Monday, December 15, 2008

YoYo

I promised you a glimpse into YoYo's life here in St Barth's so here we
go...

We headed to St Barth's on the promise of a party. Ted knows a Jazz singer
Christine Gordon www.christinegordon.com who performs often in St Barth's.
She promised us a party and a performance, so we had no choice but to set
sail.

We sailed into St Barth's a few days ago, and started looking around for
YoYo, his son Gael and their friend Kareem (who I called Guy in a previous
post, because I could not recall his name; sorry). You may recall that Omar
killed Kareem's boat.

As we sailed in to the harbor, we had much to look at. First we sailed
circles around the Maltese Falcon super yacht) (Google it, you will be
amazed). We also swung by Emerson Fittipaldi's yacht "Pilar". Then as we
approached the inner harbor, we admired a house high on a precipice looking
back over the harbor entrance and admired the architecture stonework and
location of this villa, and we waved to the men on the deck who seemed to be
watching us sail in (obviously with envy).

We found a spot to anchor, and went in in search of either Christine or
YoYo. We found Christine right away and met her at Le Select and made plans
for the evening. At Le select, we asked the Bartender about YoYo, and he
pointed to the house on the precipice and told us that YoYo lived there! We
walked up and found that it was YoYo that was waving to us, and he had
recognized Madness.

The villa belongs to the guy who owns Bannister's wharf in Newport, and YoYo
is the live in caretaker. If you want, you can rent the villa (~$100k/week)
He took us up to the main house (there are 2 houses and 2 guest bungalows)
through the courtyard. As we walked across the teak deck, turtles started to
appear out of the hibiscus bushes moving toward us like little reptilian
zombies, moving slowly, but clearly heading toward us, inscrutable intent.

"Ah, these are my turtles, they come to me when they hear my footsteps! Pick
them a Hibiscus, they love to eat them" see pics. YoYo was justifiably proud
of his gardening, his herb garden with Ginger, mints, sage, thyme, etc. and
his naturally balanced fish pond above the infinity pool. No pumps, no
chemicals, just an ecologically balanced system, which I think is very hard
to do. We looked down on his 44' Jeanneau Sun ??? And Madness right below
the cliff.

YoYo showed us around the villa (more pics) and invited us back to his
apartment in the second house for refreshments where we once again met
Frederick and Sophie who lost their new catamaran on the delivery back to St
Barth's.

I can't remember whether I told you about them, I will go back and check. If
not, I will tell you about that tomorrow. I must go eat my croissant now.

BTW - we were invited to tour one of the superyachts today, and YoYo offered
us his car for the day. Nice!

ttyl