Week 46: BVIs, Saba & Sint Maarten (130nm)

A week of two parts: a lovely passage down to the wild and wonderful island of Saba where we spend a couple of days exploring before detouring up to Sint Maarten for rigging repairs.

Opening Thoughts: The Rigging Mystery

The week needs a touch of context 😊.

Last week, we mentioned that a rig check in Anegada had revealed some worrying signs. To be more specific, those were in the form of broken strands on two of the wires that hold the mast up. This is disquieting for several reasons; first, broken strands mean the rest of the wire is taking more load than it should and will be likely to fatigue faster, and secondly, we had all the wires replaced barely a year ago – it is extremely unusual to see any sort of issues this early. What happened?

A couple of broken strands don’t mean imminent failure, so this wasn’t a “pants on fire” situation, but it really bothered us. Honestly, it should take a hurricane to break strands on brand new wires! We are very conservative sailors and have not put Serenity into any conditions that would have stressed the rig. And yet here we were with not one but two wires with broken strands.

Alec contacted all the top riggers in the Caribbean to try to get some insight, and everyone he spoke to said the same thing – this was really weird and really unusual. They also put forward lots of ideas about the cause, some of which we could rule out right away, but most of which needed the eyes of a professional to assess. We toyed with the idea of leaving it until the summer in Trinidad to sort out, but we knew the “Serenity First” answer was to get it seen to now. No sense spending the rest of the season worrying about it.

By now we were in Saba, and, fortunately, St. Maarten was only 25nm away. Not only is it a duty free island (so prices are great) but it’s also home to some of the top Caribbean companies for boat work, including highly respected riggers. It was a no-brainer at that point, and we pretty much immediately bee-lined up there. The lovely riggers at FKG made space to fit us in almost immediately, and their whole team had good a look at Serenity.

They fairly promptly ruled out every possibility that had been put forward as a potential reason for the broken strands and then some (couldn’t have been weather, tension wasn’t too loose, wires weren’t over-swaged, positioning was even, etc.), but they did notice a few unrelated oddities. The forestay was too short, meaning the mast had a slight negative curve that we’d never noticed (not a problem for the rig, but not good for sailing!), and the attachment of the backstay was unconventional (not in a good way). These would both have been errors by the Croatian riggers who replaced the wires for us back in Split, and it does suggest the possibility that it could be a problem with their workmanship that led to these early broken strands. But, ultimately, as we’ve exhausted the tools available to us to assess why those wires went, we can really only guess. It could just be a freak accident.

The good news is that the whole rig has been carefully inspected, poked and prodded, the problem wires have been replaced, the forestay and backstay correctly set, and the rig re-tensioned by highly reputed professionals – so Serenity is signed off and ready to get back out there 😊. Its another time that we’re grateful for our rigorous approach to inspecting all the boat’s systems – when you catch this stuff early, it’s not a big problem, and can be dealt with easily and with minimal stress. Part of owning a boat is accepting that stuff is going to break, all the time, and often inconveniently – but, given the right attitude and approach, it doesn’t have to detract from the experience.

Captain’s Log

17^th March: We had lovely weather overnight; 10-12kts of breeze with a touch of north in it, meaning we could sail close to a direct line to Saba through the night, which made for relaxed watches. As the sun came up, lines went out and I soon noticed we were about to sail through a patch of activity – lots of seabirds diving on what must have been a school of fish. That usually means there are predator fish around too, and just as the thought “if there was ever a spot to catch a fish, this would be it” crossed my mind, the reel on our rod went like a shot. Fish on! Pulled in a lovely little skipjack tuna with glee. This kept our spirits high when the wind came around and we had to beat the final 20nm into Saba in a steadily increasing blow. The sheer cliffs of Saba became clearer as we got close – what a landscape! Eventually we found a free mooring ball (anchoring is tough here – and it turns out the dive boats don’t like it if you borrow their buoys) and then Alec knocked up some yummy sashimi and teriyaki tuna for dinner. Bellies full, we lasted until about 20:30 and then it was bedtime for these weary sailors!

18^th March: We do eventually need to check into the country and spent yesterday evening and this morning pondering just how we might access the shore. The only “port” in Saba is on the southern coast, and you can only enter it by dinghy, meaning anchoring your boat in the Atlantic swell – not high our list of “fun things to do.” Binned any remaining ideas of it when we heard from Delos, the boat ahead of us, that it was untenable. They gave us a lift in their hard bottom dinghy to the rocky shore and we hiked up to civilisation via The Ladder – 800+ steps cut into the rocky cliff face. Spent the day exploring The Bottom, Saba’s tiny capital. Adorable town with lots of cute goats but not many people. Learned it is apparently home to the Caribbean’s most prestigious medical school – go figure. Returned via the Middle Island hike – which was part hike part scramble, but eventually made it down to the Wells Bay beach, where one of the Delos guys met us in their dinghy and gave us a ride home. Photos and video in the Story of the Week below!

