Why They Go So Fast

The owner of this painting is Steve Callahan, who spent 76 days crossing the Atlantic on a life raft and hence wrote the spellbinding best-seller “Adrift.” Steve is a talented amateur artist and a yacht designer. The painting is far nicer than this unfortunately off-color digital image on the website. It is framed in plaited straw mats from the straw market beneath the Ficus tree in George Town, Exuma. This straw was plaited by “Izona” Rolle, who is the unquestioned fastest and best straw-weaver on the island. She plaits straw by the fathom, and will cut you a deal, and indeed will plait all night practically in her sleep–if she likes you. She likes the artist.

The yacht depicted is one of Art’s favorites, the incredibly beautiful “Running Tide”, originally built by Rupert Knowles and “cut” (meaning much altered) by Rupert’s grand-nephew Mark Knowles of Mangrove Bush. There are sixteen men and boys aboard, most of them out on the pry. Late evening, April 26, 1999, off Volleyball Beach, Stocking Island.