It was a balmy night in the Windward Isles. Warm sea breezes were rattling the
palm trees and the sky was a crowded metropolis of stars. Lying in my
hammock, I was thinking about Chinese philosophers. situation: marooned on
an island with three beautiful girls. Good thing or bad? Do dreams deceive
us? Are the Chinese right when they curse people by saying, ‘May you get
what you wish for’?
I felt I was groping towards a resolution of some of these metaphysical issues
when the girls arrived for aperitifs on a wave of wafty dresses and brown
limbs and girly fragrances, throwing all serious thought into disarray. I
tried to put it to them, over the margaritas, that fulfilment was a
dangerous thing.
“Too much sun,” the Blonde said. “Exactly,” I said. “Like Icarus flying too
high.” “No, you,” the Redhead said. “You are as pink as a gay coming-out
party.”
“I love fulfilment,” said the Italian, unwinding her infinite legs from the
horizontal. “So let’s eat.”
We were on Petit St Vincent, a private island in the Grenadines. Forty years
ago, it was a dream that began, as do so many good ideas, over a couple of
beers. Demobbed from the US air force in the early 1960s, Haze Richardson
went for a drink with his flying buddy. It was one of those moments when
life pauses long enough for you to see the future with some clarity. Ahead
lay the office job, the mortgage, the suburbs — what Zorba the Greek would
have called the full catastrophe.
Haze’s friend began to talk about his dream of buying a boat. After a couple
more beers, they were deep in la-la land. There would be tropical islands,
rustling palms and dusky maidens. They would be pirates in their own
Caribbean drama.
The next morning, they realised that it hadn’t just been the beer talking. And
so, in early 1963, the two young men sold everything they had to buy a 77ft
schooner. After a couple of months of scraping and painting, they set sail
for the Caribbean. Picking up charter business out of Grenada, the two
buddies were living the dream.
It is the way of things that one bold decision can lead to another. One of
their first clients expressed an interest in buying an island, and asked the
two young men to let him know if they came upon any likely candidates. In
the Windward Islands, they dropped anchor in the bay of Petit St Vincent, a
small, pristine island inhabited only by grazing goats. They persuaded the
owner to sell to their client, and one of the Caribbean’s most idyllic
resorts was born.
PSV, as it is known to everyone, is the southernmost outpost of St Vincent and
the Grenadines, a string of small islands scattered across 1,500 square
miles of ocean. It is one of the sleepier corners of the West Indies; this
is the Caribbean as it was 20 years ago. The seclusion and beauty of these
islands has made them a favourite of yachties. It has also made them a
favourite of celebrities. Mustique is one of the Grenadines, barely 25 miles
from PSV as the laughing gull flies.
Unlike Mustique, PSV is a private island, a self-contained world with a single
resort of only 22 cottages. The island has no towns, no roads, no shops. The
resort has no formal check-in and no room keys, no disco and no activities
calendar. It is effortlessly luxurious, but without any of the gizmos so
beloved of most five-star resorts. The emphasis here is on escape. The
cottages have no satellite dishes, no plasma screens, no broadband, not even
a telephone. If you want room service, you raise the yellow banner on the
bamboo pole outside your cottage. If you want privacy, you raise the red one.
Without all the clutter and distraction of the modern world, PSV slips easily
into anyone’s dream of a tropical island retreat — the sea, the tumble of
waves, the night sky packed with stars, the slow rhythms of lazy days. In
the cottages, the bedside tables have star maps and seashell guides. Their
terraces have sun loungers and hammocks, and stone steps down to private
stretches of beach. Each cottage is carefully screened from its neighbours.
There are only 22 on an island of more than 113 acres, bounded by two miles
of beach. Dream islands must never be crowded.
I HAD only met the girls on the plane. Arriving in Barbados on the same flight
from England, we had made the connection to Union Island on the kind of
aeroplane that took Ingrid Bergman away from Humphrey Bogart. By the time we
got to PSV, the coincidence of our shared odyssey from the Heathrow
departure lounge had made us companions.
I ran the fitness track every morning with the Blonde, through the cool forest
at the northern end of the island. I played tennis with the Redhead, who
overcame my net play with a series of cross-court passing shots. I went
diving with the Italian, in a world of fish so bizarre, I wondered for a
moment if I were dreaming. Together, we had picnic lunches on a sand bar
whose sole structure was a sun umbrella, cocktails every evening in one of
our cottages and candlelit dinners on the restaurant terrace overlooking the
moonlit bay.
Haze invited us for drinks one evening in his hilltop house. In his unassuming
way, he was lord of the manor. After Haze had arranged the purchase of PSV
for his boat client, he spent 2½ years clearing the land and building the
resort before becoming its manager. His buddy slipped away in pursuit of
another wild dream — marriage — and, a couple of decades on, Haze exercised
his option of buying the island from his former client. His own dream of
owning a tropical island paradise had come true.
TO MEET one man who has fulfilled his dreams is mildly annoying. To meet two
begins to be downright irritating. In the bar one evening, we found Jeff
Stevens, a well-weathered Englishman from the Isle of Wight. He was a marine
nomad. He hadn’t lived in a house, he confessed, for 25 years.
