Diving

Sunday 17th January 2010, day 457, 7,823 miles. 17° 14’.96 N, 062° 39’.50 W. White House Bay, St Kitts.

Thursday 21st January, day 461, 7,863 miles. 17° 28’.71 N, 062° 59’.32 W. Oranje Baai, Statia

Thursday 4th February, day 475, 7,910 miles. 17° 38’.29 N, 063° 15’.41 W. Ladder Bay, Saba.

Our sail across to St Kitts from Antigua took us past Montserrat in the morning light, in the middle of one of its periodic eruptions. A thick roiling of smoke and ash pours out of one of the vents as we pass, and becomes part of the miasma hanging at a few hundred feet downwind of the island. At the north of the island, what looks like a veil of rain is actually ash and dust falling down on the remaining inhabitants. It is only a couple of days since the tragic earthquake in Haiti, so the whole region is clearly having an geologically active time.

The ash shadow from Montserrat stretches for over 50 miles, giving us wonderful diffuse scarlet sunsets. When it’s not raining. Which it is in St Kitts. The rain comes slanting down from a slate grey sky. The green fields on the lower slopes of the central volcano are soaking up the rain. The wind has roused the sea into large relentless heaps. If we were in England, it would be a day for crumpets and log fires. We have our first attempt at putting out a kedge anchor to steady us against the ferocious rolling (in the pouring rain, with visibility fading in the quick tropical dusk) – well, it was certainly a learning experience, and we are still married, so it can’t have been that bad.

[Sailors can skip this next bit: What is a kedge anchor?

Normally, in non tidal waters, a yacht on a mooring or at anchor would “lie to the wind” – that is, lie with her bows pointing into the wind, falling back from the anchor or mooring, and swinging gently with any change in the wind direction. In calm water this is fine, but when a swell comes into the harbour, the boat can be affected by this more than the wind, which makes her very uncomfortable, as the swells catching her on the side make her roll heavily back and forth. The answer is to set a kedge anchor – a second anchor from the stern, which you use to pull the boat round so that she lies at right angles to the swell. The boat then “pitches” – rises up and down with the incoming waves – but this is much easier to live with than being rolled from side to side, like a jelly bean at a funfair, when you’re trying to sleep.]

We had meant to go to the races – a big St Kitts tradition, with everyone dressed up in their finest – but it was rained off, so we went down the coast to White House Bay, where the hills are covered in a heather-like scrub. With the lowering clouds and driving rain, it is like being in Scotland. Apart from the troop of monkeys scampering and screeching along the rocky beach. This whole southern end of the island has been sold off for development, so it won’t be so empty and barren and beautiful next time we come by.

From St Kitts, we drop down for a couple of days to its sister island, Nevis, the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers; and also the place where Nelson met and married his wife, Fanny. Snorkelling off one of the little reefs, there is a school of tens of thousands of six inch long silver fish. They move as one, like starlings massing for roost, but if you make a lunge for one, they split away from you into two separate groups, whisking away, reforming behind you. No way I could catch one, even armed with Barracuda-like teeth.

And then on to Statia (St Eustatius if you’re being formal), one of the five islands in the soon-to-be-disbanded Netherlands Antilles. Being part Dutch, it is quite different to the other French or English ancestry islands in the chain. The houses are mainly one storey, with lots of pretty white painted fretwork (known as gingerbread) some with those Dutch shutters painted to look like gathered curtains, some of the streets are paved with neat, regular bricks, the shops sell every colour of de Kuyper and Bols liqueurs, the fort is beautifully preserved, and the whole has an air of neatness and organisation. The vibrant, noisy, cheerful hurly-burly of the other islands is missing – not that Statians aren’t friendly, our arms get tired from waving to every passing car which greets us – just a bit more, well, planned.

Our main reason for being here is to do our PADI course, and become able to dive. The cost has put us off up till now, but Tomia hasn’t been too demanding for the past couple of months, and we feel it would be daft, having spent so long here, not to take the plunge (ouch).

Diving turns out to be utterly fabulous. The teaching is excellent, just calmly getting us to do all sorts of unnatural things so often that they become second nature, and when we first go down, after three days of studying theory, and an afternoon shivering in a swimming pool practising the basics, we are so absorbed in the fish and the coral that we quite forget we are under 30 feet of water.

Most of the fish we saw were those we had spied on from above, while snorkelling, but down in their world we can swim among them freely, apparently unnoticed. When we are on the surface, I suppose we look like predators, but down here we don’t match any known recognised danger, so they just ignore us. What a variety of fish there is: colours from silver to royal blue to scarlet and emerald green, every size from the minute ones that live in larger fishes mouths to big ugly groupers that lurk under rocks, every shape from spherical to flat to the two foot long, one inch wide needle fish.

There is a great calmness down on the seabed, even when the waves are pounding up at the top. The peace amongst all the piscine activity is what impressed me most strongly. A stingray dozed on the sandy bottom, and we could get right up close to him, and lie, nose to nose, watching him breathe in and out. Of course, we swam around, but I would be quite happy just sitting cross-legged on the bottom, letting it all flow around me.

Over the next days, we do five more dives, going down as deep as 100 feet; we dive around the wreck of a ship, with a giant barracuda lazily patrolling the interior; we see a spotted eagle ray, and learn how to breathe from each others’ tanks, and at the end of it all, are qualified to dive anywhere we want in the world.

On land, we meet Dutch friends of my sister’s, last seen at her wedding, who have retired out here, and explore a bit, climbing up and into the crater of The Quill, the dormant volcano, filled with a lush vegetation that has thrived on the volcanic soil including magestic Mahogany and Silk Cotton trees, and where we spot a Lesser Antillean Iguana (iguana delicatissima, which may explain why they are almost extinct) immobile on a moss covered rock. An ancient scaly head with heavy hooded eyes; stumpy legs on a boulder-shaped body, attached to a two foot tail, it is the nearest we will ever get to seeing a dinosaur.

We leave Statia with regret (as for every island) and go up to Saba, where the diving is also excellent. Saba is a tiny island, so small that it feels more like a pause in the ocean rather than a complete entity. It rises almost vertically from the sea bed, with the two little towns nestling, Shangri-La like, in valleys 500 feet up. Again, the Dutch influence produces an orderly, white-painted, fret-worked neatness – and great community spirit – the island is too small for buses, so every body hitch-hikes up the near-vertical hills.

We manage two dives on the lava fingers that flowed out to sea from the last eruption of the volcano. On our last dive, we meet two reef sharks, totally uninterested in us (we are too big to eat, too small to be a threat), hovering patiently while they wait for something toothsome to come just that bit too close.

That is all we have time for on Saba, with one visit to the interior – we are totally free, and have all the time in the world, to do whatever we want, but are due in Bonaire, down near the Venezuelan coast, in six weeks’ time, and have lots to do before we get there. What a rush it all is!