DOCK TALK

JANUARY 2011 DOCKWALK YOUR WAY14

TEMPTATION

A dockwAlker’s story of struggle, both in finding work And in

surviving st. MAArten’s enticing pArty fever

By PAscAl lE BrETON

I CAn remember The pLAne touching down at Princess Juliana International Airport on that humid December evening and I remember briefly thinking about all the people who tried to warn me about how dangerous one’s lifestyle can become on the island of St. Maarten. I was, however, more focused on the

prospects of a new country, with no money, no plans and no use turning back. I was then 15 months, seven countries and several thousand CVs into an exhausting job search, and I was slowly regretting my decision not to give up hope after the first season as the other tens of thousands did.

By all accounts, at this stage I should have been lying on a cozy, climate-controlled, duvet-covered bed in the bow of some 60-meter Feadship new build; instead (simply by hoping that the island was small enough for the taxi driver to know what and where a crew house was) I soon found myself on a broken, back-bending mattress next to a slightly ill-minded, semi-vagrant Dutchman who packs groceries at the local market. The barely func-tional ceiling fan was fast enough to keep the squeaking at an annoying, sleep-depriving level,

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Who needs real life When you can be blessed With such enter- taining scenarios as attending a “pimps and ho’s” themed creW party featuring actual ho’s from the local gentlemen’s establishment?

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while slow enough to be ineffective against the mosquitoes swarming by the thousands, the sweat dripping by the gal-lon and a sudden, chilling fear for my health and safety.

To say that my initial impression was less than expected would be a gross understatement, and it didn’t stop at the crew house. Every attempt I made to explore the immediate area was challenged by torrential downpours, knee-deep mud pools, suicidal taxi bus drivers and a pack of sickly, starving stray dogs that seemed to be thinking as they saw me in the distance: “That guy over there? He’s small enough; we can take him if we work together.”

The only thing keeping me going, saving me from the horrors of SXM, was a boat. Let’s just call it M/Y Sav-ing Grace. This boat alone saved me from spending all day performing extreme dockwalking activity number 27: Standing on Simpson Bay Bridge and throwing down business cards and CVs to the constant stream of tenders cruising beneath me on errands and garbage runs. After being dubbed with the title of permanent dayworker, the engineers placed me on their job-list whiteboard mounted in the control room. They had “Find Pascal a Perma-nent Job” wedged right in there in red marker, between “Replace Hinges on Crew Entrance Door” and “Ser-vice Port Generator.” “Don’t worry, Pascal,” they would always assure me, “Every job on our list gets finished; it’s only a matter of time.”

After a month on the island, working with Saving Grace had helped me to see St. Maarten from a very different per-spective. For those 20-minute intervals in between the tor-rential downpours, when the sun is out and the skies are clear, the beaches are pristine and everyone (including the suicidal taxi bus drivers) is smiling. In a situation where dockwalkers should be banished, they are instead driven to the quay in a little golf cart by a friendly security guard, who stops to pick up coconuts along the way. Slowly I began to appreciate the convenience of having a bar within the property of my crew house and the irony of the stray dogs’ base of attack opera-tions being centered around a Chinese restaurant. There is no doubt that there is something very special about this island that extends beyond the price of the rum in your cup. There is a mystical force that changes the mentality of even the snobbi-est of yacht crew – they forget about that over-classy, shallow, all-about-the-money side of yachting that consumes the Med-iterranean season, take two steps back, put their worries and sanity aside for a few months and just let go of everything.

It wasn’t until I opened a seemingly empty toilet cubicle at The Soggy Dollar Bar to discover an Australian licking the top of the toilet seat while telling himself that he needs to “get all of it,” that I realized that maybe, just maybe, this island wasn’t healthy for those people with limited self dis-cipline. It suddenly became less comical to watch the line of zombies march down Airport Road from Bliss nightclub to Isle de Sol Marina at 6 a.m., and it became clear to me

that the definition of a drinking problem on this island was when someone couldn’t drink an entire bottle of Mount Gay Rum by him or herself and still maintain composure.

