In early April we were asked to house sit for Paul and Betty Backshall. He was editor of The Virgin Islander magazine. Betty was an interior designer. They were leaving for a holiday in England. Their house was a bungalow with a dock on the coast of West End to seaward of the Ferry Dock and Immigration office. There was a cat to feed and a lovely garden. We were also left the keys to their VW Gurgle which was like a glorified Golf cart.

I thought it would be a treat to sleep in a stationary double bed. However Jon found the sounds of crashing water on the rocks below too disturbing as it made him think our boat was dragging. So we ended up staying at the house during the daytime only. At night we slept on Camelot at anchor at the top of Soper’s Hole, about half a mile away. One of the things Paul and Betty asked of us was:

“ Please make sure that no goats gain access to the roof. their droppings contaminate the water in the cistern, and they eat all the flowers.”

Jon brought the sewing machine to the house so he could continue making a Bimini for Tony Snell’s trimaran. There were a lot of creatures including centipedes, spiders, the inevitable cockroaches and even rats, but the cat was a good rat catcher. A lizard dropped onto the canvas Jon was working on and promptly shed its tail. Then it gobbled up its own tail!

Oliver was born in Peebles Hospital

I was woken at 5.30 am on Monday 13th April when I felt the first contractions. In the galley I made tea and took a cup into Jon in the aft cabin.

“It is time to get to the hospital,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said slurping the tea and then jumping out of his bunk. “I will get Jethro dressed.”

We all climbed down into the dinghy to row ashore to the little beach under the palm trees by the road to the bridge. I pulled the dinghy up onto the sandy beach while Jon fetched the Gurgle. As dawn was breaking we drove to Peebles Hospital in Road Town which only took about twenty minutes at that early hour.

Jethro was not allowed into the hospital so Jon took him off to Village Cay for breakfast whilst I checked in to the Maternity ward. As I was lying on the delivery table the kindly midwife looked at my feet which were covered in sand from pulling up the dinghy.

“Oh I see you had time to go to the beach this morning!” She laughed.

A baby boy was delivered at 7.10 am weighing seven and a half pounds. Back on the ward there were ladies with new babies at one end and men in traction or bandages at the other. A local clergyman in flowing white robes came round blessing us all. Jon came back at visiting time which was 4pm in the afternoon. We decided the baby’s name would be Oliver. Jethro had said he liked the name Vanilla and this was the nearest proper name to that we could achieve. We stayed in hospital for just two nights. From my bed I could see yachts racing in the BVI spring Regatta out in the Francis Drake Channel.

On Wednesday afternoon, Jon came to collect us with the folding carry cot now fitted with a new mattress and the little turtle patchwork quilt I had made. We were invited for dinner that night on board a brand new Swan 57 called Stampede. Their rib tender was named Rubber Stamp. The skipper Andy and his wife Wendy were Fireball sailors from Rhodesia. While we all tucked into generous bowls of Spaghetti Bolognese, Oliver slept peacefully in the carry cot. A bottle of genuine French Champagne was served to “wet the baby’s head” as the saying goes.

Jethro was enchanted with his baby brother. I noticed him stroking Oliver’s head very gently and gazing into his sleeping face. He was astonished at how tiny Oliver’s fingers and toes were. The four and a half year age gap meant that we could talk through the new routines and he was old enough to understand. I was lying in my bunk reading with the hatches wide open one night and I overheard Jon telling Jethro,

“When babies come out of a mummy’s tummy it hurts very much. .. Probably more pain than you or me will ever know.” My ears pricked up at this. Jon went on, “ So we must both be very kind to mummy – until she gets a flat tummy.”

When we called in at Nanny Cay to drop some laundry for a bag wash, so many people came over and have a peep we could not get away. Bill and Warren, Rich and his girlfriend Ginger, Eddie the dock manager, Mike and Keith from the dive shop and even Daphne the cleaner all came to say “hello, hello, let us see the new crew.” They all wished us well and made a point of congratulating Jethro as well.

Huge Expansion at Nanny Cay

Nanny Cay had changed a lot in the past four months. The concrete dock which used to end just beyond the central cafe area was now extended right up to the shell beach by the harbour entrance. With seven Walcon finger piers fixed into the dredged inner harbour there was room for 175 yachts by then. A swimming pool was under construction along with tennis courts, eighteen cottages and a hotel. Plans had been submitted for two more restaurants and more showers and toilets.

Far from being complicated having a baby on board a boat I thought it was easier than Beck Cottage had been. With all the accommodations so compact, I could tell Jethro a story whilst preparing food. I could also keep an eye on the carrycot or bouncing chair for Oliver at the same time. We bought a plastic baby bath which I could half fill with seawater and half fresh water boiled in the kettle for bathing the baby. Jethro could climb in afterwards and play with boats whilst he also had a good soak. I could dive overboard for a swim which was great exercise for recovering.

We needed to get a passport for Oliver. We learned that simply by being born in the BVI he was what they call ‘a Belonger’ so he would have dual nationality. Rather than trying to get him added to my passport as Jethro was, he could have his own BVI passport. That involved form filling and getting photographs. The first lot I had taken showed him held up on my lap.

“Oh no, lady.” I was told. “Can’t have Yo hands in the picture!” I had to go back and wear a sheet over my hands and face. That photograph was accepted.

It was Carnival in St Thomas the first week in May and Oliver’s first time out of the British territory using his new passport. Saturday morning was the highlight of the week long celebrations. There were forty seven separate bands in the raucous parade. All had steel drums, trumpets, saxophones and much more mounted on massive trucks with low loader trailers. The entire procession was more than twelve miles long. In between each truck marched colourfully dressed people with elaborate headdresses. They flourished twirling batons, tassels or bill hooks in fact anything that could be twirled.

One float had a forty foot articulated lobster. Mincing ahead of this were mermaids wearing huge plastic Coke bottles painted to look like SCUBA tanks, tight skirts right down to their ankles and swimming fins on their feet. There were pirate floats and Cowboy and Indian floats. The local telephone company had a gigantic satellite sparkling with tinsel . These marching folk all wore headdresses made to like like different telephones. We watched this for over six hours from the comfort of an Architects office on Main Street. Mack and Mo knew them well and took us along.

The music comprised just three tunes, the winners of a competition for the 1981 Carnival. The main one consisted of three words repeated ad infinitum. “Blow your whistle! Whee whee. Blow your Whistle!” All the kids had whistles in their mouths for the whole week. The second tune was called “Jam for Eighty One”. The third was called “Backbone” but sounded so much like Jam I could not tell the difference. There were Mocko Jumbies on huge stilts.

This was our first full Carnival experience and we enjoyed it tremendously. There was a fun fair and interesting street food like coconut bread, salt fish, Roti and banana pancakes. The last night rounded off with a grand firework display. We enjoyed that from our anchorage and woke Jethro up to watch from the aft deck at 11pm. He could not remember having seen fireworks before and was utterly enthralled.