Saba 2019

We stayed at the luxurious Cottage Club, and dove all over the island with a great outfit called Sea Saba

Day 1

Our flight from Phoenix was delayed by over an hour, and we only had an hour and 15 minutes scheduled to connect in Charlotte. For a wile, it looked like we were going to spend the night in Charlotte. Steve C dealy with the stress by practicing his sleeping-in-the-airport skills It turned out well, as the pilots whipped the dickens out of the plane and got us to Charlotte in time to make the flight.
It looks a bit cloudy. actually, it was raining when we landed, but stopped soon after.
David took some pictures of St Maarten as we came in.
These guys must be a lot safer than PHX, because the line moves a lot slower
We waited at this bar for our flight to Saba. It’s a friendly place made of wood that washed up on the beach after Hurricane Irma. The name comes from the fact that the owner is a big supporter of a local animal shelter.
This is the baby that’s taking us to Saba.
I was right behind Bob M. Yes, there is a row in front of me.
Bob found that the best way to get stable GoPro video was to brace his hand against the side of the cockpit door. The pilots didn’t seem to mind. Bob exhudes an aura of harmlessness.
For 15 minutes, I was the right-side engine monitor. It worked fine.
For a few minutes, It looked like we were going to crash into Mount Scenery. At the last moment, we made a 90 degree left turn, and lined up with the runway.
There’s the runway now. I had a terrifyingly clear view of the approach.
This si the walk from the Twin Otter to the terminal. I honestly don’t know what Calum’s doing.
Our driver for the week is Peddy. I admit I don’t know if I’m spelling that right. And thanks to David W, I keep wanting to call him Manny. He’s a lot more capable of driving on The Road than I would be, that’s for sure. After a few minutes in the van, we got a nice view of the airport.
Once we got to the Cottage Club and checked in, we could enjoy the view from the deck on the back of the cottage.
The night we arrived, we ate at The Hideaway. A nice little place with really good food. I had a delicious pork tenderloin
That door right in the middle with the light turned on is cottage #3, where nic and I are staying.
Island life requires a certain proximity of everything. There a couple of cemetaries that we pass on the way to town. I took this after dinner on the way back, because it just looks better inthe dark.
When we walked through downtown Windward Side on the way to dinner, I asked everyone to stand behind this sign for a picture. Thanks, David F.
There are a few sculptures scattered around the grounds.
Bob and David scope out the shoreline at our first dive site.
As we approached the mooring for the second dive, Kevin saw something in the water. I never see anything, so I don’t know what it was.
This is Diamond Rock in Ladder Bay.
Sunday diving witht theDispensibles always means two words – Formal Dive! Dive Intern Beth took this picture of us before we got in the water.The Sea Saba crew were really cool with our low-grade shenanegans on all the dives so far. We’ll see how they do as the week wears on.
Kevin was good en ough to take a picture of us underwater in our formal dress.
After taking our picture, kevin asked me to take a picture of him “straightening his tie”.
I also got a solo portrait of Dave F, since he went full tuxedo.
Normally, I take a picture of my fin to test my camera after entering. this time, Nic was right there, so I took a picture of him instead.
One of the big rules when diving in a marine park is, “Don’t touch the coral.” The critters get a pass on that rule. This guy was using a coral covered rock to scrape the algae off his shell. That’s how the Green Sea turtles keep their sheel so lustrous.
To help repopulate the Staghorn coral on the reef after the last hurricane, The conservency takes little pieces of the coral andgrows them on underwater racks. When they’re big enough, they get transplanted by zip-tying them to nails pounded into the reef. Really – here’s a picture.
I just wanted a nurse shark. I got a shark plus a Felby.
So, on the very first dive of the trip, I encountered a spacial disconnection from the main group – long story short, it wasn’t entirely my fault, but it was pretty much my fault. Anyway, followed the plan that Kevin layed in the pre-dive briefing and met up with the group at the mooring line. On the way, I found a big sandy patch with lots of tiny garden eels. They let me get pretty close to them.
Besides the crazy assortment of coral, I like this picture because you can see how crazy clear the water is.
Two of the barracudas from the flock we saw earlier.
Peacock Flounders are masters of disguise, despite their vivid coloring.
I’m pretty sure they’ve got nothing to do with potatos, but they sure do look like them.
I thought it was just a cool picture of some orange coral, and then I saw Steve.
They have some of the most colorful coral I’ve ever seen. I may dial back the saturation on this picture before I post it. I think it might have broken my camera’s sensor.
Blah, blah… Biggest one-celled-organism in the world, Blah, blah…
the inescapable squirrelfish behind one of those potatoey looking corals.
We stopped for a surface interval in Ladder Bay. It’s a lovely spot to anchor and off-gas blood nitrogen.
On our second surface interval, David salutes the judges before making his dive.
David enjoys a swim break during the surface interval. Or is it a potty break? When you’re in the water, it’s hard to tell.
Swarm, school, whatever. They’re barracudas.
A cool tubeworm set up house next to a nice-sized fire coral. You don’t mess with fire coral.
He’s a frogfish, and he’s yellow. Take that, Kermit.
Bob asked if I could take a picture of this flower outside hius cottage. Yep.
The pool is down a few steps from the level that our cottages are on.
Hey, Look – you can see the very end of the runway from here!
While we were poolside, David kept updated on the status of tropical storm / hurricane
After the first day of diving, Steve was so wound up he had to use ancient techniques to enter a state of relaxation that allows restoration of the mind, body and spirit. Whatever, he fell asleep at the pool.
After the first day, we regrouped by the pool to log our dives. Dive logging involves drinking beer until one person asks “What was the name of the second site again?” and then everyone argues about the name until agreement is reached.
Bob watched carefully as Steve C applied the ancient relaxation techniques, and then gave it a try himself. He seems to have gotten the hang of it.
The tour coordinator pronounces it “Booba”, but that just seems pretentious. I’ll tell you one thing, though – the ambiance, food and service were freaking awesome. If the Michelin guys ever get around to visiting Saba, this place will score highly. Hit it now, while you can still get a table.
While dining at Chex Bubba, I noticed the way the cool little lantern on the table was lighting Bob’s face. I told him to lean in and look happy. Bob’s still working on looking happy.
After dinner, they took us on a tour of their wine cellar. We didn’t even get yelled at when we didn’t buy anything. Classy place, I’m telling you.
In Chez Bubba’s wine cellar, they have a nice assortment of stuff for sale.
At Chez Bubba
We went shopping for groceries after the diving was done. He didn’t really buy Twinkies, but he found something that made him happy.