But don’t let me fool you; I was by no means merely a spectator during this annual breakout of island party fever. For me, there was no greater pleasure than crossing the road to La Bamba Beach Bar every day after day work and watching the sun set over Simpson Bay with the first of many frozen Texas Teas in hand. In my mind, the first drink was justified with one of a thousand reasons. Besides, how else was I supposed to face the onslaught of that pack of stray hellhounds, waiting in the alleyways for me to come home, growing smarter and more cunning every day as they become more and more desperate, learning my every step?

From there, it didn’t take much for the party to transform from a night’s event, to a binge, into a full-blown lifestyle and finally, after two months, my nightmare island had become paradise on earth. I was scuba diving every day in pursuit of my Divemaster and, by night, I was shown an entirely new view of St. Maarten, beach by beach and bar by bar, by two amazing dive instructors whose unrivalled zest for Caribbean living can only be described as epic.

As priorities shifted, my next drink and my next dive became more important than my next job. Sleep became an unnecessary burden forcefully reduced to the bare minimum and that work-for-a-living reality became a cloudy memory in the most barren corner of my sober mind. Besides, who needs real life when you can be blessed with such entertain-ing scenarios as attending a “pimps and ho’s” themed yacht crew party featuring actual ho’s from the local gentlemen’s establishment? The party abruptly climaxes when the fea-turettes begin publicly approaching yacht crew whom they recognize as regular customers. The look on the faces of those senior deck officers or captains (as well as the look on their crewmates’ faces) and the aftermath to follow is something so magically entertaining that trying to describe the experience in words would never do it justice.

It was funny at that point to think back on all the people who tried to warn me about St. Maarten before I arrived and how I shrugged off all the warnings as simply over-praised hype for cheap alcohol. If only then I had under-stood the seemingly inexplicable island fever that they were really talking about. It’s incredible how those same mystical forces that can transform one’s perspective also

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DOCK TALK TEMPTATION ISLAND

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Pascal is a 23-year-old, single and available South African deckhand on M/Y Odessa. Although his size grants him the ability to fit into almost any bilge, he has the strength of 10 men and swims faster than the jet tender that he drives to perfection. As a Divemaster, student pilot and descendant of French royalty, he enjoys scuba diving, flying and snowboarding when off the boat.

seem to have the ability to make one leap off a bridge into a black lagoon wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a giant sombrero, and it was all, of course, 100 percent mys-tical island forces. The rum punch had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Luckily for me, it was all destined to end. As the season wound down to a close and the boats slowly trickled out of the lagoon, the weary crew with weak livers breathed a sigh of relief, and I awoke one Sunday morning with my voice of reason screaming at me, much like a snooze

alarm that you silence every 10 minutes until at some point you realize that you’re going to be late for work unless you wake up and do something

RIGHT NOW. Without hesitation, I immediately booked a one-way ticket back to Fort Lauderdale with

the last of my money and began my job search once again with a clean slate and an empty wallet, using my trademark no-money-no-plan strategy as I’d done many times before.

Little did I know how different this next sub-adventure

would be. On that first day back in Fort Lauderdale, it came as if by some perfect timing at my mental and financial breaking point. As if by completing an eerie, three-month Caribbean rite of passage, I had been rewarded with the ulti-mate gift. M/Y Saving Grace, keeping their word, checked off the last job on their Caribbean job list, and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Antigua. Another new country, with absolutely no money, but this time I had a plan – more than that, after 17 months and 18 days, I had a job.

Almost exactly one year later I will be returning to Temptation Island, docked in front of the very bar that stole my rationality, but this time things will be differ-ent. This time, I’m on a boat, and I’ll be lying on a cozy, climate-controlled, duvet-covered bed, with a sturdy mat-tress, free of mosquitoes, sweat, squeaky ceiling fans and crazy Dutchmen. This time, I’m on a boat and I will be vaccinated from that mystical island fever with a power-ful shot of commitment and responsibility. Yes, this time, things will be different, because this time, I’m on a boat, and those stray dogs can’t swim. DW

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