- Origin — born in Greece
- Job — yacht photographer, author and director
- Installed in — Indian Creek, Antigua, since 1986
- Boats — Summer Wind, then Genesis
- Books — Images (2007), Vanishing Ways and Genesis (2008)
- Movie — Vanishing Sail (2015)
- Role in the regatta — co-founder of the West Indies Regatta, in 2009
Genesis, Free in St Barth and the West Indies Regatta owe him a great deal. A luxury yacht photographer based in Antigua, Alexis Andrews has spent nearly twenty years promoting, photographing, filming and building the latest Carriacou sloops.
Born in Greece, educated in Europe
Alexis Andrews was born in Greece. He learned photography in London, and trained in advertising and fashion photography in Europe.
1986: sailing to Antigua
In 1986, he sailed to Antigua to work as a yachting photographer. He never left. For over thirty years, his images of large yachts graced magazines and luxury charter advertisements. He also photographed regattas, villas, hotels, fashion, and music, published nautical guides, and spent long hours in helicopters taking aerial photographs. He lives in Indian Creek, in the southeast of the island.
In 2007, he published Images, a large book of photographs of Antigua and Barbuda bringing together twenty years of work: nature, culture, beaches, places and sailing.
1997: The wreck of the Summer Wind
At the height of his career, he photographed the most beautiful yachts, with models and elaborate staged scenes. Success was there, but something was missing, without him knowing what. One day, during a photo shoot, a sailboat passed by: a simple wooden Caribbean fishing boat.
She took my breath away because it was something so unique and so resonant of the islands that I decided that I needed to learn more.
Alexis Andrews, sailATX podcast, November 28, 2017
He quickly realizes that these skills are disappearing. In the past, the islands thrived on sail-based trade; with the arrival of tourism in the 1960s, these crafts were lost. Carriacou may be the last island in the eastern Caribbean where these boats are still built.
In 1997, he bought an old Carriacou sloop that had sunk in English Harbour, Antigua. He restored it, then decided to sail it back to the Grenadines to present it to the man who built it.
Upon arriving in Windward, he discovered a dying world: shipwrights still building by hand on the beach, without plans, but their numbers dwindling. This journey sparked ten years of photographic work documenting the island's last shipwrights. Discover this first sloop: Summer Wind.
2003-2005: Genesis, the dream of a new sloop
After eight years on Summer Wind, Alexis dreams of a larger boat, built in the same way. He commissions it from master shipwright Alwyn Enoe. With him, his son Callistus and his nephew Bonnie, he sets off to cut down cedars in Grenada, then drags them by hand through the ravines to the road.
It was now apparent why this part had been put off for so long. It was hard going!
Alexis Andrews, Caribbean Compass, April 2005
The keel was laid in October 2003. The shipyard survived termites and Hurricane Ivan. In March 2005, on Windward Beach, Alexis's wife, holding their youngest daughter, unfurled the flag and revealed the secret name: Genesis. As tradition dictates, Alexis sacrificed a rooster on the pier, then the entire village hauled the boat out to sea.
A few weeks later, at the Antigua Classic, Genesis was leading its class from the first day, even though its interior wasn't even finished.
I knew she'd be good, but not this good.
Alexis Andrews, quoted by Dan Houston, Classic Boat, July 2005
Genesis is the first boat completed in Windward in over ten years. It has revived boatbuilding on the island. Here's its full story: Genesis.
2008: Two books and a trip
In 2008, his publishing house, Indian Creek Books, published two books of photographs: Vanishing Ways, about sailing on board the last Carriacou sloops, and Genesis: Building a Traditional Carriacou Sloop, the story of the construction.
That spring, with Doggy Watson and Aragorn, he sailed Genesis from Antigua to Foxy's Regatta in the British Virgin Islands. On the way, he stopped in Saint-Barth, where he exhibited his two books.
2009: The birth of the West Indies Regatta
In 2009, while competing in the Antigua Classic, Alexis and Aragorn were looking for boats to accompany them to Saint Barthélemy. With Loulou Magras, Daniel Blanchard, and Bruno Gréaux, then the port director, they welcomed eight boats to Gustavia. This was the first West Indies Regatta.