Day 2

One of the many little memory aids you learn when working towards an advanced SCUBA certification is “Gecko on chair, diving is there.” This little fella was on the chair of our deck this morning. Looks like good news!
It’s called “Ladder Bay” because of the stairway leading to the old Customs house on the top of the hill just left of center. Back in the day, all the fresh water, food, and other goods came to the island in ships. It was all transferred to rowboats and brought up the stairs to the customs house. From there, it continued up and over the mountain to the towns on the other side.
The customs house is in the upper right and the stairway starts at the lower left. Divemaster Captain Ben says he’s seen pictures of donkeys and a piano being hauled up the stairs in a sling.
He can stand like that for hours if nobody goes over and pokes him when it’s time to dive.
This is the rope that attached the mooring bouy to the bottom. When the current is strong, like today, hang onto it on the way down and back up. They tend to get pretty well colonized by soft corals and algaes and stuff.
Kevin found a grouper that he semed to recognize when we got on the bottom. I made a mistake when putting my camera together, so I couldn’t zoom out. I made the best of it.
Kevin’s buddy in way more closeup than I wanted. I figured out a hack to retract the lens after a few more shots. I need to be more careful and more awake when I set up my camera. I’m usually doing it first thing in the morning. I gotta get that first cup of coffee down sooner.
There haven’t been too many of these around this year. On a side note, we’ve seen lionfish on the menu at a couple of restaurants.
This is the only place besides Fiji where I’ve seen coral so bright and colorful, even without artificial lighting. At 50 feet, this stuff is still eye-fryingly orange.
Judging from the flaily arm position, I’m pretty sure that’s Steve C.
We haven’t seen a nurse shark swimming yet, but we have seen a few reef sharks. They just haven’t gotten close enough for a good picture.
These guys are all over the reef out here. I’m hoping we can get a night dive in to look for them swimming around and hunting.
On a later dive, I found a juvenile version of this species.
Sadly, one of the ugliest fish on the reef. This guy is swimming directly away from me, and his eye can swivel to keep looking right at me as he does.
Kevin told us to keep an eye out for old anchors on this dive, and then he was good enough to point one out to us.
These make great picture subjects.
Kevin told us about a stingray cleaning station where the rays come and lie down to be cleaned by little shrimps. I didn’t see any of the cleaning crew, but this guy was having a nice rest anyway.
Not much more to say.
This anemone is about the size of a Dominoes medium pizza.
I showed this picture to Divemaster Kevin who identified it as an example of coral doign the wrong thing, evolutionarily speaking. Still, you don’t mess with fire coral.
Divemaster Kevin took us to a place with lots of ledges that you can swim under and look for things hiding from other things. Sometimes they hide because the other things might eat them, and sometimes they hide because they want to eat the other things. Your experience under the ledge depends on what kind of thing the things under the ledge think you are. I took a bunch of pictures here, so I put my guess as to who’s in the picture in the title.
THese guys were hiding way at the back of one of the tunnel-y ledges. Te teeth on the snapper give you a clue at why he’s hiding back in the shadows.
More hunters in the dark shadows
They seem to like hanging around this area. This guy is a little bigger than an American football. In Turks & Caicos one night, we saw one about the size of a linebacker.
I like these guys, but they’re shy and hard to photograph anything but their tail. This one was pretty chill.
Not bad for a one-light setup.
This one was peekign straight up out of his hole.
David finally got my attention to point out this turtle that was coming straight at me. By the time I got my camera up, he was on his way past.
Our safety stop was at about 20 feet. We were on the top of a ledge that fell off another 50 feet or so to a lower shelf. While I was off-gassing, I tried to get a good picture of the edge. This is about the best I could do.

