the happy Spanish speaking people in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We rested in tiny Culebra and watched giant loggerhead turtles bury their egges in the sand. Then we did the American and British Virgins, and almost joined the St. Croix yacht club. One day we realized it was 15 August, and hurricane season was well underway! So we tanked up and took off. Heading south from St. Croix we sheeted in tight on a port tack and let the Romarin grab the tradewinds and take us where she thought best -- three days later we smelled coke pits emanating from the windward islands. Another day and Union Island loomed on the horizon. That was a pleasant four day sail that put the Caribbean into a special place in our memories.
Working south we explored Grenada and made the dangerous crossing to South America. At midnight we could see the loom of Port of Spain in Trinidad on our bow and the loom of St. George's, Grenada off our stern -- we couldn't get lost, could we. We sailed westward along the rugged mountainous Venezuela coast and happily celebrated Christmas of 1985 with several other sailing yachts at anchor in Mochima, a little village in the Puerto Mochima estuary on the north coast of Venezuela.
It was in the Puerto Mochima estuary that our Voodoo troubles began. In this haven there are several side-bays that on the chart gives it the overall appearance of a twisted, watery dragon with many legs reaching greedily into the surrounding hills. Planning to leave the next day we anchored in the leg closest to the exit that would take us out into the Caribbean.
The only sound that came from the surrounding hills was a banging, slapping rattle, as if some carpenter was trying to nail down a piece of corrugated roofing. The wind blew and the menacing noise continued unabated through the night; mother nature had no mercy on that ghostly carpenter and never let him stop his vain attempts to nail that loose sheet of metal to those naked rafters.
In the morning we dinghed ashore to look at the ruins where the specter had toiled so diligently and in the shallow, lapping surf Wendy found a little black cloth doll with outstretched arms reaching up to us.
She had been made from a course material and stuffed with something firm but not hard. Staring eyes peered from her frightening face and below the reaching arms a pair of ample hips and straight legs suggested she might be a fertility symbol. We put her in the dinghy and took her back to the Romarin.
Ten minutes later the fan belt on the diesel engine broke! I looked down to where, lying on a cockpit seat, the little doll was staring up at me. I picked her up and moving to the toerail looked down into the sunlit sea. But then I hesitated, thinking, If I throw you over, you will be in every dark sea I sail.
So I held her up and looked her straight in the eye and offered, "Mammy, we'll take care of you, if you take care of us?"
In the fifteen years since we made that deal we've either been lucky or well looked after. Though Mammy has been benevolent, she has at times been cantankerous. In Bermuda, we wanted to have a dress made for her and took her to a lady that makes paper mache dolls. She traced Mammy's outline, hips and all, and took the outline to England where she knew a doll expert in one of the museums. That was the end of that! When she came back she said Mammy resembled an ancient Egyptian fertility doll and she would not touch her again for love nor money.
We took her into some shops in St. George where dolls were sold and asked if they could make a dress for our little doll. We were surprised when we held her up for them to see and they stepped back. Finally, a clerk in a shop, a lady expatriate who had not been indoctrinated with the native culture, agreed to make a dress. We warned her not to stick any pins in Mammy. She laughed and promised the dress would be ready in a week.
A week later, we were told the lady had a stomach flu and the dress was not yet finished -- come back next week. Another week, the flu was giving her terrible headaches, but the dress was almost complete -- come back tomorrow.
That fateful day we learned the truth. The lady, still at home, had sent the doll in for us. Wendy took one look at our Mammy and gasped -- her earrings were fastened to her head by pins sticking straight in!
We pulled them out.
Her dress was wrapped around and fastened to her waist with a tiny insignificant safety pin that pierced her side. We unfastened it and put the money for the dress on the counter and left. You guessed it -- the lady came to work the next day, headache gone and stomach settled, fully recovered!
On October first of 1986 we ripped our main coming out of Martha's Vineyard and Mammy reminded us that she had a stranger give us a spare main in Tortola. We bent on the new old-sail and headed west for Long Island and New York -- against the roaring forties.
Apparently feeling that she had neglected us, Mammy provided a northeast wind and set the moon so that the tide ran westward four knots through the dangerous Race off Block Island -- with all sails up we were flying at 8 knots! She sent us in one passage from Martha's Vineyard down Long Island Sound to New York City. We flew down the East River with an outgoing six knot tide and with Mammy's blessing we anchored across the Hudson River in the shadow of the Statute of Liberty. Few sailors make it all the way west in one eighteen hour pass from 'down east' as the New Englanders say.
Nothing much has happened since, that is, if you overlook that Wendy won the first door prize at three separate parties in Bermuda with a hundred guests each, -- the chances were one in a million. Furthermore, since we hang Mammy in the companionway so she can see the sea she loves so well, I wouldn't recommend you try to board us with evil intent.
We were so impressed with Mammy that we heralded her as a principal character in our book, "Island Life", where she casts a spell on anyone threatening Amanda the beautiful, alcoholic widow.
Think what you want, but I suggest you do not laugh outloud.