Whatever floats your boat Elspeth Duncan Published: Monday, December 1, 2014 Tobago Peeps An early-morning double rainbow lights up the slate grey sky. Following it to its end, I arrive at Turtle Beach. There, the multi-coloured double arch spans the horizon, its stillness and luminosity contrasting with the dark skies and unusually rough waters. A hotel guest wearing exercise gear walks along the sand, headphones in ears. Her face looks peaceful. I surmise that she’s listening to relaxing music or some kind of inspirational talk. More fishing boats than usual lie together on the beach. They have been pulled up to shore owing to rough-sea bulletins. Their names, painted in multi-colours, echo the rainbow: Jah Knows. Vagina. Who is Next. Whatever. Casper. Parrotfish. Whenever I see names on boats, I wonder about the story behind them. I take a picture, greet a nearby fisherman and ask: “Who owns this boat?” “He does be over in Plymouth,” he says, adding casually: “Lots of people does come and take pictures of Vagina.” However, the owner of Vagina is nowhere around. Some days later, I converse with Kester Jerry, a diver and artist from Parlatuvier, who is working on his boat, Parrotfish. He tells me that he has been “on this side” for the past three weeks and is missing Parlatuvier and its peaceful rural seaside atmosphere. However, there is a reason for his being at Turtle Beach. There he has access to a boat trailer, electricity, and “most of the guys who help repair boats are up here.” His aim is to have his boat looking good. As an artist, his specialty is calabash arts and crafts—for example, calabash purses, lampshades and jewelry, sometimes using semi-precious stones “like haematite.” With the help of his girlfriend/“captain,” Verina Earheart, whom I also meet, Kester runs Parrotfish for diving and night fishing. “Parrotfish used to be Danny Boy before,” he tells me, referring to the fact that he had purchased this particular boat from someone else. He explains that he renamed it Parrotfish because of the significance that word holds for him and his girlfriend/captain. “Whenever we’re together and she’s drifting or I’m drifting, we would say to each other, ‘A parrotfish for your thoughts.’” His former boat, Make Way, which was bigger than Parrotfish, had that name when he purchased it and, even though not his choice of appellation, it still had meaning for him: “Get out of the way. I’m coming.” Some of the boat owners are not around at the time, but Kester knows snippets of some of the stories behind the names. “Mainly people name their boat for whatever,” he says. I ask him about the boat nearby, which is actually called Whatever. It was named by a fisherman who often uses that phrase with the attitude of brushing off something that he’s not going to take on: “Whatever …” The next afternoon, “Diver,” the owner of the boat named Vagina, is there to do work on his vessel, which he uses when he goes diving, mainly for lobsters. I ask him what inspired the name. “I don’t know if you will want to put this,” he says with humble respect, “but I hold women in very high esteem. I had my boat refurbished and, when it was done, it looked so beautiful, I could think of no other name. The vagina is the most beautiful-looking thing in the world.” The afternoon sun is sinking. Silhouetted fishermen clamber all over their boats, painting, scraping, drilling. Hotel guests stroll along the sand and lounge on deck chairs. Four young men laugh loudly as massive incoming waves tumble them to shore. Source:: Trinidad Guardian The post Whatever floats your boat appeared first on Trinidad & Tobago Online. #trinidad
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 04:08:26 +0000
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