Unique Saba
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Sat 26 Feb 2011 22:53
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The Unique Saba and Her
Extraordinary People
 As soon as we stepped ashore we knew
Saba was something very different - nothing could prepare us for just how unique
this island really is. Until the 1940's Saba was almost inaccessible. Everything
had to come and go via Ladder Bay. This amazing landing on the leeward shore
provided scant shelter from ocean swells. Some eight hundred steps are cut in
the rock. The steepness of the steps and their elevation can only be appreciated
from the sea by looking at the old customs house,
which is only half way up (seen as a small white dot on the tree line an inch or
so toward centre from the yacht). We took this picture as we were leaving to go
to St Croix, a yacht (bottom
left) had just come in for the night and makes for a good measure of
perspective - looks so tiny.
 Boats could only land when the sea
was calm and even then men had to stand waist deep in water
to handle the cargo. Everything from the outside had to be carried up,
including, at different times a piano and a bishop. The Sabans were able to
prevent invasions by keeping piles of boulders behind wooden supports that were
cut down when attackers were half way up the hill.
 Schooner 'The
Mayflower' anchored at Fort Bay in
1928
 The original
steps
    The 'modern steps' from the shore half way up to the old customs
house
 Some of the original
roads still in good repair
A road was built to Fort Bay in 1943,
but with no port to shelter the bay, the island was still impossible to reach
much of the time. Up until the 1950's the only way to get between the villages
was to walk along a steep mountain track. Engineers came out from Holland and
said the steep terrain made road building impossible. So Joseph Hassel, born in
1906, took a correspondence course in road building and the Saban people
hand-built their road. It took them several years and was finished in
1958.     We thought Grenada knew the meaning of
the word steep - here they invented the word
steep
 The road from
Bottom to Windwardside is known as "the road that couldn't be built",
some pepole call it "the road that shouldn't have been built", so steep
few will attempt it and occasionally closed due to landslides. We made use of
the free buoy - letter D. Still a little rolly but at least we managed to stay
put on our bed, unlike the washing machine on rinse cycle we had at Fort Bay the
night before.
   Dutch engineers were similarly
unsupportive of an airport. The Sabans called in
Remy de Haenen, a pilot from St Barts ( the airport we featured in a blog,
over a mountain, line up quick and if you cannot stop, get wet). He looked over
their one flat topped rock and said landing may be a possibility. The Sabans
flattened out the area as much as possible by hand, removing big rocks and
filling in holes. Remy landed, proving his theory. To land here is described as
"exactly like landing on an aircraft carrier".
So we saw first hand the steps, the
road and the airport.
ALL IN ALL
PROVES THE POWER OF TEAMWORK -
ASTONISHING
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