The Volcano and the Ciguatera Capitol of the Caribbean!

http://www.caribbeanislands.us/montserrat.htm

Waking up the day after the mountain bike adventure proved much eaiser then we had anticipated.  We had had a few victory cocktails that evening and between those and 20 odd miles of biking I was expecting a much angrier beginning to our sail over to Montserrat.  Woke up feeling great!  We did leave Nevis with a small disapointment, however.  We were unsuccessful in aquiring a little helper monkey.  I thought for sure that I'd never wash another dish, or coil another line after Nevis....  I guess you can't have everything. 

The sail from Nevis to Montserrat was about 24nm and passed Rodonda Rock.  At one point there was quite a large mining operation going on there, as well as a few other good stories.  There also seems to be some music asscociated with the island:

Redonda information:
http://anbanet.com/redonda.html
Redonda Rock n Roll!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9or-BP0xMP4


One of the most notable and historic stories linked to the island...  Rich and Andrew caught there first fish while sailing passed here!!!!  A little tuna that we marinanted in Italian dressing and had for dinner and breakfast!  Delicous!  Interesting to note, one of our guidebooks list Redonda Rock as the Ciguatera capitol of the Caribbean....  We didn't even see one house on it.  There is no way it could be the capitol of anything.  We assumed the information was a typo in the guide book and fed our bellies with that yummy tuna!  Chomp!

Arriving in Montserrat was less then exciting.  As you would imagine a giant smoking volcanic island blasting its way out of the sea...  there are no good anchorages.  Just one little bayopen to the northly swell.  Luckly the swell laid down overnight while we were there.

A few notes on Montserrat. 

In 1995 the Soufriere Hills Vocano erupted covering two thirds of the island with volcanic ash.  Now I know that might just seem like an interesting factoid about some far away island in the Caribbean, however visiting made the impact that little eruption had on the people of that island very real.  The 2/3s of the island the ash covered was the important 2/3s.  In addition, 1995 wasn't all that long ago and we met many people who were living there well before the eruption.

To put it in some perspective.  What were you doing in 1995?  Imagine the small or medium sized town you were living in (if you live in a big city, skip down and just look at the pictures).  Imagine if suddenly the whole town, minus a few outer neighborhoods were covered in 10 - 15 feet of volcanic ash.  No police station, no post office, no grocery store, no airport, no sea port, no house, no neighbors house, all of it buried!  Its not like you could just drive an extra hour to the next Home Depot down the road to start to rebuild!  It was a weird place.

We rented a car and set out to see the volcano!

Little Bay Anchorage, Montserrat

No one was in the office immigration.  We were told by the custom officals to come back in the afternoon.  Maybe someone would be there then.

Little bay anchorage from the beach.  Nevis in the background.  Redonda Rock in the forground.

View from the "observation deck".  It looks hot up there!  Soufriere Hills Volcano smoking!

Our VEV (Volcano Exploration Vehicle).  Andrew is making sure its up to the task.

Here they are uh...  umm....  the next picture is musch more interesting!

Who thinks our VEV couldn't penatrate this sign?

Lots of ash!  Thats the second floor.  The volcano continues to smoke and spew ash from time to time.  The ash washes down the hills.

View from atop a hill over looking the ruined town of Plymouth

Ruined and abandoned town of Plymouth.  In 1994 it was beautiful Caribbean town.  Late 1995 it looked like this.  Proof that smoking is bad.  This is what one smoking volcano did to a town.  Legislation is in place to get the volcano on the nicotine patch.  Everyone really wants it to stop smoking.

Only the most sophisticated and high quality equipment is used to monitor the volcano.

And that is how an island is built.  Eastern side of the volcano.

Much of this land wasn't here in pre 1995.  I have some old charts that simply don't show it... obviously.

We are currently in Antigua awaiting the arrival of my family.  Can't wait!  There is talk of Andrew making a guest editorial piece here on the blogg.  Next blogg will be all about Antigua!

Nevis!

http://www.caribbeanislands.us/st-kitts.htm

Nevis and St. Kitts are one Country.  You can check into either and freely sail between them.  I'd like to say that we choose to skip St. Kitts since we understood that it was more touristy then Nevis.  As a general rule we try to avoid any island with a cruise ship dock.  However, truth be told, we had great wind and we eager to move on down the island chain and capture a helper monkey for the boat.  This was a wonderful sail of about 30 nm which we made in one big tack.  The three most important reasons to visit Nevis:

(1) Alexander Hamilton was born here.

(2) They have wild monkeys!!

(3) They have wild monkeys!!!!!!

