Howdy all,
Here's the next installment of Saba. This must kind of make you begin to wonder about the posts for the Villa and the final post about our thoughts on SXM itself. I wonder about those too... But they're on the way...
I make the usual disclaimer about this being my experience and that your results may vary. But again, where Saba is concerned, I really hope they're exactly the same!
So, without further adieu, here's...
Saba – Part 2.
Innerspace and Sea Saba
I urge you to read part 1 of this post first (posted Thursday evening, July 5), or some of what follows isn’t going to make sense…
Garvis has delivered me to the wharf to board the dive boat for the first of my three underwater adventures. I’m alive. So wonderfully alive. The brakes didn’t fail. The transmission didn’t fall out. I’ve managed to keep my breakfast on board despite the roads. I don’t think we ejected any pedestrians as we drove. We even went through a town called The Bottom. Are those 6 foot waves outside this thing you call a harbor?! Hah! That’s nothing. I just drove through the Bottom. Literally… Let’s get out to sea! Now!
Saba Harbor.
Harbor? The “shore” slopes steeply away from the mountainsides on Saba so any chance of there being a harbor as we might know one is pretty slim. When you make the turn at the bottom of the scooter track from the Bottom you are right at the bottom. Saba harbor is formed from a small breakwater of concrete blocks and poured concrete surface of about a hundred yards long jutting out in a hook about a hundred feet from shore, and another, smaller, breakwater of about fifty yards jutting out about seventy feet from shore a few hundred feet south. These two breakwaters form a kind of pincer that is open to the sea in the middle to allow boats, vehicles that didn’t make the turn at the bottom after coming from the Bottom, and hapless ejectees who were deluded into thinking they were walking on a sidewalk when they were sideswiped by a rabid, aircraft carrier crew-eating local. In the middle of the harbor compound is where there is a concrete boat ramp extending from the scooter track into the water. I’d sure like to watch someone launch a boat when there’s a sizeable swell running into the harbor but that will have to be another trip, since the ramp was deserted on this day. Actually it’s kind of nice that they built this since it could easily be the only point that an ejected pedestrian could drag themselves back ashore and dry off before walking up… to the Bottom… The harbor buildings include shops for a couple of the island dive operators, something of an eatery called “Pop’s Place” which is either named for someone called Pop or after the sound that an ejected pedestrian makes as they are sent into the blue on a sudden dive trip (I never did get clarification) and a strange unmarked building that made a continuous industrial sound and serving some unknown purpose. Perhaps they were rendering the remains of tourists or were constructing a doomsday weapon for the evil genius who runs the island, but I guess we’ll never know unless he doesn’t get his ransom and he actually uses it.
Garvis dropped me off on the outer wharf and said he’d be there to pick me up for the return journey. I didn’t doubt him for a minute, thanked him and blessed the engineers who design safe, reliable braking systems for vehicles.
Nestled up against the inner reaches of the northern (long) breakwater were the two handsome dive boats of Sea Saba, moored fore and aft (which, for those non-nautical types, means butt-to-butt – why do us boat people always love to speak in nautical terms and sound so aloof – oh, that’s why). These are fairly sizeable craft modeled on a sport-fisherman design (large cockpit / dive deck, reasonable sized enclosed area below midships, driven from a flying bridge (which is another of those curious boating terms – I’d rather the bridge didn’t “fly” anywhere thanks…). There are bunks below, for some unknown reason, and there’s the head (toilet) which, of course, doesn’t work (remember, that’s what the line trailing behind the boat at dive sites is for…).
Patrick Swayze and the other bank robbers were busy swarming over the boats loading tanks and preparing to take on their victims. The first boat already had a few passengers aboard but I found Ryan (who was to be diving with me) and a gorgeous young English woman named Debbie (in the bank robber movie, she’d be the gal who finally sees the error of her ways and falls in love with and helps the young rookie FBI/Police hero bring down the thieves in a daring sequence of action events – I’m looking for an FBI application so I can go back to Saba real soon… Dude…). I brought my gear aboard, Ryan pointed out a tank and I started setting up things up. Ryan also assisted with the setup (partly, I think, to make sure that I knew what I was doing which was kind of reassuring). I chatted with Debbie and found her to be yet another beautiful British woman who had recently lived in Southeast Asia. She now found herself on Saba and had been here all of a month. When I used to dive extensively on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, I met and befriended many young women just like her. They grew on trees and their boyfriends often swung from them (I’m just jealous, of course). I’ve often thought how nice it must be to just exercise one’s wanderlust and strike out to see the world. Sonia and I would now like to do that by boat and I hope we manage something like it soon.