In Saint-Barth, two people held the thread during the first years: Jannie May, the wife of Loulou Magras, and Lee Davidson, a friend of Alexis.
Genesis is owned by Alexis Andrews, who started this regatta, and has put a huge amount of work into promoting these local boats, and the few people who are left building them on the islands.
Sampson Boat Co, West Indies Regatta
2010-2013: Filming Alwyn's last boat
Alwyn Enoe is approaching 70. His sons have left to work elsewhere, and the craft risks disappearing with him. For three years, Alexis filmed his latest project, Exodus: the trees felled in the forest, the sons returning to help their father, the mast hewn from a utility pole, and then the race against time to be ready for the Antigua Classic. Exodus was launched on Easter Sunday 2013. Discover this boat: Exodus.
If this thing gone from here, everything gone you know…
Alwyn Enoe, in Vanishing Sail
Two men, a camera, and 180 hours of footage
To film, Alexis doesn't use a cinema camera, but his SLR cameras, which also record video. For ten years, the residents of Windward have seen him with his camera around his neck: when he starts filming, no one changes their attitude. He climbs to the top of the mast, goes fishing with the sailors, dives underwater with a housing while they sail, without the heavy crew of a traditional film shoot.
The film was financed through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. To his great surprise, an entire community responded. He teamed up with Justin Sihera, from Carriacou, who was captivated by the book and became the producer. For three years, while the boat was being built, it was just the two of them.
It is our first film, so we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.
Alexis Andrews, sailATX podcast, November 28, 2017
They brought back approximately 180 hours of footage. The first edit lasted three hours; they were advised to cut it by at least half. It took another two years of editing, first in Los Angeles, then in the UK, then back in Antigua and Carriacou, to find the true story. Funding was constantly running low, and each time someone came to their aid at the last minute.
The sound of the waves and the music
A photographer first and foremost, Alexis thought the image was enough. He was told that a good film is more than half sound. A sound engineer from Los Angeles, who worked for Apple and had stayed in the islands, offered to help him for free. He lent him his equipment, and Alexis and Justin returned to Carriacou to re-record the lapping waves, the creaking masts, the sounds of the races.
Then came the music. For months, in a studio in Antigua, Alexis worked with a classically trained German composer living in the Caribbean, to write music around the images, to the rhythm of the waves and the wood.
2015: Vanishing Sail
Vanishing Sail, his first film, was released in 2015. He wrote, directed, and filmed it, with Justin Sihera as producer, an Englishman of Carriacouaise origin who had sailed and fished as a child with his grandfather Compton. Eric Clapton, captivated by the project, offered him an original score.
The film was initially rejected everywhere: Sundance, South by Southwest, Tribeca, and several European festivals. Rather than give up, Alexis submitted it to festivals in coastal cities, where it found its audience. Another surprise: in theaters, the female viewers were among the most enthusiastic.
The world premiere took place in Saint-Barth, for the twentieth anniversary of the St Barth Film Festival. More than 350 spectators crowded onto the quayside, facing the moored sloops, and rose to applaud at the end.
The dock became wrapped in silence, only the creaking of mooring lines, the vessels all swaying together lit by the moon, all feeling the story as one.
Afloat, 2015
In 2015, Alexis summarized the welcome that Saint-Barth gives to sloops every year as follows:
What the people of St. Barth have decided to give us each year is the biggest welcome we could expect from the entire West Indies.
Alexis Andrews, All At Sea, June 2015
That same year, the film won two awards at the Rhode Island International Film Festival: the Best New Director Award and the Audience Award. This was followed by the Grand Jury Prize at the Barcelona International Film Festival and a Caribbean Spirit Award.
A haunting, captivating story that will pull heart-strings and etch in the mind of every viewer.
Classic Boat Magazine
The film is being presented at the Martha's Vineyard festival, where the screening is sold out, and at the Anchorage festival in Alaska.
