Forget everything you know about Caribbean memoirs. This isn't about finding yourself on a beach with a rum punch. This is about the last wild frontier of the 1980s, when Antigua was still raw and real, when windsurfing was exploding into the world's consciousness, and when a couple of young Americans could build a sandcastle empire on an empty beach with nothing but a dream built on trade winds.
If "Surfing the Interstates" was about escaping across America with a thumb and a guitar, "Sahara Dust" is about what happens when you finally stop running and decide to build something spectacular in the most unlikely place on earth—with the woman you dreamed of in the southwest desert.
The Vision Becomes Real
Remember that hallucinatory moment at the end of "Surfing the Interstates"? When fasting and exhausted, Andre saw boats, ocean, and a woman "who moves like water." That desert prophecy becomes flesh and blood in “Sahara Winds” when he meets Thea—zestful, funny, fearless Thea who can navigate by stars, swim like a dolphin, and laugh at disaster.
Picture this: 1982. Jolly Beach, Antigua. Nearly deserted despite a brand new 460-room, two-story adobe-style mega resort. Few have discovered this place yet. The perfectly flat waters that would make it the ideal location for teaching the fast-growing sport of windsurfing are still a secret. Enter two windsurfing-obsessed Americans who see what nobody else can see—that this massive, pristine stretch of white sand is about to become the Caribbean star of the International Windsurfer School System.
A Love Story Written in Salt and Sand
This isn't just about building a business—it's about two people creating a life so intertwined with wind and water that they end up getting blown away themselves. Watch them teach together, her patience balancing his intensity. See them navigate hurricane prep as a choreographed dance. Witness the private moments between lessons when they'd steal away, just the two of them traveling to St. Barts, Barbados and St. Martin.
Seven years of waking up to trade winds and each other. Seven years of inside jokes with British aristocrats and Antiguan fishermen. Seven years of building something extraordinary while the rest of the world thinks you've disappeared.
The Cast of Characters You Won't Believe Are Real
Meet Patrick Scales, philosopher-entrepreneur who names his glass-bottom boat "You Burn, I Earn" and drops wisdom like “De higher de mountain, de cooler de breeze - de younger de couple, de tighter de squeeze.” while navigating both tourist dollars and the wilder side of Caribbean commerce.
Meet Normandy and Shines—two young Antiguan men who become not just employees but surrogate sons, with Normandy's athletic charisma earning him a reputation for "banging everything that moves" and Shines' inimitable wit ordering "Adam's Ale" when short on USD.
The Celebrity Circus
Watch Bob Dylan shuffle through the airport in an anorak while his black model companion struts in white patent leather thigh-high boots.
Learn to windsurf alongside Vanessa Redgrave, who insists on going out in impossible conditions while her James Bond boyfriend (Timothy Dalton) watches from shore.
Imagine seeing a table for 12 set on the terrace at the Lord Nelson Beach Hotel for Keith Richards and his friends, and Christopher Cross slipping away unnoticed from his single room.
Witness the transformation of sleepy Antigua into a playground for rock stars, actors, and international jet-setters who all want to learn the new sport that's capturing the world's imagination.
The Adventures
The legendary Windsurfing Antigua Week that Andre and Thea organize with seven hotels, each of the seven races named for the resort it ended at, where a score of daring sailors become the first to complete the challenging circumnavigation. The 26-mile Montserrat channel crossing that novice Heinz Diehl undertook on a whim, inspiring Andre to organize it into an annual event. Hurricane Gloria bearing down while they board up the Lord Nelson Beach Hotel with plywood from their own windsurf equipment shed. The F2 photoshoot that puts Windsurfing Antigua on the international map.
The Intrigue
Let's just say that in 1980s Antigua, not every boat heading out at night was going fishing, not every small plane landing was carrying tourists, and the line between legitimate business and Caribbean reality was... fluid. When your little beach operation sits between international waters and a hotel full of interesting characters, you see things. You learn when to look away. You discover that paradise has its own rules.
Why This Story Now
"Sahara Dust" captures a moment that can never happen again—when the Caribbean was still wild, when you could build a business on a handshake, when an empty beach could become an international destination through sheer will and perfect wind. It's about the last generation who could genuinely disappear into an adventure and emerge transformed.
This is the Antigua nobody writes about anymore—not the cruise ship destination or the luxury resort island, but the raw, hilarious, complicated place where locals and expats collided in spectacular ways, where you could eat fresh barracuda for breakfast (if you were brave enough to risk ciguatera) and where every sunset painted by actual Sahara dust crossing the Atlantic felt like a promise that tomorrow would be even wilder.
While "Surfing the Interstates" asked what happens when you run from everything, "Sahara Dust" asks: what happens when you stop running and try to build paradise with someone who makes you believe in tomorrow? What does it cost? What do you become? And why do the best adventures always happen on borrowed time?
Coming Soon
The party's about to begin. The trade winds are picking up. And somewhere in the Caribbean, a beach is waiting to tell its story of two people who turned a desert vision into seven years of magic.
Andre de Saint Phalle taught windsurfing to hundreds of adventurers in Antigua during the 1980s, including members of British aristocracy, international celebrities, and anyone else brave enough to trust the wind. He's still processing what those years meant.