Capt. Lou Boudreau

In the winter of 1975, we sailed the 138-foot Herreshoff schooner Janeen (now the Mariette) to the Grenadines.

At age 17 I joined the schooner Bluenose II as a deckhand when she was off St. Lucia in the West Indies.

On a sunny morning in May 1958, north of the British Virgin Islands, a school of dolphins played under the bowsprit of a large sailing vessel. The ship rolled gently on the blue Atlantic, and her bow wave gurgled and hissed under her figurehead.

The Virgin Islands lie just east of Puerto Rico, stretching some 40 miles from the west end of St. Thomas to the wreck-strewn reefs off Anegada.