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Presents BUILDERS OF TORTOLA |
Andrew Kimberley Clayton Born in Scarboro, Yorkshire, Kim now lives on Luck Hill, with his wife Christine Cass. As a teenager he joined the British Merchant Navy and traveled the worlds, but was made redundant in the early 1980s (along with 25,000 others) in an economic downtown.
After applying for several jobs he saw an advert for Windjammer Barefoot Cruises and sent in a job application. After hearing nothing for six months he was told to be in Antigua in two weeks. Thus in September 1984 he entered the yachting fraternity as Second Mate of the Mandalay tall ship going from Antigua to Grenada. After ten months on this ship he was transferred to The Flying Cloud and landed on Tortola on the first of June 1985.
He was Captain of The Flying Cloud until August 1986 when he resigned. After a break ashore in Tortola he started work on chartered sail boats and also worked part-time at Blue water Divers. After almost sailing off to Australia with a friend he settled in for the long haul with Blue Water Divers. He became a Dive Master in 1987 and was full-time from 1988. He met Christine Cass on Boxing Day 1991, thus ensuring his stay in Tortola. He retired on May 1st 2005.
He has seen major changes in his twenty odd years in the BVI. There has been a great increase in the number and variety of peoples in the BVI. Construction has boomed, and traffic has increased. These are all, of course, different facets of the same process. When he arrived there were a lot of poor cars on poor roads. Now Tortola is characterized by luxury four-wheel drive vehicles.
Diving has also changed – although perhaps not so dramatically! “It just costs more”. In part because there is better and more expensive equipment. But you can now do the “theoretical stuff” on line, and get books, videos and DVDs on the Internet. However, the practical stuff still has to be done in the water. Face to face teaching. In theory it is now a much safer form of recreation, with dive computers, and re-breathers and other modern pieces of equipment. Certification is now necessary. As regulation has increased (improved?) the dive business has become more difficult with anchoring difficulties, mooring buoys, and fees for use of National Parks, all making life more complicated.
Kim sees many of the changes as just that – changes rather than progress. He preferred it when Tortola was “more sleepy” with “some” tourists. Like many other ‘Builders’, Kim was attracted here by conditions that no longer prevail. And ironically he also had a hand in making the changes. But we do now get fresh produce more easily and other foods and goods are more readily available. There were a few bars now there are many. Like others he sees a lot of challenges associated with more people, new architectural styles, cruise ships, increased building, and increases in numbers of cars and taxis. How these challenges are to be resolved remains unclear.
Draft as of December 11th, 2008
Builders of Tortola Guide