Day 3

This time, Steve C was right under me on descent, so he was the model for my test photo.
The first dive of the day should be the deepest, so we started today with Saba’s famous “Eye of the Needle” pinnacle. It starts 200 feet underwater, and rises straight up to just about 100 feet below the surface. Breathing nitrox limits us to 111 feet, so we had to be careful not to get to excited about exploring over the edge. It was only about 15 feet across the top, so it’s very cool looking way down the side towards the bottom.
The whole needle is entirely covered with life – corals, algae, sponges, divers…
Another shot lookign down over the edge of the needle.
A couple of divers going down on the needle. Sorry – it’s late.
Nic making a loop around the needle.
At one point, a huge flock of parrotfish came zooming up from the depths and swam over the top of the needle.
Your guess is as good as mine. you can see just a little bit of Steve C.
They’re like the streetcorner thugs of the reef. Just hanging around looking tough.
I think this one has fangs
I guess with less competition, they’re getting bigger.
I found a great photo spot, but there’s never a diver around when you want one, so this guy had to stand in.
Every divers’ favorite critter
David swam over and showed me that he had found a knife on the bottom of the sea. For some reason, he also was showing me his dive light.
I like these palm tree looking worms.
He was just sitting there like he thought the coral was hiding him or something.
When I took the picture, he knew his hiding place wasn’t working, so he slinked off to find another spot.
David using his light to search for critters in the dark under a ledge
We always make a point of looking into these huge barrel sponges because you never know what you’ll find. David seems to be getting rather deep into this one.
Sure enough, he got himself stuck, and it took three of us a good ten minutes to pull him free. Luckily, the boat had extra tanks.
That black and yellow fish was just sitting behind the coral, looking like he was in a jail. The fish is called a Rock Beauty, so I thought I’d be able to get a picture of a “Jailhouse Rock Beauty”, but it was not to be. He was just too fast.
Divemaster Ben told us about underwater hot springs that bubble up through the sand. If you stick your hand in the sand, you can feel the heat. Here’s Nic trying it. The sand around the hot springs gets discolored from the sulpher in the water. Everything above is true. I promise.
When I see a turtle moving fast away from Bob, I don’t ask questions. The poor little guy looked like he wanted me to rescue him.
The blue spots look like neon under water
He had to be close to 2 feet long.
You know – those almost transparent ones that sit on the bottom on their pectoral fins like they’re planking?
He’s only about half an inch long. I showed the picture to Divemaster Ben, and he told me what it was.
These Saba turtles just don’t even seem to notice divers. I had my head down taking pictures, and this guy almost ran me down as he came zooming through. It’s pretty cool, actually. They seem to know the rules of the marine preserve.
He must have ground off about 1000 years worth of coral growth to get so clean.

