1979
Turning Point
At the end of a day's charter Nino and Elaine, our french friends, motored into the lagoon and anchored in their usual place not far from the yacht club dock. As they made ready to ferry the guests ashore, a dinghy pulled alongside and a young revolutionary jumped aboard, rifle in hand. He insisted on searching the boat, finding nothing suspicous of course. As he made to leave, he threw his rifle down into the dinghy tethered alongside. As it landed, the old Lee Enfield .303 went off. There were some fifteen guests on board the thirty-five foot boat at the time. Nino was alone in the cabin below as the bullet exploded through the hull in the galley area, smashed through a stack of plates next to the sink, before hitting him in the thigh. Incredibly, its energy expended by the thick glass fibre hull and the dinner plates, the bullet bounced off our lucky frenchmen leaving a spectacular bruise.
Kim had arrived back at the dock at around the same time and we were tidying up after the days guests had departed, when the shot rang out across the harbour. My father jumped into Kim's dinghy and rushed out to Nino's boat. With the large number of guests aboard it seemed that someone had to have been hurt. Grabbing the rifle off the stunned young soldier and checking the breech it was obvious that the inexperienced youth had gone aboard a crowded yacht with his gun fully loaded and ready to fire.
Having recovered from his intial shock, Nino was furious, to say the least, unleashing a formidable torrent of very colorful french. Having seen the guests safely ashore and back to their hotels he went after the revolutionary government with murder in his eyes. If I recall correctly, he went straight to the top and called on the rebel leaders at the overthrown capital building. He marched right up there and demanded that his boat be repaired in full and that he be compensated for his loss of revenue. And he was too, not wishing any international outcry, the boat was promptly hauled out, the holes filled in and the hull completely repainted at the expense of the Cuban backed rebels.
This and other smaller incidents made it clear that the situation in Grenada had become to unstable to continue operating a tourist business. The safety of the paying guests was no longer assured. Perhaps it was time to move on. The truth of the matter was that our parents had been thinking it was time to get us kids into a decent school system before we lost any remaining chance to re-integrate.
I was then about twelve and pretty much a hell raiser. I got into trouble at nearly every opportunity. My sister was a sixteen year old blonde... an early developer and getting into trouble at every opportunity. My brother was fifteen going on thirty and not getting into enough trouble. Yes, it was time.
My knowledge of the actual plan is vague to say the least, seems it must have been discussed after I went to bed or something. It involved sailing away from Grenada and ending up either in a place called New Zealand or another place called Canada. I didn't really know much about them as I had never left the Caribbean since I had arrived ten years before, and all my school taught me was the map of Grenadines.
Nino had also decided to stop chartering and had some friends visiting from France, a father and his two young daughters. He wore a long flowing white cotton robe which ballooned out as he rasied his arms from his side. We called him JC because he looked like Jesus. He seemed a bit odd. But he said he wanted to buy our boat!
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