bequia

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

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 \AR6m6

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.

A1 is u 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; .

Dart and Trio,

Bequia's two whaling boats. Like almost al¬ ways, no luck today.

had been settled in part by New Bedford whalers that the tradition took hold.

But it’s seemingly a dying tradition, as the only Bequians who continue to whale are older. They go out hunting whales every day of the week but Sunday. You think they’d be discouraged coming home 99.5% of the time empty-handed, but they insist they “do fine”.

In 1980 a harpooner on one of the boats had speared a whale that began to drag the boat. Unfortunately the chock guiding the harpoon lines broke, jeopardizing the harpooner’s leg. The line line had to be cut, and as a result no whales were taken during all of 1980. But it all evens out; in 1979 they got a mother whale as well as the calf that was alongside her.

Whaling, as practiced by the Bequians, is not a modern industry. There are no big sophisticated ships with harpoon cannons as used by the Japanese and the Soviets, The Bequian fleet'consists of Dart and Trio, two 30-ft. open whale boats; the harpoons are thrown by hand.

Dart and Trio are moreqrless lug rigged and propelled by a combination of cotton and dacron sails and by sculling. They have special fold-up rudders that, when the ballast stones are removed, allow them to be drag¬ ged up on the beach by the crew.

Given the relative primitive equipment, the Bequians don’t pose a great threat to the world’s whale population. Their technique is limited, too. Each day as the two boats put to sea, a spotter climbs to the highest peak in search of whales through a spyglass. We find it hard to believe, but it’s claimed that when

ALL PHOTOS BY JAN PEHRSON

the spotter sees a whale he uses a mirror to direct the reflection of the sun in front of the whale boats. This supposedly alerts the crew to turn on their walkie-talkies to receive specific directions.

The whalers on Bequia are proud of what they do. When asked if they’d heard of Greenpeace, they replied, “No.”

As you might suspect, since they kill a whale so rarely, whem they actually do it’s cause for a big celebration. Everyone gets in a festive mood and comes down to buy their share. According to accepted practice, everyone gets 10 pounds; 2 pounds of blub¬ ber and 8 pounds of meat. Apparently that is the ratio of fat-to-meat in which it is suppos¬ ed to be prepared.

The weather in Bequia, one of the dozen or so of the 100 Grenadines that is in¬ habited, makes it easy for the sailing tradition to survive. The northeast trades blow almost constantly at 20 knots, and the air tempera¬ ture varies between 78 and 82 degrees. The point of sail between Bequia and St. Vincent and other important islands is a pleasant

Making sail on the Friendship Rose.

The stem of another 85-ft. cargo ship marks the start of another boatbuilding project on Friendship Bay.

,*U?T y' (T°P)'the WOmen and chlldren take nngs,de seats m the trees. (Middle), some of the helpers stop to contemplate their next move. (Bot¬ tom), near the water’s edge, an unsuccessful attempt to lift the boat into the water by hand. reach, and has allowed the use of pure sail¬ ing ships as cargo carriers between the islands.

Actually, besides the mail boat, the only regularly scheduled transit between Bequia • and St. Vincent is Friendship Rose, an 85-ft. passenger and cargo vessel built three years ago by Bequians in Bequia’s Friendship Bay. Bequians are good boatbuilders and have built others of this size. A similar boat was built a year later for singer/poet/born again Christian Bob Dylan. But you don’t have to be a rock n roll star to afford one — you can ’ get your own built for around $30,000.

T1 hese are reputed to be good boats, although not exactly with the ‘yacht finish’ you’d expect of Palmer Johnson or Swan. The Bequians principle weapon in construc¬ tion is the adz, and they use nothing but traditional hand tools. Electric tools are not used at all. The hulls.ai'e built of local woods, with the keels brought in from South Ameri¬ ca. It takes three Bequians about 15 months to complete such an 85-ft. boat.

dynamiting fish. He was also one of the three men who built Wave Dancer.

Wave Dancer, having almost,been wrestled into the water.

as much an occasion for celebration as is cat¬ ching a whale. But you don’t launch a boat on a tight schedule at Bequia like you do, say at Svendsen’s Yard in Alameda. You see, boats in Bequia are built on a hillside about 100-ft. from the water. That’s so when the boat is finished it can be backed up on sand-slipperized rolling logs and pulled into the Water by 100 men tugging on a big 8-purchase block and tackle. That’s the theory anyway, it doesn’t always work out that way.

The boat suffered from tXo minor disasters while on the way to the water. The first happened when a check line broke, splitting one of the rolling logs, allowing the boat to careen forward crushing the work shed and smashing into a tree. This put the boat off its planned trajectory, and when it finally got close to the water, it was aiming right at some rocks. After lots of contemplat¬ ing, sipping, jacking, and attempts to lift the boat by hand, the anchor, block and tackle was moved farther out and the boat pivoted safely into the water. In the days of early aviation they used to say any landing you survived was a good one; in Bequia a good launching is any one that gets the boat to water.

That’s not the modern way to do things, but that’s the way it’s done in Bequia, and that’s the way Jan liked it. Bequia has lots of good anchoring, its people are extremely friendly — particularly to sailors. The island has quite a bit of vegatation and the people

Friendship Rose, for example, was built in an area with too much sand and the laun¬ ching took almost two full days. As such, it was a real crowd pleaser, what with all the women and girls watching from the trees and the men sipping rum from big plastic buckets. Dylan’s boat (he was there) was sort of a bummer. It took less than an hour to launch and didn’t even allow the festivities to get started.

While Jan was in Bequia they launched Wave Dancer, another cargo boat over 85-ft. The launch, taking from 7 in the morning until 6 at night, was ideal because it

A Bequian comes around with a plastic pail full of rum to keep the boat¬ launching troops happy.

was long enough for an all-day party, but short enough for dancing afterwards. The supervisor of the launch was a former Be-quian fisherman who had lost one arm while speak English. Busy with animals and crops in Sebastapol, Jan can’t go there this winter, but she kind of wishes she could. — latitude 38