We had spotted a little green dot on the Caribbean chart and decided to visit Saba, a 5 square mile Dutch island that offers a wild and unspoiled nature.
Freddie the anchor man!

Charlie filming Miss Tippy sailing at a steady 5 knots from St Kitts to Saba.

We found a beautiful island surrounded by by boulders and cliffs.Because of the depth there are only a few treacherous rocks to avoid just below the surface of the shoreline.
The island is a dormant volcano the last eruption was 5000 years ago.
Annie on deck looking our for rocks.

Saba has no beaches no natural harbour and a coastline of rock.Our soltary mooring buoy in the foreground.

The 800 step vertiginous route named The Ladder is the original first landing from which to access the island and was used until 1970’s to bring up cargo from Ladder Bay to the main town named The Bottom!

Freddie and I bringing in the buoy,we found there were no sheltered anchorages and the wind was beginning to blow!

Once moored up we decided to access the steps by dinghy and climb to the top.

Brian and Freddie set off to try out the access but with a gusting wind and growing sea swell it proved impossible to land the dinghy with out the risk of being dashed against the rocks.Instead they set of into the sunset to take some pictures of Miss Tippy and we settled down for an uncomfortable night as the wind increased.

During the night the wind increased to 35 knots and we were thrown out of our beds,crockery and cutlery smashing in the cupboards and drawers and the mooring buoy straining to hold us.We detached our line and motored around to Fort Bay to seek protection.We picked up another buoy with difficulty and secured a line, it felt like we were being spun in a washing machine. Brian attached a spare line as a back up, which proved fortunate as during the night the rolly sea caused the whole main line to chafe through against the the barnicles on the buoy loop and snapped clean off .We were dangling from a spare line but Miss Tippy had been saved from shipwreck!

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