impact of ocean waves. Here a resort owner, receiving complaints
about mosquitoes, obtained government permission to dredge the har-
bor and construct a seawall (along with, eventually, five hundred villas).
“Because of removal of the mangroves, runoff from the hills sends
more sediment into the sea water,” Fuller notes. Hurricane Luis exac-
erbated the situation, delivering a massive pool of mud that filled in the
bay. Its waters have never been as clear since.
“Watch out for your hats,” Fuller says as we near Reads Point.
“These rolling swells, I’m gonna slow down, but expect a little drop as
we go over them.” Turning north up the Caribbean coast, we hurtle
past Antigua’s lone nude beach (“the only place the police turn a blind
eye to naturism”), pick up a few more passengers in St. John’s, and
continue on past Runaway Beach. The erosion I had witnessed stand-
ing on the shoreline with Ambassador Hurst is even more startling
when viewed from the sea.
Fuller shakes his head. Just south of where we had started out, he
says “the severe erosion isn’t just because of the sea and the bigger
groundswells we’ve been seeing in the wintertime. After the ’95 hurri-
cane pushed all the sand over into the swamp at Dark Wood Beach,
when it was still uninhabited, trucks took the sand away in a govern-
ment-sponsored mining operation. Then, at Pinchin Beach, the same
thing happened; this time, a local family who owns the land there
mined all the sand from behind the beach. This is when I wrote to the
Prime Minister, through Sir Ronald Saunders, to put a stop to it. It did
stop for a while pending an ‘investigation.’ As usual, nothing hap-
pened and sand was later mined quietly from the same beautiful
beach.”
Our cruise continues, with Fuller pointing out yachts that charter
for $20,000 a day, a resort where the rooms go for $2,400 a night, and
another hotel “whose gimmick is, they can have all 350 of their guests
on the water at the same time” on various types of sailing craft. The
new sport of kite surfing has recently made its debut. “Using a board
the size of a snowboard, essentially you’re sailing backwards and for-
wards using a kite to pull you,” Fuller explains. “Depending on how
you turn the kite, once you’re good it can lift you 25 or 30 feet in the
air, and you’re doing all kinds of flips and spins while you’re up there.”
68 Dick Russell