Nevis was a turning point for many reasons.  First, it was during our sail here that we began our Jimmy Buffett affliction.  Its really disguising how much of him we have listened to since Nevis. 

Also, from here was the first time we sighted Antigua.  Antigua meant two main things to us.  We would see my family for the Easter Holiday and it was basically the last island that lay to windward!

Nevis was also the first time we took a day to relish in our current lifestyle and lay on a beautiful caribbean beach all afternoon.  Truth be told we had been keeping a pretty busy pace of sailing, touring, diving, hiking, and sleeping in rolly anchorages.  Ahh!!! It was nice to sit for a bit. 

Our adventure here consisted of renting mountain bikes for the day.  The road that circumnavigates Nevis is about 20miles.  We biked that road, as well as several other trails, and side trips.  I'd say pretty confidantly we did 25miles but wouldn't be surprised if it was 30.  The up hill sections were no fun but the down hill ones... whoo doggie!!!  We had two really epic down hill jaunts.  The first one on some trails coming down from up on the mountain at the beginning of the ride, and the second speeding down the main road into Charlestown after lunch.

Pictures:



We had been unsuccessful up to this point at catching any fish.  Here Andrew wonders why?



West coast of St. Kitts

Rainbow around the sun

Coming into Charlestown, Nevis.  There are literally hundrreds of mooring to choose from!

Downtown Charlestown.  The kid who backed out of buying my car before I left STT was named Charles Pemberton.

Birthplace of Alexander Hamilton.  We were too cheap to pay the $13 EC (about $5 US) to go inside.  Plus we were hungry and heard it was boring in there anyway...  It looked real nice from the outside.

Haunch and spew!  Here we are right before we attacked Nevis on these shread machines.  It was a hard ride but such a fun experiance!

Thats right.

Wind farm in Nevis.  2.2 Mega watts of power (theoretically).  None of them were spinning when we rode by.

Where did they mount the toilet paper holder?

Vrooom!!  I wish I coulda bought a t-shirt here!  Drag strip in Nevis!

Monkey!!  We had a few sightings but they move pretty fast and don't let you get too close!

Almost our little helper monkey.

Lunch at the Golden Rock Inn

There is alot of farming that goes on in Nevis.  The countryside is dotted with beautiful farms and crops.

Next Off to the Volcano of Montserrat!

Statia

http://www.caribbeanislands.us/st-eustatius.htm

The sail from Saba to Statia was very nice.  Statia is ESE of Saba so we had to do a bit of tacking and since our batteries were down we motorsailed much of it.  Statia is an interesting island, both present and past.  Currently, there isn't much there except a huge oil distribution facility.  Its an oil hub for the Caribbean and historically it was a free port in which many export papers were "cooked".  i.e.  countries that technically couldn't trade with each other would bring there goods to Statia.  The goods would then become "exports of Statia" and the goods could reach markets they otherwise couldn't.  For example, in 1770 Statia produced about 600,000 pounds of sugar, but exported 20 million pounds.  Most of the 8000 Statians (of mixed Dutch, English, and Jewish decent) got very rich during this time.

Who knows what goes on with the oil trade today?

Two interesting pieces of American history involve Statia. 

First is that a lot of the weapons and ammunition supplied to the American soldiers were purchased from the dutch and passed through Statia. 

The first time a US Navy ship was reconized and saluted by another country occured in Statia.  As a side note it is becoming very evident how important these islands were as Europeans colinized the Caribbean and North America.  A sailing ship coming from Europe naturally ends up in the Eastern Caribbean as it follows the trade winds and currents.  It seems that during the American revolution the US was looked at without much more (if not less) importance than some of the Caribbean islands.  Little did the Brits know that the sugar trade would dry up and they would all be lusting after Harley Davidson motorcycles many years later.

Probably the nicest and one of the only hotels on the islands "The old gin house"

Fort in the main town of Statia, Oranjestad.  It was from this fort in 1776 that the Andrew Doria, an American vessel, came into harbor and gave a salute.  The governor (de Graff) didn't know what to do so he fired a return salute, abit two guns less.  He didn't realize that although the Andrew Doria was a merchant ship, she was under command of an American rebel navy captain.  This event coupled with many other things, mainly the fact that Statia was selling lots of weapons to the American rebels, lead to war between England and Holland.

It felt like we were anchored off the docks in Newark.  Those are your BIG boy oil tankers.

Thanks for the help Holland!!!!

Next stop...  Nevis...  Hopefully we'll be able to capture a little helper monkey there!

