'Irma was rough. I felt like I was in a survival movie, man. I Fish were spinning right on up the street, the sea surged forward and a lot of boats got destroyed. There was no water, no electricity. I had chosen to keep a watch over my family’s house, but the windows were gone, there was nothing left in the kitchen – the wind had blown it all away.’
Grand Harbour on Jost Van Dyke
a marooned speedboat and stripped hillside
Skipper Glenroy Johnson.
Yacht skipper Glenroy Johnson recalls 6 September 2017, when the eye of a cataclysmic storm hit the British Virgin Islands. Irma was the strongest hurricane ever to gather over the Atlantic and smash against the Caribbean, with sustained wind speeds of 185mph and gusts up to 220mph. Nine out of ten homes on Tortola – the largest of the British Virgin Islands – were damaged or ruined. ‘Afterwards, the islands were dried completely brown,’ says Glenroy.
‘I wouldn’t have wished what happened on my worst enemy.’ In the months since, greenery has started to return amid the mangled remains of trees on the hillsides. Skippers such as Glenroy are in business again – ironically, as travellers are drawn back here by the wind. Before Irma’s impact, steady winds and peaceful waters gave the British Virgin Islands a reputation as one of the world’s greatest sailing destinations.
‘The drilling of roofs being reattached is overlaid with the bleating of a goat and the creaking of a hammock’
TORTOLA TO JOST VAN DYKE
The history of the British Virgin Islands has been shaped by winds both wild and fair. Trade winds irst carried Christopher Columbus here during the late 15th century. A hundred years later, British privateers including Sir Francis Drake used the islands as a base for plundering Spanish colonial shipping. By the early 18th century, the pirate Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach was lurking in far-spread coves, and slaves were shipped from Africa in their thousands. The slaves farmed the sugar cane and cotton that helped to build the wealth of the British Empire, and set down roots for many of today’s 30,000 residents.
Aboard a gleaming new catamaran, Star Eyes, Glenroy and I head for the shallows of Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke, named after a Dutch pirate who settled here in the 17th century. The drilling of roofs being reattached is overlaid with the sounds of waves lapping against a jetty, the bleating of a goat and the creaking of a hammock beneath a shade tree. From a beach shack where cats loll in the warmth, the rich chuckle of Philicianno ‘Foxy’ Callwood can also be heard.
Foxy’s Tamarind Bar is famed for its owner’s uniltered humour, and as a source of Painkillers – the locally invented rum/pineapple/coconut/ nutmeg cocktail that, trust me, is a dangerous choice when you’re jet-lagged. The bar was ferociously damaged by the gusts and storm surge brought by Irma. ‘I was damn scared – but I count myself lucky,’ says Foxy, his bare feet digging in the coral sand. ‘I opened my irst bar in ’68, over 50 years ago. It was primitive! My family has been here for seven generations, and I ain’t going no place now.’ He hands over his phone, to play a video of him singing a calypso song to Sir Richard Branson, the owner of nearby Necker Island. The lyrics cast un-PC aspersions against a character named Irma (sample lines: ‘How do I know? Cause she liked to blow!’).