by Bruce Donath, photographs by the author
Editor’s note: In 1995, a married couple decided to chuck it all and buy a legendary but challenging slice of paradise: a bar in Jost van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. This is their story.
We were finishing our 18th day as owner/managers of the Soggy Dollar Bar. We had just endured a tropical storm and two hurricanes.
We were lucky. The storms had left us with a lot of mess but minor damage. We could not avoid a bit of smugness knowing that we had passed these tests. But, almost on cue, the fates brought us something unexpected — a late-night visitor.
About ten o’clock that night, we were woken by our neighbor, Claude, who had a small house about 300 yards away.
“Bruce, we have a problem,” he said. “Some fisherman washed ashore on our beach. He needs dry clothes and a place to sleep, and we thought he could stay in one of your cottages since there are no guests.”
It sounded like the beginning of a mystery novel — The Body on the Beach. Amazingly, this fellow had survived 24 hours in the water.
We got the fisherman set up in Cottage No. 2, and tried to contact St. Thomas by VHF radio to report that he had been found. All that accomplished was that the resident immigration officer on Jost van Dyke contacted us to say that the man should be checked out because it appeared that he had come into the BVI from the U.S., across the international border. He would be coming over from Great Harbour to interview the “casualty.”
About two in the morning, the officer showed up with a small entourage of one policeman and two bleary-eyed residents to investigate this refugee. Sitting in the cottage by the light of a lantern, they grilled him. Apparently, his fishing boat had failed to outrun the storm and had sunk. He had been floating for nearly 24 hours with his personal flotation device. He bumped into one of the private mooring balls in White Bay and held on for his life. After a long while, he saw a dim light and doggie-paddled to shore.
The guy gave his name and the name of the boat he was on. He said he was a U.S. citizen but had no identification. We gave him some of my clothes. “Don’t let him leave the island until we can check him out,” said the officer after directing a pointless series of questions at the man, who was exhausted and disoriented from his ordeal.
Thanks to VHF chatter, word got to the U.S. Coast Guard that a citizen was in need of rescue, and someone decided he should be taken to a hospital. So the next morning, a Coast Guard rescue copter from St. Thomas came to pick him up. Without enough beach space to land on, the helicopter hovered over the shallow waters and lowered a crewman and a rescue basket. The crewman came ashore and told the victim that he would be taken to a hospital. “Whatever you do,” the guy begged, “don’t make me go back into the water. It’s too scary for me now.”
Unfortunately, he had no choice. The only way to complete the pickup was to pull the victim into the water and then into the dangling basket to be hauled up into the copter. With that, we waved goodbye. Arriving on the scene just as the copter flew away, the local immigration officer dashed over and told us that the victim had not been properly documented. Alas, he was too late. Fortunately, we were not blamed, as shore landowners are not responsible for patrolling their beachfront.
The immigration officer said, “You know, we have had three storms in about twelve days, and many are saying that this all started when you arrived.” He had a point. To pull his leg, Debby found an old “For Sale” sign and posted it on the palm tree in front of the bar.
Since our propane refrigeration had started without a hitch, Debby and I toasted Hurricane Marilyn’s demise with a cold beer, and bought beers all around for the investigating entourage.
You can buy Soggy Dollar Daze from Amazon at www.amazon.com/Soggy-Dollar-Daze-Decade-Paradise/dp/B0H8X5FZLH?