For much of his life, Jeff had nurtured a dream of building a traditional
wooden boat. The Jambalaya, a 73ft island schooner, was his dream come true.
She lay at anchor, looking like something out of a rum advert — idyllic
Caribbean bay, idyllic boat at anchor, idyllic girls drinking rum to the
tinkle of ice and laughter.
Jeff had the boat and I, so to speak, had the girls. He invited us along the
following day for a sail to the Tobago Cays, a group of five deserted
islands that lay on our eastern horizon, and we stepped happily into our own
rum advert. The girls were a perfect fit. I wasn’t sure I would have made
the casting cut.
We scudded across the waves on a gentle southeasterly. The ocean shaded from
deep blue to turquoise. Beneath us lay some of the finest coral reefs in the
Caribbean. The castaway scenes for Pirates of the Caribbean — when Johnny
Depp is marooned with Keira Knightley — were shot on these palm-studded
beaches. I liked to think I knew how Johnny felt.
We slipped over the side to swim with sea turtles that sailed through
fractured sunlight above undulating beds of sea grass. Back on board, the
girls stretched out like mermaids on the deck.
“Tough assignment,” Jeff said, nodding towards the sunbathing girls.
“Jeff,” I said, “I can’t lie to you. It is disturbing my equilibrium.”
I was beginning to think things couldn’t get better until, one evening in the
bar, the girls embarked on a series of cocktail experiments. After a second
fiery rocket, the Blonde suggested skinny-dipping. “Race you to the beach,”
the Redhead said. I set a pace that would have made Linford Christie seem
sluggish. When the girls arrived, they stripped off and waded into the warm,
moonlit sea. Perhaps I had died and gone to heaven. What is certain is that
I should have written down the recipe for those fiery rockets, because I
couldn’t remember it the next morning.
Stanley Stewart travelled as a guest of Petit St Vincent and British Airways
Travel details: seven nights on Petit St Vincent (00 1 954 963 7401, www.psvresort.com)
start at £1,085pp, full-board, in low season (April to August), rising to
£1,687pp in high season. Flights are not included. British Airways (0870
850 9850, www.ba.com) runs
services from Gatwick to Barbados, from £531; from there, fly to Union
Island with Grenadine Airways (www.grenadineairways.com;
from £180), then transfer by motor launch. If you’d prefer a package, ITC
Classics (01244 355 550, www.itcclassics.co.uk)
has seven nights from £2,198pp, full-board, including flights. Or try
Caribbean Expressions (020 7433 2610, www.expressionsholidays.co.uk)
or Carrier (0161 491 7620, www.carrier.co.uk).
Half-day dives cost £30 (www.grenadinesdive.com).
A day sail on the Jambalaya (www.windwardschooner.com
) costs £90pp, including lunch and drinks; an overnight trip for up to 6
people is £865.
Five more private-island hideaways
A HOTEL on a private island is a little world of its own — but it needn’t cost
the earth. Here’s our pick of the hideaways.
FUNZI KEYS, KENYA
Just off the Kenyan coast, close to the Tanzanian border, Funzi Keys has just
nine stone-and-thatch cottages on the bone-whitest of beaches. Audley (01993
838500, www.audleytravel.com)
has seven nights from £1,875, full-board, including flights via Mombasa.
ISLAND HIDEAWAY, MALDIVES
Opened in August 2005, Island Hideaway is cut adrift at the northern tip of
the Maldives on Dhonakulhi island, a mile-long, beach-fringed crescent moon
lapped by a waist-deep cobalt lagoon. With 43 thatched villas, the resort
has a superb house reef, dive centre and spa. Western & Oriental (0870
499 0677, www.westernoriental.com)
has seven nights from £1,520, B&B, including flights via Malé.
QUILALEA ISLAND, MOZAMBIQUE
Hidden away on an 85-acre island on the Quirimbas archipelago, off northern
Mozambique, this is a malaria-free resort with nine stone-and-thatch villas
overlooking the Indian Ocean, an excellent Padi dive centre and bountiful
reefs. Expert Africa (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com)
has seven nights for £2,299, full-board, including flights via Dar es Salaam.
BOUNTY ISLAND, FIJI
Fiji is littered with low-budget backpacker private-island resorts, but Bounty
Island (00 679 666 6999, www.fiji-bounty.com),
in the Mamanuca chain, is more “chill out” than “party on”. Accommodation
ranges from £12.50 per night in a 20-bed dorm to £79pp per night in a
beachfront burefor two; meals cost £13 per day. Fly with Air New Zealand
(0800 028 4149, www.airnewzealand.co.uk);
from about £700.
WILSON ISLAND, AUSTRALIA
A five-acre coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef, Wilson has six designer tents
overlooking a crystal sea, with some of the best snorkelling and diving on
the planet. Turtles nest in the pristine sands, humpback whales pass by from
June to October. Bridge & Wickers (020 7483 6555, www.bridgeandwickers.co.uk)
has five nights from £897, room-only, and flights from £665.
