Tamarin sailing
Hurricanes can be devastating and disastrous. Over the years Whitey and I have had our share of disasters, most (but not all) from hurricanes. Each one is a story of it’s own.
One year, we thought we were being prudent by getting out of the Virgin Islands by early July and heading south for hurricane season. It was 1996 when we scheduled a charter in the St. Martin and St Barth’s region for the first two weeks of July. We were then planning on heading straight to the island of Grenada that is south of the hurricane belt.
The previous year, Hurricane Marilyn in September, 1995 had done tremendous damage to our charter catamaran, Tamarin of Tortola. The complete rebuilding of Tamarin in 4 months is another story. However, with insurance and the hard work of us, friends and the boat yard in Tortola, we were back in business by the end of January, 1996.
It was 1978, I had hitchhiked across the South Pacific on other peoples boats and was living in San Francisco. I met some backpackers from Denmark who were on their way to Peru, South America. They had heard from other backpackers that the Incas have a Sun Festival called Inti Raymi that only happens every 300 years. It sounded so cool and what an opportunity if it only happened every 300 years! I was working and saving to continue my trip to England.