Ryan is a sketch. He’s one of those quintessential Californians. He’s very friendly but somehow manages to say very little. You get the distinct impression that, despite the carefree surfer image, he’s actually taking everything in and is the kind of guy you want to have right next to you when a critical piece of dive equipment fails and you could really use some help. “Hey man, grab my regulator. I don’t need it…”
Five other passengers join us on boat number two (or is it boat number one, I guess I never figured that out and I know the boats had names but I forgot to take note of them) and we’re soon off towards the first dive. There were two couples and a woman named Vickie whom I would be diving with. To give you an idea of how dedicated we are at this activity, Vickie had just injured her back on a diving trip on (I believe) Saint Lucia and was out here diving the next day on Saba. We love this stuff that much and I completely understood her motivation. Two of our passengers were actually dining at Juliana’s when I showed up and I wondered why they didn’t travel to the boat with Garvis and I. The waves are running about four feet in a reasonably irregular swell, but this boat doesn’t seem fazed and the steering actually seems to work (which is good since I didn’t see any evidence of a tiller…). With the swell and the rocking of the boat, though, I had to feel for Vickie and her back!
I’m used to long runs out to dive sites. On the Barrier Reef in Australia, it’s quite normal to have a trip of two to three hours out to a given site from Cairns, Cooktown or Port Douglas. So I’m pleasantly surprised when, after all of 10 minutes, we arrive at the first dive…
Outer Limits
This is “the Pinnacles” area of Saba and is renowned for being spectacular (I have a sneaking suspicion that a detailed hydrographic survey would reveal hundreds of these things around the island, but these are the ones folks actually know about). In his typical fashion, Ryan gives us a brief run-down of the area…
“Saba’s a volcano, and these pinnacles are lava spires. There’s Twilight Zone over there and this is Outer Limits, so you may have already gathered there’s a sci-fi theme. There are no spacecraft down there…”
End of story. Frankly, that’s all we needed so it was perfect. He did give us a thorough and competent briefing of the dive in keeping with the fact that these Sea Saba folks are professionals. We listen to the briefing and then complete gearing up for diving.
Once rigged for action, there are no outwardly beautiful scuba divers. Trust me on this. I think Catherine Zeta Jones is one of the most physically beautiful women I’ve ever seen (she’s not a patch on my Sonia, by the way, who is beautiful in every way). I’ve never seen a picture of Catherine Zeta Jones in full scuba gear underwater. I’m sure that, even if she did scuba dive, she would make sure several of her minders killed (with extreme prejudice, of course) anyone who managed to get a picture of her in dive gear. No one is pretty in scuba gear. If you don’t dive, and you want to know how you’ll look for that glamour-shot when you try it, put a fairly good sized nozzle on a garden hose and connect it to a faucet. Place the nozzle fully into your mouth (I mean the whole thing, including about two inches of garden hose). Put on a diver’s mask. Turn on the faucet so that your eyes bug out and your cheeks puff up like a deranged squirrel. This is what divers look like. Oh, I forgot to mention that, at 60 feet or so there isn’t a lot of color in the water except a pale blue, so use makeup for this effect. This is pretty close to how you will be seen. “Look ma! No beauty…” It’s got to be one of the few recreational activities that people do without being able to “totally look, like, cool”. Maybe that’s why it suits me. To paraphrase a bad dive joke, it’s the great equalizer.
We drop over the stern and descend to the bottom of the mooring line in 85 feet of water. The line is attached to the top of a tall spire of lava (known as a pinnacle) that’s ovoid in horizontal cross section and about a hundred feet north to south and thirty feet east to west. We are to descend down towards the base of the spire and then work our way up.
Often times when I dive (but, strangely, not when among American divers, hmmm) the topic of one’s “Best” or “Favorite” dive comes up. Somehow, people always seem to be able to pinpoint one. Despite well over fifteen hundred dives so far, I can still point to one dive in Cairns. It was on a coral bommie (the biologic version of a pinnacle). I was traveling on a dive boat called the Nimrod and we were diving a northern area known as the Ribbon Reefs, at Ribbon Five (there are ten of them). As we were slowly approaching the area we would anchor and rest for the night, one of the dive instructors and I noticed a bommie well astern and agreed to dive it first thing in the morning. At 4:30 a.m. we donned our gear and slipped out into the darkness behind the boat and swam what we had earlier estimated to be the 250 yards to where the bommie should be. It’s still dark at 5:00 a.m., but the tropical sun is fast spreading its light on the far horizon. We have no way of knowing if we’re at the right point or not, but we shrug our shoulders and descend into the blackness. At 60 feet, we discover we’re right on top of the bommie. We slowly swim down alongside it to a depth of 150 feet and begin to circle it. The light is coming up and we don’t bother with flashlights. As we work our way halfway around the bommie, at about 120 feet, we are directly under a massive number of huge fish of all kinds that have been sleeping and are just beginning to stir as the daylight begins. Our bubbles come up under the fish and they move off in all directions, down towards us, up and away and out from the coral into the deep blue. The sight of it was awe-inspiring and still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.