Day 4

After the devestating destruction of Super Hurricane Dorian on Wednesday, the harbor was still a mess on Thursday morning. Since it was impossible to get to the boat, diving was off for Thursday morning. We decided this was a perfect day to mount the highest point in The Kingdom of the Netherlands., that being Mount Scenery right here on Saba. The trail to the top starts with these steps, and continues for just over a thousand more just like them.
On the way up the trail, Bob came across some more devestation caused by Super Hurricane Dorian. Evidently, the official disaster relief workers hadn’t started on this part of the island yet. Luckily, Bob was there to help clear debris from the trail. Here we see him moving a stick to the side of the stairs.
I’m guessing that the power lines follow the trail up and over the mountain.
The top third or so of the trail is totally enrobed in clouds, so we were in a dense fog. This not only messes with visibility, it also keeps everything wet and slippery. The footing was very treacherous.
David took a picture of me at the highest point in The Netherlands.
At the top, there was a strong wind, and the clouds were moving fast. Every few minutes, a little hole would blow past and allow a view all the way down to the water.
With the slick stone steps and all, David decided that flip-flops weren’t the best choice for hiking. Right before we left, he bought a new pair of Columbia walking shoes. By the time he got down, he had walked the soles right off the shoes. Silver lining: They’re now perfect for wearing on the deck of his sailboat.
Divemaster Kevin told us in the briefing about a pervert turtle that lived near this site.He claimed that it was VERY friendly towards divers. From his description of it being a very large, 200 year old turtle, this can’t be him, but this guy cam zooming between me and David as we were descending the line at about 75 feet. He almost sideswiped me, and then he looked over his shoulder with this Mr. Magoo expression, like it was my fault. There’s something weird going on with the turtles down in Saba.
This unknown diver is committing a major no-no by petting a turtle. Nevermind that the turtle in question almost crashed into multiple divers.
Another head of bizzarly misshapen fire coral, hiding a squirelfish and a damselfish.
This is probably the best shot I’ve been able to get of the most disliked specied in the sea.
All the eels I saw on this trip were the spotted variety. This is about the most I ever saw one exposed.
This one seems a bit more alert, considering it’s still daytime.
I finally found some of this stuff with little fish around it.
Sometimes these little shrimp are all over the place. On this trip, we didn’t see that many of them. This is about the best picture I got.
Got to be the ugliest fish on the reef. They probably get self consious of all the other fish looking at them.
I think this looks like some kind of a musical instrument.
I saw a nice grouping of squirellfish, and then that little blue jerk jumps in with the photobomb.

Day 5

You almost never see lobsters out walking around during the day. Lobsters are tasty, so it’s dangerous for them to show themselves before dark.
These sponges usually grow as one large barrel. Sometimes you see two or three that have grown together. This looks like six that are growing as a single colony. This is gonna look really cool in a hundred years or so.
I wanted to get a picture of the top of the seamount from down low on the slopes.
It kind of looks like a mountain on a cloudy day.
Another nice clear picture of my new favorite coral species. Just look at all the different corals in there.
Near the end of the dive, I looked through a gap between two rocks, and Calum waved at me. He was framed so nicely, I just had to take a picture.
These are really cool. Those spots are really bright, like little LEDs.
That beak of his can chomp of bites of coral and crunch it up. Then he poops out the sand that makes nice beaches.
Fire worms look like centipedes that crawl along the coral. They’re covered with bristly spines that sting way worse than a scorpion or jellyfish. The part of this one that you can see in the picture is about three inches long, and that represents about a third of the whole worm.
We’ve been seeing these all week, but this is the best picture I’ve been able to get.
Sand Divers lay partly buried in the sand. THey lie in wait for another fish to swim by and then ambush it.
Bob has a trick for reducing his gas consumption. When he starts up the line, he takes out his regulator and holds his breath all the way up. That’s a diving joke. He really took out his reg to pose, and then got distracted by David SuperHero flying next to him.
David W hanging on the line on ascent from the SuperHero dive.
This is my best “Divers with Coral” picture yet. I’m pretty sure that the three guys starting up the mooring line are Bob M, David F, and Steve C. I was taking pictures along the side of the pinnacle, and I happened to look up just as they were beginning their ascent.
Hey, isn’t that Bob’s girlfriend down among the coral with no dive gear?
Wait a minute – how come her hands are zip-tied behind back? Something tells me Bob’s been up to his old tricks again.
At the end of our second dive, the current returning to the boat was so strong that Divemaster Kevin signalled that we were aborting the the dive. After inflating his surface marker bouy, he had us all group together and we made a blue water ascent. Once we made it to the surface, Ben maneuvered the boat’s stern near us, and Beth threw out a stern line attached to a bouy. Nic somehow positioned his head diretly in the path of the bouy, so it took a bit of a bounce before it came to rest.
Today was our Pirate Dive, which means we carry deadly toy weapons and poke each other with them until we run out of air.
David runs afoul of Ben’s blade.
David W and Captain Ben sparred underwater for quite a long time.
Captain Ben knee-grabbed Bob’s tank and attacked from a position of strength. Note the simulated eyepatch. That’s a nice touch.
After a protracted round of fencing, Ben managed to deal a lethal blow to Bob, who obliged by floating belly-up.
Dave F wields his saber during our Pirate Dive.
We finished diving early on Friday so we would have 24 hours to off-gas nitrogen before flying home on Saturday. With the extra time after diving, we visited the Queen’s Garden Hotel. They have a bartender named Duco who is a mad-scientist type genius at concocting new and creative gin and tonic based drinks. Some of us attended a little clinic where Duco shows his stuff.
This is Duco making one of his special recipes.
This is a picture of PART of Duco’s gin collection.
A view of some of the rooms.
Some parts of The Road remind me of the Great Wall of China