Saba Island with Photos

Position: 17°37’58.3″N 63°14’16.3″W

Clouds hang on Saba. Viewed from St. Martin, Saba (pronounced Say-bah) is a giant fist of a volcano thrust out of the sea. The volcano is quiet these days, but as you approach from the north you half expect to see King Kong peering down at you through the mists that constantly swirl around the peak.

As you approach, mournful cries for help hang in the winds drifting off the island. A lost child, perhaps? Or a goat, bleating on the hillsides? Overhead, beautiful white birds with long, long tails dip and soar. Garrulous and sociable, the red-billed tropic bird lives high in the crags of Saba’s bluffs and imposing cliffs. Besides their beauty, the tropic bird’s shrill whistle has all the urgency of a traffic cop’s and commands your attention.

There’s no protection for sailors here. From any direction trade winds whip around the island and meet up on the far side. Any sea swell makes for a rolly and often uncomfortable anchorage. There’s no marina, just the grey concrete slabs of Captain Leo Chance’s pier* on the south end of the island. A few shipping containers, a few fishing vessels, several warehouses, and a snack bar line the wharf. It looks like it belongs on Cannery Row. For surprisingly good food you should head over to Saba Deep – a pub named for a semi-defunct dive operator. It has a big red-lettered sign that you can’t miss.

The Ladder

Clearing customs involves finding a spare mooring outside the pier, in the swell. You’ll run in in your dinghy and tie up just below the customs office. Because of all these challenges, Saba is generally off limits to charterers and keeps its rugged beauty for hardier adventurers – or tourists arriving by ferry and airplane.

The island is small, just five square miles. In the past it was almost inaccessible, so sheer are the cliffs. For years, Saba was supplied via the Ladder, a rough staircase hewn out of the rocks on the west side of the island. Goods were landed on a tiny pebble beach and portaged by hand up the 800 steps to The Bottom, the island’s administrative center. Today there’s a road from the quayside and it is vertiginous. With a 23% grade and several switchbacks, it makes a formidable second stage bike ride/hill climb for the Saba Triathlon.

The population has remained steady, around 1,900 full time residents, mainly descended from Dutch, Scots, and English settlers (many of whom were pirates). Tourists and students at the medical college boost the numbers and the economy. Yet, with its steep terrain and extensive parks system, you can find solitude here.

Marine Park

Saba’s entire shoreline is a designated marine park. Along its western side half a dozen mooring balls are available for the paltry sum of three dollars per person aboard your boat, per day. Alternatively, you can anchor where there is no coral on a sandy bottom. Still, the shelf is narrow which means you’re going to have to get in close.

Diving around Saba is terrific – as Carol will tell you. We were all kitted up for a three-dive day, but when I got in the water I could neither descend properly, nor get my breathing right. Fed up, I snorkeled instead. From my lofty vantage point the corals and fish were respectively colorful and abundant. Carol said it was even better 75 feet down. The next day conditions were sufficiently benign that she managed to dive the Pinnacle, a rock formation teeming with life a half mile out to sea that requires optimum conditions.

As warm and dry as the shore is, once you reach the villages, things turn green very quickly. We visited The Bottom and Windwardside. The Bottom rests snugly in the cradle of an ancient caldera, while Windwardside clings to Mount Scenery and straddles a ridge between the mountain and what looks like a cinder cone. Both towns are lushly virescent, with Windwardside being noticeably cooler and damper.

Zoning

Saba maintains tight zoning laws. Your house can be any color you like as long as its walls are white, its trim is green, and its roof is red. Exceptions are made for some grandfathered dark brown on ochre homes, but they’re rare. House prices, like most things on this Dutch administered island, are reasonable.

Hiking up Mount Scenery from Windwardside (see video) takes you into a cloud forest. I don’t think I’d been in a cloud forest before. Megaflora in the shape of giant leafy house plants (the kind King Kong would appreciate), pretty mosses, and a constant swirl of mist slicked the footholds on the path up the mountain and kept us on our toes.

Mount Scenery is deemed a ‘potentially active’ volcano. It is also the highest point in the scandalously flat Netherlands. Mostly dormant, it last erupted in the early 17th century, so another eruption may occur any day. Fortunately for Saba it has the exceedingly active Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat and Kick ‘em Jenny (near Grenada) as pressure relief valves; much like Mount St. Helens in the Cascades.

After four days on a mooring and some excellent exploring, we were chased away by forecasts of increased winds and large swells out of the northeast. It felt like we barely scratched the surface of this little island with so much to offer. We plan to return in a couple of months as we head back north.

* follow the link for a bit of local history.