The Caribbean is in her blood – By Susan Mustapich – Rockland … – Courier

Cathy Hardy of Lincolnville has visited the Caribbean twice a year for more than 15 years. Early in November, she will pull up her deep roots in Maine, and move to St. Croix, where she plans to live year-round.

During an interview Oct. 14, Hardy took a break from packing to relax on a couch in her open-design living and dining room area. Pointing to a high stack of Caribbean Travel + Life magazines on the coffee table, she said, “If you flip to any page in any one of those, I’ve either been there, or it’s on my list of things to do.”

Hardy got to know the islands during many shore excursions, while traveling through the Caribbean on cruises. Her dream was to buy a vacation home where she would spend the winters, while continuing to work part-time in Maine.

“After I first visited different islands on a cruise, the ones I liked I later went back to and spent one to two weeks there, some, like St. Croix, over the course of multiple years. That’s how I really got to know more about each destination,” Hardy said. All of the places Hardy liked the best have at least one thing in common: excellent snorkeling, one of her favorite pastimes.

“The other thing I love in all the traveling is the people who you meet,” Hardy said. She read about Miguel who runs an excursion to an island called Prickly Pear, and then took an excursion and met him. “My friend dove for conch shells, and his wife made us a conch salad. I love conch; I could live on it,” she said.

For the past nine years, Hardy has traveled with her mother, Carole, who also enjoys the Caribbean. Hardy’s mother and father, who were high school sweethearts, married in Puerto Rico and lived there for two years, while her father was stationed at the Air Force base there and worked as an airplane mechanic. Her mother calls that time, during which Cathy was born, “a two-year honeymoon.”

“I spent the first 8 months of my life there, and I’ve always felt comfortable and at home down there.” Hardy is the only one of the four siblings who has ever visited the Caribbean. “My mother says, I have the Caribbean in my blood.”

During Hardy’s many years of travels, three areas rose to the top of her list of places to visit again, and again, Turks and Caicos, Roatan and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

St. Croix, one of three U.S. Virgin Islands, kept coming up all the time, she said. With her retirement budget in mind, it became clear the more expensive Turks and Caicos, would be the choice “if money were no object,” and St. Thomas and St. John were also out of her price range. Hardy, who has lived in Lincolnville for most of her life, liked the smaller scale of St. Croix, which is 28 miles long, 6 miles at its widest has a population of around 50,000, and two small cities on either end. While the population of Roatan is similar to St. Croix, and the island is popular with ex-patriots, it is larger and less developed, Hardy explained.

“The thing I really liked about St. Croix is it has a lot of the Caribbean culture, the ‘Mocko Jumbies’ stilt walkers, West Indian buffets, a boat parade,” she said. Hardy will live near the outskirts of the city of Christiansted, which has a harbor, boardwalk and shops that are lit up at night, “kind of like Camden,” Hardy said. At the Christmas boat parade, decorated and colorfully lighted boats fill the harbor.

She enjoys the wide geographical diversity of St. Croix. Travelling from end-to-end of the island, “you can get a mini-geography lesson,” she said. On the west end is an area with a rain forest, there are high, hilly areas, fields for farming, ocean and beach, and at the east end of the island a more arid, dry climate. “Kind of like Lincolnville’s mountains, ocean and beaches, but with 85-degree water and 80-degree temperatures year-round,” she said with a smile.

Hardy’s enthusiasm for St. Croix brings to mind her years as director of the Camden-Rockport Chamber of Commerce (later renamed the Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce), when she served as a booster of Camden, Rockport and the surrounding towns. Though she does not plan on working full-time once she arrives, she already has ideas about working part-time in the hospitality industry, whether at the front desk in a resort, leading tours around the island, or even guiding snorkeling excursions.

Hardy refers to the winter of 2014 as one “tipping point,” where the dream of a vacation home in the Caribbean began to change to one of living there full-time, with extended trips back to Maine to visit family in the fall.

“I’m one of those frugal people who hates to pay rent, and throw money away,” she said. While on a trip, she picked up a real estate flyer, and saw a condominium priced in the “high 60s. I thought about making an offer but didn’t,” Hardy said. However, she kept her eye on the property, and saw it sold for $57,000. At that point, she knew there were still good deals available.

“The other tipping point during that hard winter was watching Caribbean Life Sundays on HGTV,” Hardy said. “You’d see all these people, couples, singles, living there. People who went on vacation and decided to move there, and I started thinking, why couldn’t that be me?”

Hardy finally saw her opportunity when a condominium, which was part of an estate under probate, went on sale for under $70,000. The condominium is located in a “smaller complex” and is near a resort area and the city of Christiansted. And it is within a three-minute walk to the ocean, she said. Hardy closed on the property this February.

While she plans on living in St. Croix full-time, she is not selling her home in Lincolnville yet. She is renting it to the daughter of a friend for 18 months, and knows she has a place to come back to, in case she changes her mind.

Hardy is a planner, organizer and practical to her core, and is devoting each day to staging her move. Even so, she feels “there’s still a million things to do.” She will drive her Jeep to Florida, then ship it and some furniture to St. Croix. Her downstairs living space is completely packed, stacks of boxes are ready to go, and she is in contact with the property manager at her condominium complex, who is willing to pick them up for her. The tenant in her condo is leaving Nov. 1, and the condo will be cleaned. When she arrives, her furniture may not be there yet, so she will stay for three days in a neighbor and friend’s condo in the complex. She traveled to St. Croix in June to set up bank accounts, car and homeowners insurance and evaluate what home furnishings could be purchased there.

Hardy has deep roots in the Midcoast. She graduated from Camden-Rockport High School in 1973; attended the University of Maine Orono for one year and then decided to go to work. She worked at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Maine, becoming the youngest manager at the facility at age 24, and stayed there for 12 years. After that, she worked in public relations, fund development and marketing. She has recently resigned from her position with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Maine where she has worked for the past seven years, and from her three-year term on the Lincolnville Board of Selectmen, of which she has served just under two and a half years.

She knows people are surprised she is leaving Maine. “They know how entrenched I am in the community and have all my family here,” she said. “I didn’t want to turn 70 and say, why didn’t I do this 10 years ago. I’m still healthy and I want to do this while I can enjoy it,” she said.

Hardy promised herself six or seven years ago that she was never going to spend another January birthday in Maine. She celebrated her 60th birthday at Margaritaville at Grand Turk, in the Turks and Caicos, and just happened to meet Jimmy Buffett.

“He was staying at the same cheap hotel I stayed at,” she said, then clarified that she always travels on a budget. “It’s a nice little resort, the Turtle Cove Inn.”

With her big move scheduled for Nov. 4, she is right on time for celebrating her 62nd birthday, and semi-retirement in St. Croix.

Despite achieving a long held dream, she still has a bucket list. Seeing Jimmy Buffet in concert was on the list, and she has done this. Another item on her list is swimming with whale sharks, a large grey fish with black spots, that eats plankton.

A send-off gathering will be held Wednesday, Oct. 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Whales Tooth Pub in Lincolnville.

Courier Publications reporter Susan Mustapich can be reached at 236-8511 or by email at smustapich@villagesoup.com.