HE was certain that if he built it, they would come.

The old Club Med beach club and snack bar had been lying desolate and forlorn for many years, but Christopher West could see the possibility of building a beach bar which would attract a diverse crowd looking for a different way to spend a languorous afternoon or to party the night away.

The result is an attractively lively place whose atmosphere and tropical ambience is more reminiscent of a casual Hawaiian surfer hang-out than of the traditionally more staid Bermuda beach club.

It is certainly an idyllic spot on a sunny afternoon in late May. You can sit at the Beach It! bar, sipping an exotic cocktail or a cool beer, and look right over the golden sands to the waves lapping at the beach.

You can gaze out at the blinding aquamarine of the waters of the bay, looking due east to the darker blue of the ocean waves at the horizon, and know that there is nothing out there until Africa. Looking left along the pristine beach, you see the imposing walls of Fort St. Catherine, and behind lie the green fairways of St. George's Golf Club.

Chris West's journey to his current position as proprietor of this beach bar has been a long and interesting one. A direct and gregarious host, Chris was born in Shelly Bay in 1945, the third of Billy and Shirley West's six children. He attended Whitney Institute, and regrets having left early.

"I quit school at 17, which was a big mistake. I got a job diving with Johnny McDaniel and Smokey Wingood, who had a contract to look after Argus Tower.

"It was a submarine tracking station, and we maintained the Tower legs, and the instruments that were under water. It was interesting, and a lot of fun, but also a lot of danger. I spent a numbers of years with that crew out at Argus, labouring, diving, whatever they needed, but also building docks around the island, and doing ship surveys."

' new fianc?e Carol thought that the life of a diver at Argus Tower was too risky, so, at the still tender age of 22, Chris came ashore. "I became head diver for Salisbury Construction and built the dock at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. Then, I came out of the water completely, when Ward Young of Bermuda General Agency got hold of me, and put me on the road as a salesman. From there, I became retail manager of the Woodbourne Chemists, and then managed some hotel lobby shops for him. Altogether, I spent about five years with Ward and BGA."

Chris' life took a dramatic turn as a result of a chance meeting in Switzerland with an American, a man from California who said he would like to open a restaurant in Bermuda. It was the winter of 1979, and Chris was on vacation, skiing with Carol.

Many of our lives are redirected by serendipitous events or meetings, and Chris cheerfully concedes that he might never have spent the rest of his business life in the restaurant and hospitality business but for meeting this American.

"I came back to Bermuda and started looking for a restaurant, knowing nothing about the business. I looked hardest at the Plantation restaurant, which had been in operation since around the end of the (Second World) war, and I went out to California.

"It turned out that he was more enthusiastic about the idea of owning a restaurant in Bermuda, than he was in investing anything to make that happen. Worse, he suggested that I wouldn't be able to do anything without him, which got under my skin a bit.

"So, I flew to Florida to buy the Plantation from the owner, Jack Mayne. I was able to do it on an earn-out basis, paying from the future profits of the business, and in that first year, we only had to pay him ten dollars."

At that time, the Tom Moore's and Plantation restaurants, close together in that part of Hamilton Parish, were considered among the best on the island, but Chris doesn't remember being particularly anxious about his near competitor, or about their lack of experience in a very specialised business. So it was that ex-diver and salesman Chris, and Carol, on the American Airlines staff at the airport, came to be proprietors of the Plantation restauraunt.

"I figured we would 'go for it', and try to put good people behind us, especially in the kitchen. We thought that there was nothing to bar-tending, and that we would just try to serve people as we would if they were in our home. And that's what we did, we created a relaxed atmosphere there, so that people felt at home the minute they came through the door."

next challenge came in the late Eighties, in the shape of an offer to open a restaurant at Dockyard, the space which became The Frog and Onion. Those who thought that the name derived from some culinary marriage of the legs of the small green amphibian and the bulbous vegetable were mistaken.

Although initially resisted by the West End Development Corporation, lessor of the space, who preferred some nautical theme, the name was a slangy reference to the origins of French chef Jean Paul Magnum and the Bermudian owners.

"Jean Paul worked at the Plantation, and was planning to go home, but we decided we would open the place at Dockyard if he came in with us as a partner. He jumped at the chance. He was, and is, an excellent chef, who really understood about food and the proper management of a kitchen.

"In fact, he was responsible for the reputation of the food at the Plantation. I worked the floor at the Frog and Onion for a year, before coming back to the Plantation."

Taking over the White Horse Tavern, on King's Square in St. George's, was their next venture, and after an amicable divorce from Carol, Chris agreed to take sole ownership of that bar and restaurant, with Carol taking over their interest in the Frog and Onion.

By then, a deep reduction in the number of tourist visitors and the closure of the Castle Harbour Hotel had meant that the Plantation was no longer viable, and the restaurant was closed, a considerable blow to Bermuda's more demanding gourmands.

"The problem we had at the White Horse, and which is faced by every business in St. George's, is that we have a six-month tourist season. The White Horse did well in the summer season, but it is hard to make a restaurant work through the winter months."

As an alfresco beach bar which requires warm days and nights to attract patrons, the Beach It! recognises the seasonal reality. It opens at the end of April, with the arrival of the first cruise ships, and closes at the end of October, when they sail away.

"This is our fifth year at Beach It! The beach facility had been dormant since the closing of the Club Med operation, so I approached Government with the idea of opening it up for locals and visitors, and they liked the idea. The snack bar, toilets and changing rooms were there, but we built the bar from scratch."

With only one other beach in St. George's, the small and crowded Tobacco Bay, and with two cruise ships docked in St. George's harbour from Monday to Thursday, Chris was confident from the outset that the Beach It! business could be a success.

"We are open from ten in the morning until the last person leaves the beach. We have a very talented band called Pulse which plays on Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. We are closed on Fridays, but open on Saturdays and Sundays from noon until we finish.

"The cruise ship visitors are obviously important to us, but some locals come by during the day, and when the band is on at night, hundreds of people come from all over the island."

Beach It! also rents all of the requirements for a fun day out: chairs, tables, umbrellas, masks and flippers. Chris also rents kayaks, and takes ten visitors at a time out on the Banana Boat for a 15- minute ride, sometimes 15 times a day. The beach is public, and anyone is welcome to use it without taking advantage of the Beach It! facility.

"We act as overseers of the beach, so that if people have a picnic there, we make sure that they don't leave trash or burning charcoal. "

It! is an efficient operation, with Kavan Bassett behind the bar, and Peggy Delpeche turns out the burgers and fries and cod fish cakes at the Snack Bar. Peggy's husband Tulben, a friendly Vincentian, runs the operations on the beach. Deejay Keith "Aftershock" helps keep the party going on Sundays, and Tuesdays through Thursdays. To attract locals at weekends when the cruise ships are absent, drinks are only $3, and rental rates are reduced.

"I have one more year on the lease, but I plan to speak to Government soon, because I would like to invest some money in the operation and upgrade it. I think that Government is happy about the way that Beach It! is being run, because it is a place for locals and visitors alike, and we have created a happy, friendly atmosphere.

"My new wife Barbara has helped a lot, and stood by me through a few troubles. We were slammed by Hurricane Fabian, but we are back and the party is only starting!"