November 2015: the birth of Free
With Thierry de Badereau, a restaurateur in Saint-Barth, Alexis imagines a new sloop, the first built by the generation of Alwyn's sons. The day before the launch, Vanishing Sail is screened in Hillsborough, and the inhabitants of Carriacou recognize themselves on the screen: "Hey Hopey, you're a movie star now," someone calls out to one of them.
The following day, November 8, 2015, the entire Windward Free hauled itself out to sea. Discover this boat: Free in St Barth.
2016-2017: the film goes around the world
Vanishing Sail then traveled from festival to festival, from Alaska to Warsaw, in more than forty public screenings, including at UNESCO World Heritage sites. In 2016, the UK premiere took place in Scotland, where Alexis discovered the traditional boatbuilding of the Hebrides. In 2017, a tour of the south coast of England took him from Portsmouth to Falmouth.
In 2017 in London, the film received the Donald Gosling Award for best film or television program at the Maritime Media Awards.
An absolutely superb film, with all aspects of it perfectly balanced.
Jury of the Maritime Media Awards, 2017
What the film means
The most important thing that we can learn from a film like this is how to appreciate things that take time and working with our hands again and reconnecting with ourselves and the history and heritage that we come from.
Alexis Andrews, sailATX podcast, November 28, 2017
For him, the message is universal: in the modern world, time has become money. Building a wooden boat takes far more time than one might imagine, and it is this time, spent making something with one's own hands, that reconnects us to ourselves. This, he says, is also Alwyn Enoe's dream: that these skills will continue.
Today
Alexis Andrews still lives in Antigua. Genesis returns every year to the West Indies Regatta, sometimes with Aragorn at the helm. In 2020, Forbes magazine described him as one of the people who has done the most to keep the spirit of traditional Caribbean boats alive.
Watch the movie
Since April 2018, Vanishing Sail has been legally available for rent or purchase online, in its original English version, on the official platform chosen by its authors: Vanishing Sail on Vimeo On Demand.
To order the DVD or organize a screening in a yacht club, association or school, simply write to the film team: info@vanishingsail.com.
How to contact him
- Photography website — alexisandrews.com
- E-mail — images@alexisandrews.com
- Instagram — @alexis_antigua
- Vimeo — alexisandrews
- Film website — vanishingsail.com
- Facebook page of the film — Vanishing Sail
- Film email — vanishingsail@gmail.com
Sources
- Vanishing Sail, film crew: Crew
- Vanishing Sail, articles by Alexis Andrews: Alexis Andrews
- Martha's Vineyard Film Society, 2015: Vanishing Sail with director Alexis Andrews
- CharterWorld: Alexis Andrews
- Wadadli Pen, authors from Antigua and Barbuda: Antiguan and Barbudan Non-Fiction Writing
- Wadadli Pen, January 26, 2018: Vanishing Sail Wins Again
- Alexis Andrews, Caribbean Compass, April 2005: Traditional Launch of Carriacou Sloop Genesis
- Dan Houston, Classic Boat, July 2005: Carriacou sloops at Antigua
- Jan Hein, Sail Magazine, April 9, 2010: A Carriacou Comeback
- Jack Griswold, Cruising Club of America: Film Review: Vanishing Sail
- Afloat, 2015: Vanishing Sail Film Documents Wooden Boat Building in The Caribbean
- St Barth Film Festival, archives: 2015 and 2016 editions
- Gary Brown, All At Sea, June 28, 2015: West Indies Regatta: Connecting with Times Past
- Maiwenn Beadle, Caribbean Compass: The Launch of Free
- Sampson Boat Co: West Indies Regatta, St. Barths
- Katherine Parker-Magyar, Forbes, July 23, 2020: Meet The Man Keeping Traditional Caribbean Sailing Alive
- Steve Ward, sailATX podcast, episode 5, recorded on November 28, 2017: Interview with Alexis Andrews
- Alexis Andrews' Instagram: @alexis_antigua
- Vimeo: Alexis Andrews
- Vimeo On Demand: Vanishing Sail | The Story of a Caribbean Tradition
- Sail World Cruising, 2018: Vanishing Sail launches online with Vimeo on Demand