BEAUTIFUL
Jan Pehrson gets around. When we first met her she was crewing on an Islander 36 to Hawaii. Inspired by that trip, she bought a LeComte 38 in Florida which shortly thereafter was crushed in a vain attempt to deliver it to the west coast. All during this time she’s been sailing her Cal 20, Scoot, on the bay and in ‘home and away' competition with Oahu’s Kaneohe Bay Yacht Club. But lately Jan’s most frequently been traveling and sailing in the Caribbean \Vhere she prefers to spend her. winters. It’s warm there, you know. So warm she’s made it four times in the last three years. The Caribbean is a big place, but as you’d expect a woman like Jan gets around. In all her Caribbean ex¬ perience she’s found the island people of tiny Bequia to be a special treat. Not the least of which Jan likes about Be¬ quia is the attitude its people have toward sailing. Unlike most of the peoples of the Caribbean, the Bequians are known as — and proud to be — good sailors. As Jan puts it, “every family has at least one son at sea, be they on a freighter, oiler, cargo boat, or
A Norweigian trawler, chartered for $25 a day in Bequia.
Mexico \AR6m6
Bequia Bequia is about as far away from the U.S.A. as you can get and still be in the Caribbean.
yacht.” The woman whose guest house she stayed at for $12 a night, had lost her father, a sea captain, in the 50’s when a ship went down with fifteen sea captains aboard. Part of the reason Bequians sail is economics. The island is small, about 5 miles by 2V2 miles, and the lack of industry (“none” except for a guy who does boat molds) and water makes it difficult to support its native population of several thousand. The average Bequian makes less than $1,000 a year, and^families get by growing their own vegetables and raising chickens. This is typically supplemented by sons who go to sea and send money home to help make ends meet.
But Bequians sail and go to sea for
more than just money, they love it. There are all kinds of little boats around the island, and it’s not unusual for the same little boat to be raced, fished from, sailed, sculled, and used with an outboard motor. Virtually every family on the island owns some kind of boat or the other, usually all native built. During her stay on the island, Jan was told that it’s easier for a Bequian to finance the building of a boat than the building of a home.
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1 is best as we can determine, there are only two peoples left in the world that prac¬ tice subsistence whaling: the Eskimos, who kill about 50 whales per year; and the Be¬ quians who kill — this is no joke — about one whale per year. Whaling was not always practiced on the island, it was only after it
Friendship Bay, Be¬ quia. While Jan was there I00C.C.A. members came through with their boats;
.
