Murders, scandals and the pursuit of forbidden pleasures may help to while the time away, but for Montego Bay's elite in the 1950s nothing is as important as the annual yacht race. Winkler interweaves the lives of five Montegonians: Fitzpatrick the barrister, Angwin the magistrate, O'Hara the hotelier, Biddle the reporter — all of whom will eventually compete in the race — and Father Huck, the American priest who ministers over them and tried his best to understand them, while battling with his own conflicts. In so doing Winkler provides us with an affectionately satirical, hilarious view of a paranoid, hypocritical and eccentric colonialist society, during the twilight of its influence.