Wine tasting in the buff, anyone? An intrepid writer casts off his clothes to explore the rival factions in the world of naturism
Mark Haskell Smith’s worst nightmare goes like this. He’s in the company of 2,000 strangers when he suddenly realises that he is the only one wearing clothes. Panicking slightly at all those sagging nads and pendulous breasts (everyone except him appears to be over 70), he decides that he has no option but to “drop trou” and join in. This, by rights, should be the moment when Haskell Smith wakes up sweat-drenched. Instead, he finds himself in the Ocean Bar, sipping a beer butt naked. This, it transpires, is not a dream but a working day. Haskell Smith is on board the Big Nude Boat to investigate, undercover, the state of contemporary naturism.
It turns out to be a declining world, or at least a splintering one. The passengers on this Caribbean “nakation” are mostly middle-class retirees, former teachers, lawyers and administrators, who cluster round the piano in the evening and ask for something by Elton John or Billy Joel. During the day they sign up for sessions on everything from pastry-making to wine tasting by way of ice carving. The yoga class, oddly, is pretty much the only place where clothes are compulsory, since the prospect of 100 naked people simultaneously doing downward dog in a small space is considered a breach not of decency but aesthetics.
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It turns out to be a declining world, or at least a splintering one. The passengers on this Caribbean “nakation” are mostly middle-class retirees, former teachers, lawyers and administrators, who cluster round the piano in the evening and ask for something by Elton John or Billy Joel. During the day they sign up for sessions on everything from pastry-making to wine tasting by way of ice carving. The yoga class, oddly, is pretty much the only place where clothes are compulsory, since the prospect of 100 naked people simultaneously doing downward dog in a small space is considered a breach not of decency but aesthetics.
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