As we descend along the Outer Limits pinnacle here on Saba, I am immediately struck by a profound difference to many of the coral bommie dives I have done before and it takes me a bit to put my finger on it. The water s incredibly clear but it is somehow different. We dive the plan, so to speak, and come across a shark sleeping in a small grotto. I try to get a picture of him and get something passable, but I really don’t want to disturb him since I know that would really piss me off if I was sleeping 95 feet underwater and some [censored] with a big strobe flash came along and poked it in my face. “Oh look Harry… He’s sleeping!” Not any more lady. Oh, and take this, creep! Chomp! There were some, but not a lot, of fish swarming over the top of the spire but it was still a fantastic dive. We couldn’t go to the bottom of the spire at 130 feet because most of the team was diving on Nitrox, a special mix of gas that has a higher percentage of Oxygen and lower percentage of Nitrogen. Oxygen becomes toxic at depth and these folks couldn’t go below 105 feet as a safety measure. In 34 years of diving I’ve never done the Nitrox thing. I know it’s the only acceptable way for a true macho diver to be (man or woman) but I figure I’ll just keep breathing air and keep things simple. The Nitrox does give divers extended bottom times (longer dives) since they are absorbing less nitrogen and I guess that’s why they didn’t care for me, since I think I was the only one diving on air and would therefore need to surface sooner.
The dive is great and we surface to a rocking boat (I’m getting used to this by now from the first day of diving on Sint Maarten) where Debbie assists us on board. It’s only then that I realize what was different about the water. No sand at the bottom, and no carpet of white calcium (from long deceased coral). The water had a strange darkness to it that is very compelling, a sort of deep blue-violet that is reflected off the dark lava. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced, even diving in Hawaii, and it was particularly beautiful.
In no time, we’re off. In my normal experience, we would head to the next dive site but in this case… It’s back to the harbor. Before I get all ornery and ready to complain, I remember that we’re only ten minutes away and I am, after all, their guest. Apparently we are heading to the harbor to pick up more guests, swap guests with the other boat (for some unknown reason) and discharge other guests. It’s a strange way to do things but, in the end, it all worked.
At the harbor we close up and moor to the wharf and watch the arrival of a small catamaran ferry that I learn is called, The Edge. This is apparently because of the “wave piercing” thin hulls it rides on, but I suspect it’s actually named for where it seems to take its passengers. There is a tiny box in between the twin hulls that stands as the main cabin. Out from it emerged about twenty very unhappy looking people. Two of them made for the edge of the wharf (not The Edge itself) and proceeded to barf into the harbor for a few minutes, promoting a wry comment from Ryan about how that was just what we needed to see before going out again. One of the passengers sat down on the dock and seemed immovable, just staring at the mean little boat with a look of deep malevolence. I’m glad I flew. Even if it was to the site of the shipping tragedy that now passes as an airport. WINAIR, The Edge, and long distance swimming, are your only ways on and off this island without your own boat. It’s no coincidence that my next visit to the Netherlands Antilles may, in fact, be in our own boat… Anyone for Saba?? I’ll happily take TTOL passengers from Simpson Bay marina for the day, free of charge. Of course, on my boat, at 10 knots, it would be… “A three hour tour, a three hour tour..”
When I left Juliana’s after breakfast, Garvis was given a package containing what appeared to be three sandwiches and was told to pass on to Ryan that these were for the “folks from The Edge”. Now I knew more about what that meant. We now had three new passengers as we singled up our lines, slipped our berth and headed back out to sea, careful to avoid any ejected pedestrians if they were airborne at the time. The sandwiches became a rather interesting side note when two of these passengers (a nice couple from California) casually inquired about lunch. Ryan pointed out that we had some sandwiches aboard and we were all startled when the third passenger belted out, gruffly and in no uncertain terms, “THOSE AR MINE!” and then he turned and went about continuing to prepare his gear. After an uncomfortable pause. Ryan simply said, “There’s lemonade and water!” and went about his own preparations. The new couple were a little put out by this since they had clearly expected there to be some kind of lunch. Ummm… Too bad! In less than ten minutes, we were at…
50-50.
