The Banana Log: From Dream to Disaster

For those who dream about distant tropical islands, armchair sailors or cruisers preparing the sail of a life time, the three parts of this book paint a colorful variety of small island countries, poor and rich, with as many cultures as there are islands. It tells of sailors and adventurers escaping a good job in an orderly civilization in exchange for the last reserves of freedom. It is not a tale of wild and daring ocean crossings but of the pains and pleasures of what should be a leisurely cruise in steady trade winds along palm-tree framed beaches and fuming volcanoes. The reader, like the crew of the “SeaLife”, is charmed into careless anchoring and diving in turquoise blue bays, encountering strange sea creatures while floating without gravity through colorful tropical reefs.

But behind the serine scene looms unpredictable violence. Gigantic underground powers that have erupted and destroyed whole towns in an instant, tropical storms that can drive boats on land and houses into the sea, lovely mountains that can cast off mudslides burying farms and roads, lightning storms, tornadoes, and rains that wash away soil and crops.

And the people that are shaped by either vicious or fertile nature and by a bizarre history of century-long battles are struggling to survive, fighting endless obstacles of modern civilization conflicting with the way things work in the islands. People that have inherited the leftovers from colonial powers now live between progress and failure. And still, ever since 1492, dreamers and adventurers are attracted by the illusion of paradise. But only those with stupid stubbornness, with skill, determination, and energy, succeed and they are the core of a slowly growing economy.

The cruise of the ketch SeaLife covers the whole chain of Caribbean islands from the Bahamas, close to Florida, to Grenada, only seventy nautical miles from Venezuela, South America. “Island hopping” among more than one thousand islands and dozens of Banana Republics faces dangers that the ocean passage maker does not have to worry about: Navigating among shoals and rocks, beating against the “thorny path” of head winds, dealing with bureaucracies of island officials and having repairs done by incompetent mechanics.

At first, unexpected weather delays and breakdowns allow adventurous excursions. But then the dream cruise becomes a race against time, trying to escape the hurricane zone before the hurricane season. And like so many island ventures, the dream cruise ends in disaster.