19^th March: We started the morning with a second hike up the ladder for coffees at the Bottom Bean café and some internet. The St. Maarten riggers say they can fit us in immediately and we decide the “Serenity First” option is to get the rig fixed now, so we’re not worrying about it for the next three months. We consider the weather and our schedule as we finish our coffees and head back towards the boat. By the time we’re back aboard, we’ve made up our minds to cast lines this afternoon and make for SXM. We ended up having a lovely afternoon listening to podcasts while sailing along, and before we knew it we’d arrived at Simpson Bay. It was too late to catch the last bridge opening for the lagoon, but we nestled safely into the anchorage outside and headed to bed early.

20^th March: The first bridge opening for inbound traffic wasn’t until 9:30, so we had a relaxed start to the day watching the world go by (discovered the boat anchored next to us boasted FOUR kids aboard, all appearing to be under the age of 10). When it was time, we were the only boat heading inbound at the bridge, though on the outbound run there’d been 10s of boats – not sure what that means. Found a good spot to anchor in the lagoon and then busied ourselves with various chores while waiting for the riggers to visit. A pair of Frenchmen turned up in the afternoon and gave the rig and mast a very thorough inspection. Looks like we made the right decision to get things checked out, as they turned up a few additional issues that we weren’t even aware of, on top of the known breakages on the stays. Feeling relieved, we headed into the local haunt, Lagoonies, for happy hour and to get some wifi to allow us to finish our latest blog post.

21^st March: Happy birthday to me! Kicked it off with exceptional pancakes by Alec for breakfast, before getting down to the meat of the day. We had a bit of homework from the riggers to get done and wanted to tick it off so we could be ready for the them as soon as possible. So, down came the genoa, off came the furlex, and then up went a new topping lift (the old one was badly chafed). One great thing about being in St. Maarten is that it’s duty free and therefore one of the best places to buy boat stuff – so I took advantage by investing in new marine sanitation hose for the heads. Alec surmised that I might be the only person in the world who could recount such a list of birthday activities. Honestly it was a great day though! Finished with a happy hour drink at Lagoonies, which we’ve decided might be our favourite bar in the Caribbean, and an unbelievable dinner at The Palms. Go for the pao buns and the Trinidad-style shrimp curry – heaven!!

22^nd March: Relaxed most of the morning while we waited for the riggers to finish work on another boat so we could have its space on the pontoon. I took the opportunity to do a little data entry (my idea of a good time. I’m not the only one, right?) – pulling information out of our logbook so I could do some fun analyses of our travels in 2018 (stay tuned for the results in my upcoming ‘2018 year in review’ post – which I really will finish soon!). Then I roped Alec into helping me replace an old section of sanitation pipe that we’d decided had done its time. By mid-afternoon we were able to move over to the pontoon, and the riggers started tinkering away. The boat next to us turned out to be the new home of a lovely Aussie / Spanish / Canadian couple, James and Natalia, and we spent a fun evening with them chatting boats and cruising life.

23^rd March: It may have been Saturday, but that didn’t deter the guys at FKG, who turned up before 8am and had our new wires made and ready to attach before I’d even started my breakfast. I left Alec and them to it, and instead hiked up to the main road and caught the bus up to the French side where there is a great value supermarket. I returned bearing beer, chorizo and a haphazard selection of other wonderful things that were on sale (I love a sale) to discover the rig was already done! The guys were kind enough to let us stay on the dock over the weekend (yay for easy land access!) and we settled down for a chilled afternoon with a boat job or two. We definitely made the right decision getting this work done now; I feel at ease looking forward to the rest of the season 😊.

Story of the Week: Saba

Why and frankly how people settled on Saba is a total mystery to me. It is not in the least bit inviting when approached from the sea (I’ve heard the same for arriving by air – Saba boasts the world’s shortest commercial runway, just 400m long set on a bit of flattened old lava flow). The island’s huge, sheer cliffs rise from the water and never really seem to level off on their way up, coming together 900m later into a point. The island is round with no natural harbours, merely a couple of slight indentations on the western and southern sides that offer some marginal protection, depending on the wind direction. The water stays deep until right close to the land, which, combined with the dark rock bottom, gives it a moody blue colour. The people who stopped here and thought “this will do” back in the day must have been a truly hardy bunch.