Saba!!

http://www.caribbeanislands.us/saba.htm

We left St. Barts right after getting fuel at the 0730 fuel dock opening.  The sail to saba was fast and fun!  full main and we poled out the 110% jib surfing down waves the whole way!!  Areyto required atention at the helm the whole time.  Antention Andrew gave her for nearly the entire 28 nm passage!  Capt Rico only assisted for part of the time.  The rest of the time I napped and took pictures!  Saba is awesome!  I've started to include the links above so that I can avoid having to provide alot of the basic information about each island.  Also, there are good links should anyone have the interest and time to further research any island of interest.  Having said that, Saba is not a place to go if the weather is bad.  It is literally one giant rock with really no harbor.  The weather was nice while we were there but the anchorage is still open to the full ocean swell.  So... It was very rolly at night and we needed to self medicate with a healthy ration of Cruzan in the evenings so we would fall asleep.  We landed the dingy at the base of the "ladder" in ladder bay.  This is where the original Sabaians had to off load any cargo coming into the island.  Interesting and historic.  We proceeded to hike all the way up to the top of Saba (~2800') and back down.  It was quite a bit of hiking and walking although also a really great way to see the island!  We did two dives.  One about 80' around a pinacle called diamond rock and another about 40' - 60' onto a reef filled with more life than I've ever seen diving before!  Groupers, rays, turtles, snapper, angle fish, barracuda, crazy sponges, coral, and reef organisms!!  It was like being in a National Geographic documentary!  Sorry, no underwater pictures.  :-(

Action shot tiding up the boat leaving St. Barts!

Coming into Saba HOT!!!

Its a big mountain!!  Lets walk up it!

The stairs (ladder) at ladder bay.  The little house is the old customs house an is about 1/3 the way up the ladder.  We were petty over any stairs for a while after visiting Saba.



Yellow and blue is in this spring.  Sabians are hip to it.




View of ladder bay from the old custom house.  Thats Areyto all the way to the left.



Sabaian house

Pool and little cottage at the eco lodge.  We had a delicous lunch here of seared tuna.  yum!



Sauna at the eco lodge




The fat bunny that eats all the crops in the eco lodges garden.  It was FAT!



A little trail near the eco lodge

A slide at the eco lodge.  The Sabians used to use it to decend the 2000 feet down from the town to the sea.  It was put out of comission shortly after being built due to an epidemic of "rug burn" on the island.

This house was along one of the trails we hiked.  Not particularly close to any roads...  :-)

Andrew, you don't think that leaf is a little over kill for the job its doing?

On the trail to the top of Saba.  Maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up.  Lots of steps!

Looking down into ladder bay from the top of Saba (Mt. Scenery).  Areyto is the little boat in the middle of the two others.

Next Stop....  The oil hub of the Caribbean and some American history in Statia!!!  See you there!

St Barts!

http://www.caribbeanislands.us/st-barths.htm

We left Grand Case about mid morning and rounded north around St. Martin for the close reach/beat south to Gustavia, St. Barts.  I believe it was about an 18 nm sail.  St. Barts is very up scale and beautiful.  Lots of cool cars and motorcycles!  I spent a good part of the time while we were exploring the town just admiring all the cool types and makes of motorcycles.  Lots of which I'd never seen or heard of before.  Also, interesting to note that on all the islands we've been to since we left the BVI, quads/ATVs are all legal to register on the roads.  Its really cool to see and listen to a tricked out quad winding out its gears leaving town!  As we dingied into Port Gustavia for the first time the bbbrraaaaahhhhppppp.... bbbrrraaaaaaahhhhpppp.... ring ding ding ding of a full on two stroke motor cross bike echoed through the streets!!!!  Awesome!!!!!  There was a fancy regatta going on the weekend we were in St. Barts as well.  It was very fun to see all the cool racing yachts at the dock and out sailing during the day.  Things were a bit expensive and we had to take on some diesel before we left...  It was something on the order of an entire bailout bill per liter.  Anyway here are the pictures!

I fell in love with this little boat.  My favorite boat in Gustavia for sure.



Dingying into Gustavia!  Race boats and big yachts!!!  Cool!!!



Main street "Gustavia, St Barts"

It was motorcylce mania!

Cool Church in Travertine Marble on a side street in Gustavia

It doesn't matter how fancy and nice your island is....  you're always waiting for parts in the Caribbean.

Looking down from the old fort in Gustavia.  This bay is the next bay south of Gustavia.

Looking north at Port Gustavia  from the old fort. 

French breakfast....

Racing boats!!

Next stop....Saba!!  About 25miles WSW!!  Down hill!!!!   yay!!