In Which Ye Author Most Shamelessly Plugs
A NATURAL HISTORY OF MUSTIQUE
Patrick O'Brian novels are best read lounging in a mizzentop, perhaps the only place you can keep track of all the rigging and nautical gear it takes to sail to the far side of the world.
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| Brig Astrid, since sunk. |
So when, aloft on the brig Astrid, I spied Martinique's canefields start to greenly shivver on their volcanic slopes, I put The Nutmeg Of Consolation aside, swung from the mainyard garnet 'neath the futtocks to the quarterdeck ratlines, and scrambled down to check the synthetic aperture radar--sure enough, it was time to shorten sail.
Radar is fine for navigation, but tells little of what's ashore. From meteorology to mineralogy, there's lot of natural history to be encountered cruising the Caribbean.
The late great Captain Raul King of Bequia maintained that " Nothing in this sea will harm you", but that's only if you know not to bite into manchineel fruit, gobble green pommes de Macassar, poke the lionfish, grab the fire coral or step on the sea urchins instead of eating them.
What's called for is A Natural History Handbook. I helped write one focused on a tight little Grenadine island, wondrously rich in geology for its size, with rocks glittering with the Pyrites of the Caribbean, as well as the chalcopyrites, zeolites, and both green epidotes and gray epicenes in their dotage.
Though abounding in birds of bright plumage, and ants, plants and tortoises galore, the isle is paparazzi-free, with few sycophants and fewer elephants No one dared replace the last one after it ran amok on St. Lucia.
As many creatures have migrated from from the Antilles to the Grenadines, readers will find this book Indispensable on all islands Leeward & Windward
It is published by by The Mustique Company, with a foreword by a surprisingly intelligent London School of Economics drop-out who built his dreamhouse here in 1971.
A Natural History of Mustique
includes 360 color photos covering all creatures great and small, from harmless insects the size of birds, to vinegaroons, hummingbirds the size of bees, and a snake easily mistaken for a keychain. Every reptile from St. Barts to Barbados, from the noble tortoise geochelone to lividly green lizards, is vividly depicted in this handbook.
includes 360 color photos covering all creatures great and small, from harmless insects the size of birds, to vinegaroons, hummingbirds the size of bees, and a snake easily mistaken for a keychain. Every reptile from St. Barts to Barbados, from the noble tortoise geochelone to lividly green lizards, is vividly depicted in this handbook.
Despite its name, constant vigilance has made Mustique mercifully poor in mosquitoes, yet rich in Wi Fi bandwith at The Excellent Bar of Basil Charles O.B.E.
This surprisingly waterproof guide is an absolute snip at forty bucks at better rum shops & bookstores throughout the Spanish Main.
While pyrite crystals may be pried from Virgin Islands lamprophyre veins, and jade from DR riverbeds, the Grenadines offer golden chalcopyrite crystals and glittering sprays of zeolites like stilbite. More touristed isles, like St. Lucia are barely cooled piles of lava and volcanic ash but ancient basement rocks endow some metamorphic Grenadines with richer and more eventful geology.
For a really hot diving spot, try Kickem Jenny, the underwater volcano perking its way to the surface a long days sail southwest. A Must See for CO2Coalition and other coal and tar sand flacks spewing nonsense about underwater CO2 and thermal fluxes.
Newcomers may find St.Vincent and Bequia more welcoming than the 0utlying Grenadines, but the Tobago Cays are worth chartering a boat to visit. Yachts at anchor there get to oogle the turquise seascape where Pirates of the Caribbean was shot, and are provided with rum by the enterprising Jack Iron moonshiners of Petit Martinique.
Newer and more elegant editions of the handbook will report more on where the Grenadine pyrites are buried , but go in June, and you will find the outlying islets and pinnacles. like Battowia and Baliceaux abuzz with congregations of boobies worthy of a Heartland Institute Climate Conference
Alas, the brig Astrid , shown above, passed into less vigilant hands in 2012, and at the goodly age of 92, ran aground on the rocks of Cork.
One always needs a bigger boat, and I vastly enjoyed my last septagenarian Grenadines sail aboard Mikael Krafft's modern recreation of the Preußen, whose five masts 400 feet of hull, and 55,000 square feet of sail anchor for snorkeling in the Tobago Keys. Seriously good boat.
