The Art of Doing Nothing

The general manager at Cobblers Cove has a theory about their pink and white striped umbrellas: they’re not really about shade. “Watch our guests,” he tells us during our site visit. “They’ll move from sun to shade and back again all day, but they always return to the same umbrella. It’s like they’re learning the art of doing nothing, but they need their anchor point to do it properly.”

He’s right. Over three days, we observe a fascinating pattern. The businessman from London claims the umbrella nearest the reef view each morning, spreading his newspapers just so. The honeymoon couple gravitates toward the garden-facing canopy, where bougainvillea spills over ancient coral stone. A family of four has somehow negotiated shared custody of the poolside umbrella with the best sight lines to both the ice cream cart and the bar.

These custom patio umbrellas have become anchor points in a place designed for the art of doing nothing. Cobblers Cove operates on island time, where lunch might stretch into afternoon tea and afternoon tea might dissolve into sunset cocktails. The striped canopies create waypoints in this delicious temporal confusion—reference points that allow guests to abandon their watches without losing themselves entirely.

“We could have chosen solid colors,” the manager muses, watching a guest photograph her book against the striped shadows. “But there’s something about stripes that makes people feel playful. Less serious about being on vacation.”

Perhaps the luxury isn’t in the thread count or the engineering—it’s in mastering the art of doing nothing, one striped shadow at a time.