Until the 1940s, the only access to the interior of the island was a punishing staircase, called The Ladder, which was cut by hand into the face of one of the western cliffs in the 17^th century. Spoiler alert – Alec and I climbed it twice and its +800 steps are gruelling. An informational plaque at the old customs house, a tiny building perched precariously about 2/3 of the way up, explained that literally everything that came to the island—from grand pianos to building materials and even the pontiff (their list, not mine!)—had to be carried up these stairs for hundreds of years. Who the heck ordered a grand piano to bring here???

It makes a little more sense when you emerge at the top of the Ladder into The Bottom. This humorously monikered little town sits in a sort of bowl formed by the sheer mountains around it (I assume it’s the crater of an old volcano, but I’m not sure) and is blissfully much flatter than the rest of this side of the island. The walls of rock around it reduce the trade winds to a soft breeze, and a pretty deciduous forest fills in the gaps between little white houses, a surprising number of churches and the odd grassy area. What an amazing haven! It would have been outrageously easy to defend, should anyone have been crazy enough to try to invade. The modern town is sleepy, with, so far as I could tell, more goats than people, but the locals we did meet in our comings and goings were the friendliest we’ve encountered anywhere. I know I’m at risk of running on into a Tolkien-esque length description of this place, but it was truly breath-taking.

There is, technically, now a little port on the southern side of the island at Fort Bay, which is where customs and immigration are to be found. A couple of short breakwaters were built in the early 1970s that provide enough protection for ferries to dock, but yachts are restricted to access by dinghy only. Anchoring outside the breakwaters here is risky due to the prevailing wind and swell, so it seems like nowadays most people park on the west and then drive their dinghies the two miles round. We love our little dinghy but were not convinced of his ability to make this journey, hence why we found ourselves, the morning after our arrival in Saba, in a bit of a conundrum about just how we might go about reaching customs and immigration.

We’d decided, with some reservations, that we’d try to take Serenity down to the south and anchor off the port for just long enough to check in before coming back to the shelter of Wells Bay in the west. We dropped our mooring ball and were heading down that way when we noticed a boat called Delos on the AIS just ahead of us. Delos are one of the more famous sailing vloggers, with a YouTube following of +300k people, and have been sailing around the world for nearly 10 years. We figured they probably knew what they were doing more than most, so if they were going to anchor on the south for check in, then we must be okay to do the same. Of course, not five minutes later, just as they’d made it round the SW point, we saw Delos turn right around and start heading back our way. That didn’t bode well for the conditions, so I hailed them on the VHF to find out – they promptly replied that it was untenable. So, we turned around ourselves and got back on our mooring ball, still unsure how to access this place.

As Delos drove by to pick up the ball in front of us, we spied that they had a large, hard bottom dinghy that would presumably be much more capable of making a long trip, so I called them back up and asked if we could bum a ride. An incredibly friendly group, they immediately said yes. We went over to their boat to say hello in person, and after chatting all decided that actually we’d be better off taking the dinghy to the bottom of The Ladder and hiking up that way. We’d heard a rumour that it was possible to check in at The Bottom, so this seemed to be a smart play. Plus, The Ladder looked like a great hike!

We all piled into Delos’ huge aluminium dinghy (there are four liveaboards on Delos, plus they had two guests with them) and made for The Ladder. After a slightly wild and rocky landing, we finally made it to shore. The hike up the many steps was beautiful, and tiring! But so worthwhile. Sadly, it was not actually possible to check in at The Bottom, but Alec and Brian, Delos’ skipper, volunteered to hike down to Fort Bay to complete formalities while the rest of the group explored the town. We had a good walk and then settled down at the one café with internet (none of us had mobile signal in Saba) to check in with the rest of the world.

When Alec and Brian returned, we decided to get back to the boats via a different route. We’d discovered there was another hiking trail leading to Wells Bay (closer to where the boats were moored), called Middle Island. A couple of the Delos guys went back down The Ladder to retrieve their dinghy, and the rest of the group hiked towards Wells Bay. The trail started as a lovely groomed path but then at times disappeared altogether. We had to traverse a few rock scrambles and pick our way around a couple of ravines, but it was a great adventure and a lot of fun to chat with the Delos guys on the way. After an hour or so, we finally emerged out at Wells Bay, exhausted but having greatly enjoyed the challenge. We got a ride back to the Serenity and didn’t make it long before passing out. What a fantastic day meeting new friends and exploring this unusual place – a top one all around!!