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!
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| Little Bay Anchorage, Montserrat |
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| 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. |
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| Little bay anchorage from the beach. Nevis in the background. Redonda Rock in the forground. |
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| View from the "observation deck". It looks hot up there! Soufriere Hills Volcano smoking! |
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| Our VEV (Volcano Exploration Vehicle). Andrew is making sure its up to the task. |
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| Here they are uh... umm.... the next picture is musch more interesting! |
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| Who thinks our VEV couldn't penatrate this sign? |
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| 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. |
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| View from atop a hill over looking the ruined town of Plymouth |
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| 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. |
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| Only the most sophisticated and high quality equipment is used to monitor the volcano. |
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| And that is how an island is built. Eastern side of the volcano. |
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| 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!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehi Guys: Happy Easter! Nice job on the blog, narrative and pics. Rich, please say hi to your family. tried posting a pic in my earlier comment, didnt work, thus deleted.
ReplyDeleteCheers, safe journey!
joe dad
I've heard Monserr...Monsterr...the volcano island throws one helluva St. Patty's day bash! Did you get any feed back on that?
ReplyDeleteAnother little known factoid about the volcano island, that when it spews a bunch of ash into the air and it travels up the island chain, that it affects islands like St. Thomas and the other VI? Mostly the effects on said islands are ash covered cars and even worse are the women who work at the Ritz who have nothing better to do than complain about said ash building up on their car and that they have to wash their windows all the time and it's starting to affect their allergies and waaaaa waaaa waaaa!! Nothing interesting like that?
Ah well, you two are doing awesome, can't wait to hear about Antigua, Dominica and your Whale of a sailing tale!! (you can use that in future publications at no charge). God Speed!
Hit the nail on the head with the St. Patty's Day info Patrick. The Irish were very sexually active in the early colonial days of the island. Many of them adeventually left the island. However, they left behind many smiling Irish faces who would carry on the tradition of wearing green everything, getting wasted, and buying thousands of plastic top hats with shamrocks on the sides from the Chinese every St. Patty's Day. So yes, we heard froma few people that St. Patty's on Montserrat is better then woodstock ever was!
ReplyDeleteThey adventually left, huh Rusty? I guess being on the boat has really helped your use of the English language eh?
ReplyDelete