HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
Dougie Brookes first experience with wood and water was launching a matchstick in the street drain outside his house on Fort Street around age five... his Mom says. He graduated to crude boat shapes with off cuts of balsa from Uncle Sonny Skerritt’s model aeroplane building and flying hobby. Despite his being surrounded by model planes, he stuck to boats.
His first "serious" boat construction and sea adventure was at age fourteen when he tied together 4 or 5 small tree trunks, cut down from the hills around Beanfield, Vieux Fort in St.Lucia. This craft, with Captain Brookes in command, was paddled out to uninhabited "Maria Island" where he spent several hours exploring.
MISHAP AT SEA...
On return to the mainland, with total disregard for drift and tide, he and his craft was swept across the reef with the bottom of the vessel suffering the same fate as his "bottom". Thanks to Uncle John who, with the entire Vieux Fort Police and Fire Brigade was waiting ashore, having been notified of the trip by some nosey person.
DB's sailing took a more organized and solid aspect in Grenada at the Grenada Yacht Club with it’s Sunday Regattas in GP 14, Tornados and Flying Dutchmen. This is where he learned to sail and race. He took part especially in the Easter Regattas between Grenada, Trinidad and Barbados every year.
One of his many jobs after school was running groups of divers to collect exotic fish for export to the UK. This entailed using the 30ft. sailboat of the owner to visit the various dive sites. He sailed her single-handed to Trinidad and back during that time.
His job as Captain of one of Spronk’s first Cats built in St.Maarten was his first introduction to big Cats and he never looked back.
STUCK ON A REEF...
One night on a approach to Hilsbourough, Carriacou, he sailed her onto the reef surrounding Sandy Island. After a trip from Sandy Island across to Carriacou in a half deflated rubber dinghy, 2:00am in the morning paddling with Evelyn to summon help, and returning at daybreak with half the Carriacou fishermen, the Cat was pulled off the reef minus her two bottoms - this time with no similar experience to h'is bottom'. After describing the damage to Spronk via telephone, he was told that repair was out of the question. He was then told, “ Well now. Since you know how to wreck them. Would you like to learn how to build them?" And, that is how DB became a boat builder and for the first time in his life found his own "direction".
BEGINNING TO BUILD...
While working with Spronk and learning boat construction and design, he sailed the northern Caribbean with spronk on a few Trade Wind Races. He also single-handedly build a 50 foot Spronk design Cat with which he started a Charter Company. It was used for day chartering to St. Barths. This vessel took first place in one Trade Wind race.
The sale of Zwana, that 50 foot cat, took him to St. Kitts to design and build his first Cat, Eagle. Eagle went on to win four Heineken Regattas, three Offshore races to Nevis and Back and the Conch shell Regatta in St. Croix. In between racing Eagle chartered to St. Barths, did one single handed trip to Nevis and back and took her down to Barbados and Grenada.
Towards the end of owning "Brookes Boats Company" in St. Kitts - where he built many large ocean going cats, Doug delivered a 65ft, Brookes Boats Cat to Malta in the Med, spending a month there with the owner sailing around Sicily in the Mid Sea Race.
LAUNCHING FORTRESS MARINE...
DB's latest sailing exploits have been putting together a motley crew of friends and racing a Beneteau 50 in the Heineken Regatta, winning his class three times before returning to St. Kitts to start it all over again with the founding of Fortress Marine.
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