This piece was written by Noel and is a short excerpt from a longer chapter in our first memoir, Of Foreign Build. What follows is a pared-back version of the story, shared as a taste rather than the whole meal. The full account, with all its detours and details, lives in the book.
A Tender Moment in a House of Ill Repute
We reached Barbados just in time for New Year’s Eve, the Atlantic still humming through us. Two weeks later, Den, my Dutch mate, and I were working six days a week in the back shed of a Bridgetown brothel, building a dinghy from scratch.
The shed was open to the street and commentary came free.
“Hey mon, whatcha doin?”
“Makin’ a dinghy.”
“You gonna fibreglass dat thing?”
This played on repeat. As the timber slowly began to resemble a boat, the laughter grew. What we saw as fair lines, the locals saw as a beer cooler waiting to happen.
Golden Smile
The place was run by a towering man with a smile made for advertising and enough gold to make your eyes water. He welcomed us warmly, warned us not to trust anyone, and mentioned, almost as an aside, that the place had been closed for a year after a murder. There was a reopening party planned for Saturday. We promised to be gone by Friday afternoon.
The need for a dinghy was recent and painful. On New Year’s night, after a lapse in attention and a rising swell, our faithful little boat was torn apart on a concrete wharf. We watched the remains drift off in the moonlight and wished each other a thin Happy New Year.
Madam!
Finding materials, transport, and a place to build took a week of rattling bus rides and borrowed lifts. It was ‘Tash who finally asked the woman behind the corrugated fence if we could use the shed out back. The woman was the Madam. She said yes and let us lock our tools in her hallway.
The timber resisted every curve. Honduras Pine looks cooperative but is not. One morning I arrived to find one of the girls being hosed down naked in the yard. I focused on a sign about no credit and no guns and waited for my eyes to recover.
This was not the cruising life of palm trees and cold drinks. It was heat, sawdust, scavenging, and the odd feeling that all your tools were under the care of someone who might also own a firearm.
On Friday evening we launched PJ II at sunset, barely dry and only primed. The next day our boat became a workshop and Jackie and I finished her properly.
Built in Barbados, in a brothel, by an Australian and a Dutchman, PJ II draws looks. People point. Kids want one. The green fenders cut from swimming floats help.
But here is the quiet win. Shiny new dinghies vanish every season in the Caribbean. Ours will not. If the glue holds and the timber behaves, PJ II will take us home.
She cost two hundred dollars and a bouquet of flowers for the Madam.
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