I’m not sure if the site is named for your chances of survival, chances of seeing something interesting or chances of being hit by an ejected pedestrian (I didn’t see any roads up the cliffs nearby so you’d really have to be moving to eject someone this far), but it’s a series of lava fingers about ten feet tall and twenty feet wide running out from shore for about three hundred yards. The bottom is at 50 feet (no surprise here!) and the dive was great with many large coral fans on the fingers and thousands of all kinds and colors of sponges. Most divers go to see the fish. As you may have gathered from my previous dive reports, I go for the diving, and to experience whatever I will be lucky enough to see, including the very small corals and the large reef structure and other attached objects like sponges and corals. I wasn’t at all disappointed although others seemed to be displeased with the lack of life. In reality, there was a staggering array of life all around us and it was just that a lot of it didn’t swim. To each his own but, once again, I was as happy as a stationery clam (if a clam is actually happy – I mean, how would you know?!). Debbie led the dive and she is clearly completely at ease under the water and was a delight to dive with. Once again, I was a wimp breathing only air so I would no doubt be leaving early. As it turned out, that wasn’t the case but I won’t go there so as not to impugn one or two of the special gas breathers. It was a great dive in clear water. There was, once again, the strange hue to the light at the site and I found it really exotic. We surface, board (with the assistance of Ryan who stayed aboard during the dive) and get out of our gear and we soon slip our moor and head… back to the harbor.
Once again, we tie up for the ritual passenger exchange. It was here that I would lose Vickie, who had decided that two dives with me gave her such a pain the back that she couldn’t go on. Actually, I hope she was able to get it treated and really have to give her credit for even coming out with pain like that. Three vibrant young college lads came aboard (two locals and one from Holland) and they immediately gravitated to Debbie. We should have been off straight away but, the unfed couple who had come aboard from the mean little Edge, had taken off for Pop’s place to grab a quick lunch. This was Ryan’s suggestion but we all regretted it. It took them more than 40 minutes to get their take away meal and all the while we sat, and I wondered if I would make the last dive and then be able to report back to the carrier in time for my evening sortie to Sint Maarten. They finally piled back aboard with some kind of food that didn’t actually look like it should be consumed before any mobile activity, but they wolfed it down and I didn’t see them any the worse for wear later on.
Once again, we slipped our berth, avoided flying pedestrians and left the harbor. Then we stopped! About five hundred yards from the harbor after traveling for all of about what seemed like only two minutes. We have arrived at…
Greer’s Gut.
“Gut” apparently means “cove” or “pocket” or something like that in Dutch. Between the various Dutch and Parmiento speakers and Ryan’s Californian Patrick Swayze bank robber speak, we never got a clear definition. We did have a fantastic dive, though, in about 40 feet of water that was littered with small clumps of lava overgrown with coral and some of the biggest barrel sponges I’d yet seen. Very little current and a small amount of surge made for relaxing conditions below and we all managed to make the most of it. Ryan took my camera and snapped a picture of me hovering over a barrel sponge that’s as big as I am which is saying something. Here there was more sand so the blue light I had experienced on the previous dives was not present but it didn’t matter because it was still a fascinating dive. Each little clump of coral covered lava had its own personality and seemed a lot different from a typical modern American subdivision, where all the houses are the same and you’re never really sure who you’re getting into bed with (apparently this homogeneity is good for property values, but I’ve never been able to figure out why). This place reminded me of an older village where everyone still relies on each other, but they’re all different. I liked it immensely.
Back to the surface and the sudden realization that this was the last dive of my Saba adventure. I’m really happy (“HPY”) but also sad (“SAD”) and it’s a hard set of emotions to reconcile. We take our passage-making trip of all of 500 yards back to the harbor and we’re soon alongside the wharf and ready to disembark. Goodbye’s are said all around and I wish the young college students well. I really hope Ryan and Debbie are still there when I return to Saba to continue the dive adventure, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find either of them have moved on to other, equally exciting destinations. I’m sort of reminded of the scene in the movie Titanic when Rose’s mother says to Jack “and you find that kind of rootless existence appealing, do you?” Yep! I guarantee that they absolutely do ma’am…
I don’t know why I thought of the Titanic just then, even though the mean little Edge was in the harbor at the time absorbing those who had come out from Sint Maarten earlier and hadn’t been able to subsequently book flights or learn how to hang-glide. The Edge isn’t anything like the Titanic. It doesn’t have ANY lifeboats. Actually, I’m sure it has all the required safety gear and, since people were aboard both ways, they must be doing good business and get there charges back and forth safely day in and day out. I just know I’ll continue to use the services of WINAIR whenever I visit.
Okay folks… It’s 3:00 p.m. Garvis is sure enough patiently waiting at the dock and it’s time for the next Saba adventure. Leaving…
Stay tuned for the final installment in what will be a shorter post (I promise!).
Thanks once again for your patience…
James
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