After 10 days on the French/Dutch island of St. Martin where the bars were more visited than the restaurants, we decided to safe some money and sail down to Saba, another small island of The Netherlands Antilles.
The sailing was one of the best I have had with winds around 20 knots coming, surprisinglynot from the direction we were travelling but a good half wind and 5 hours later we were right next to the steep walls and hills of Saba. FortBaai is the port of entry and from bitter experience, that is the place you go first and not anywhere else but when we rounded the southern tip of Saba the wind was right up our noses again and blowing hard. Solitude had a hard time fighting the waves coming at us so we turned around and picked up a mooring ball on the east coast of the 13 square kilometre island.
The wind had turned so it came from north because of turbulence around the island and so was the swells it was perfect but we had no idea. The dinghy was put back in its right element and the outboard engine was put on. Raincoats were put on and we headed for FortBaai and sure enough when we rounded the southern tip again in this small vessel, the sea was raging. Wet and laughing we tired the dinghy up in the very small harbour and went to the harbourmasters office.
After meeting Mr. Foyt and the British Virgin Islands customs, I’m always happy when checking in to a new country is fairly smooth. The harbourmaster didn’t even look at boat papers or our passports.
Getting back to Solitude was if not worse so as wet as the ride the other way. A beer was opened when the sun went down and food was eaten. We had a few…. maybe 8 more beers, checked the mooring again and passed out. All night Solitude rolled and The Harlem Globetrotters were playing basketball on the hull that was the sound anyway when ever the mooring ball was hitting my ship. I was up checking things out 5 times during the night and noticed the wind constantly changing from north to south.
Laughing we sat in the cockpit in the morning drinking coffee, it was the worst night we had had so far on Solitude. The dinghy ride back to FortBaai was not better than yesterday. In the dive shop we asked how to get to The Bottom one of 5 small towns on the island on foot. He looked at us as we were from another planet, he could call a taxi so we didn’t have to walk but we wanted to do some hiking.
He pointed up a very steep hill and said, there is only one way and that’s up. Sweating like pigs but with a smile on our faces we came to The Bottom. Why the hell it’s called that, I have no idea, ‘cause it is NOT anywhere near the bottom.
In the café we drank a coke and water and told the bar lady about our little hike, all she could reply was, but why?!?!
The Bottom has lots of small houses and a couple of old churches, it looked like a small village in the Alps but the palm trees reminded me that I was not on the European Continent.
The next major…. Well the next town is Windwardside and why stop the adventure here in The Bottom. If a taxi would stop, we could always take it.
Out of The Bottom we were meet by amazing view over the Caribbean Sea and all of a sudden we were in Windwardside, soaking wet from sweating. Very quickly, we do have a good portion of experience, we found a bar and had a few beers and food and decided that the hiking adventure was over, we would grab a taxi back to FortBaai and the dinghy.
At Saba Divers we booked a dive, the reason why we were in Saba, for the next day and even got a discount because we were on a sailboat.
Another bar, second out of the three located in Windwardside, was visited and more beers were poured down. We went back to the first bar to get a taxi and you can’t really enter a bar without having a few beers but eventually we got a taxi.
Very interesting, the taxi driver told stories from the old days on Saba before the road was build and before there were any cars. Everything had to be carried up steep trails or on donkeys.
Back on Solitude, we ate diner, drank beers and rolled like crazy in the swells. One minute we had the beautiful sunset aft and the next we were facing the old customs building with steep steps from the rocky beach, up to it. Ladder bay, as the place is called because of the steep steps, was a very weird place and the Harlem Globetrotters were at it again.
The sun went down and the island became black but we were still rolling. Any minute we expected a 6 meters flying lizard circling the mast looking for young Danes to prey on, the place was weird. I never did understand why The Harlem Globetrotters never took a shot, all they did was dribbling but it was only during all night!
Next morning with faces looking like they were in the last round of a boxing match, we sat in the cockpit drinking coffee. What else could we do but laugh about the second shit night, the diving better make it all worth it.
In FortBaai a guy on a dive boat waved that we should come over and the dive equipment was loaded onto the dive boat. The usually dive papers that basically says, if you die it your own damn fault, were signed and Rodney an instructor from South Africa told us we were the only divers on this dive therefore we could make a dive on Shark Shoal, a dive to 51 meters, a swim through an overhang and back up to 30 meters. They hardly ever did the dive with costumers but since we are experienced divers we were able to do it. It sounded very extreme just like we like it. The waves had come down when the dive boat was moored up on top of Shark Shoal and we put on the gear and jumped into the blue.
The buoy line was used to swim down to the top in 28 meters of water and the first Caribbean Reef Sharks cruised by. Huge sponges, the biggest I have seen in The Caribbean Sea, were sitting on the top of the shoal. The ok sign came from the three of us and we went further down between the two pinnacles to a depth of 51 meters and the 2 meters times 1.5 meter entrance to the overhang. The colour on the other end of the 20 meter tunnel was deep blue and a couple of fish swam by, it was like being in an aquarium. On the slow way back to the top of the pinnacles which was covered in corals with lots of different fish around them, a couple of sharks showed them self out in the blue but only so you could barely see them. It gave a spooky but exciting feeling to the dive. My dive computer on my wrist was beeping trying to tell me that I should get to a shallower depth but I just wanted to stay. The buoy line was reached again and the computer was happy again as another shark with no effort swam by around 15 meters from me. We just hang on the line for about 20 minutes looking at all the aquatic life we were surrounded by. A nearly 2 meter Mahi Mahi was hanging out just above over heads for 5 minutes before it disappeared.
The equipment was taken off back out of the water on the dive boat and Rolf and I thanked Bob who was driving the boat and Rodney who dove with us, what an amazing dive.
Rodney told us how lucky we were doing this dive and we thanked our God (beer?) for being able to do it.
A couple from the US was picked up in FortBaai and we did the second dive less than 2 minutes from the harbour but long enough the get the American guy seasickness. He should only see where we lived, in our rolling paradise with The Globetrotters.
The dive was really good with dark sand that made the corals stick out even more colourful, Garden Eels and a Lettuce Seaslug with a more reddish colour to it than the ones I have seen and photographed in Curacao.
A well deserved beer and another one at the local and only bar in FortBaai were washing down our lunches before we said goodbye to Sabas dry land and went to the dinghy. The last “dinghy ride from hell” around the south eastern tip of the island was taken and a sundowner on Solitude made the day perfect.
A Dutch sailboat moored up next to us and they were greeted with the hand full of a beer.
We laughed a bit at them, they had no idea what type of night they were about to have…
Very tired we passed out in each end of the boat and slept good for the first time since we got here. At 2 o’clock (am off course) The Globetrotters decided to practise dribbling but I couldn’t understand why they still had to do it on the hull of Solitude. 7 minutes later a small bang sounded like two boat bumping into each other. I must have been half asleep when I heard it but I just remembered the Dutch boat next to us.
The weird winds and waves around Saba, aka JurrasicPark had pushed the two boats together but nothing had happened. I tried to sleep again but couldn’t and stayed up during the night. At one point the Dutch skipper said, “I don’t know what to do….” when we were very close again. It was a funny thing, standing in the dark talking without being able to see the other person.
Next morning Rolf got up, we had coffee and breakfast and tired off. Next stop would be Nevis.
The diving was worth all the rolling and sleepless nights and that would be the only reason why I would return to JurrasicPark….. Not the rolling and the nights but the diving!
d (beer?) for being able to do it.