Fifteen years ago, the only ways to get to Sandcastle's Soggy Dollar Beach Bar on the Caribbean island of Jost Van Dyke were by boat or goat trail.

We chose to arrive by water, anchoring our chartered sailboat off the beach of the undeveloped isle and getting wet while landing the dinghy. Our cash, as expected, got soggy and was hung out to dry on a laundry line behind the Soggy Dollar. From the funky bar, we drank in the intoxicating, isolated setting: white powder sand, indescribably beautiful water and skies, rope hammocks swaying in the trade winds.

The bar itself was simple: no doors, no windows, only sand for a carpet. That lack of pretense was reflected across the island, which had no electricity, no telephone service, no roads and only a couple of Spartan rental units.

Last December when I revisited this rugged island in the British Virgin Islands, I was surprised to find not only electric power, telephone service and an unpaved road of sorts, but a villa on a hillside overlooking one end of the two-mile-long beach. It was the island's first (and still only) luxury rental, a handsome multilevel villa painted in the traditional pastel colors of native West Indies architecture.

Another surprise came when I encountered the owner, builder, landscaper, developer, maintenance man and innkeeper of the White Bay Villas - John Klein. He and I, it turned out, have mutual sailing friends on the Chesapeake Bay, and Klein, formerly of Philadelphia, still has a home outside Annapolis not far from where I live. Small-world time.

Tan, lean and bearded, this 45-year-old with a ponytail looks like an escapist beach-bum dropout in this Margaritaville setting. But what gave him away as a worker and not a player was his leather tool belt - a permanent part of his daily uniform of shorts, hiking boots and T-shirt.

Home of his dreams

What was for many years a construction site is now occupied by Klein's dream home and an adjoining rental property. Two additional rental units appear to be suspended 100 feet above the azure, wind-blown Windward Passage with Tortola's famed Cane Garden Bay a few miles off in the distance.

"I built this as my home, but visitors kept asking me if I would consider renting it," he says. "So I moved into a storage room under the main deck, turned the house over to renters, and kept building and working while they luxuriated, enjoying the manner of living that I thought I would be enjoying."

Klein remembers looking over at St. Thomas one night from his eagle's nest after a devastating hurricane knocked out all the power there. "It was so strange. Where once there were thousands of lights in the west, now there was only darkness, just like the dark mountainside of White Bay at night," he recalled.

"I couldn't help but think that I might miss that darkness and solitude if ever the developers arrive here and do what they did to St. Thomas. I mean, there's no crime here on Jost Van Dyke, for example. None. Houses are left open. Even when the beach bars 'close' for the night, most of the owners don't lock up because there are no doors and windows to lock anyway."

Making a place

Klein first came to Jost Van Dyke in 1976 and returned many times. "That first visit I chartered a sailboat for two weeks and spent nine of those 14 days anchored off Jost, exploring the inhabited part of the island by foot," he recalls. "I immediately fell in love with the place and its people, and started thinking about finding a way to live here. There were no roads, no police, no electricity, no telephones, no waters or sewers, no ferry service and no pollution.

"Visitors get fooled when they visit a place like Jost because U.S. dollars are the currency here and the natives speak English, although in a West Indian patois," he explains. "Things are slower, of course, and there's no immediate awareness that this is an entirely different culture."

The Annapolis sailor discovered the difficulties of meshing cultures in 1983 soon after buying his 4-acre property at Pull and Be Dammed Point. When he began clearing the land for building, the islanders saw him as just another crazy outsider who had come searching for paradise, would find something else and would also leave. Only he refused to give up.

Instead, he hired one of the island's 150 permanent residents to help him clear the nasty scrub brush with a chain saw and machete, and to level a site for a road and house. Later he employed Baba Gene Maduro from Tortola to operate a bulldozer and backhoe. The clearing alone took six months. Klein slept under the shelter of an old sail when he was too tired to hike down the hill to his live-aboard sailboat anchored in the Great Harbour bight.

He believes he earned the respect of his small labor force by setting a pace and working hard with them. "I did not ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do," he says. "I worked longer hours and at a faster pace and did not stand around giving orders like some construction superintendent. Some resented it, but others respected it."

In order to continue his project, Klein closed up shop and took long breaks to go cruising and pursue contract work back in the United States to help finance the dream. But he always returned to Pull and Be Damned Point to pick up where he left off.

Seeing progress

After the brush was cleared, Klein and Baba Gene moved dirt and rocks for another six months - "400 truckloads of material that went to build the back road in Great Harbour," he says. "After work, we would shoot over to St. John in my speedboat to party. We'd return at 2 a.m., crash in the boat to get some sleep, and get up at 5 to start work again. That didn't last long. I just couldn't keep up with him and, as it turned out, he couldn't keep up either."

Looking back on the experience of clearing and burning, Klein says, "It was the best time I had on the whole project because I didn't yet have the worry about getting supplies and I could see visible progress every day."

The nightmare frustrations of bringing in building material by barge and boat were about to begin. "When construction started, the work got harder and logistical problems became more difficult," he recalls.

Careful construction

Klein took care with the project to make sure the exposed buildings were hurricane resistant, energy efficient and water conserving. His work paid off. In September, White Bay Villas withstood a direct hit from Hurricane Georges and its sustained winds of 115 miles per hour.

"Because these villas were over-built by the most insecure builder on the planet - me - we had no damage," he says. "We didn't even lose a rain gutter."

His next project may be adding a second-floor efficiency for himself above the structure that houses his backup generator. "Maybe then I'll be able to hang up my tool belt, relax on my deck and really enjoy my surroundings and the incredible view," he says.

"I hope to get a cruising sailboat again and moor it in front of the house. When my guests ask if anyone can take them day-sailing, I could do it myself and once again rekindle that part of my life that lured me here to begin with."

Before you go ...

For information: White Bay Villas comprise three private villas - each with one, two or three bedrooms - that rent for about $100 per person per day. To find out more, call John Klein at 410-626-7722, e-mail him at jkwhitebaol.com or go to his Web site at www.jostvandyke.com.

Pub Date: 11/15/98