Montserrat....Whales, a horrible nights sleep at anchor and lost Irish Kingdoms

16:48.046N 62:12.485W

5^th February 2015

5834 Miles from Ramsgate by log.

            Yesterday we dropped down from Jolly harbour, went around the bottom of Montserrat and spent the night in the only surviving harbour, Little bay, a distance of around 42 miles. One point of interest as we crossed over was a pod of 4-6 whales that came within 25 meters of us, I’m not sure which make or model they were but they measured about 15 feet, were all black and had very blunt noses. They certainly caused a flurry of activity on board as cameras were grabbed from below but all to no avail as all we managed were pictures of empty ocean.

On approaching the South West coast of Montserrat the devastation from the volcano is still very much in evidence and even from 1.5 miles offshore you can see the ash flows running down the volcano’s side. As we turned the corner at the bottom of the island the old capital of Plymouth came into sight which had two great swathes of devastation running right through it, leaving a small island of houses and greenery in the middle. In fact the volcano is still giving off steam and smoke which meant that as we got down wind of it the air became laden with s strong sulphur smell which was not pleasant at all. As most of the southern part of the island is still under an exclusion zone while the volcano is still active the only harbour and port of entry remaining is Little Harbour up on the North East coast. It is really just a small dock and a customs shed with a few buildings around it and the only real point of interest was HMS Severn anchored in the bay which is on Caribbean (anti drug smuggling) patrol. In traditional form we dipped our ensign to salute them as we passed and awaited their response which turned out to be a damn good ignoring but at least we tried.

The South East corner of Montserrat and the first ash flow

On the Southern headland, a large boulder field at Lookout point.

Lookout point from 2 miles off

Approaching Plymouth

Plymouth showing the two flows and smoke from the Volcano descending over the remains

Closer view of the previous photo

The remains of the cathedral is just on the edge of the left hand green patch

The smoke cloud follows us as we head down wind. It has a pretty strong sulphur smell even from 2 miles away.

HMS Severn at anchor but is anyone on watch?

            No sooner had we dropped our anchor than an inter island trading ship came into the harbour which needed more room to manoeuvre and so it was up anchor and move over. By the time we had re-anchored it was getting dark and customs was closed so we decided to eat aboard and get a good nights sleep. No chance of that, even in the fairly light winds a swell worked it’s way into the anchorage and we rolled like a drunken dog all night. I dropped our flopper stopper over the side to try to cut down the roll which did slow the roll down but it was still very uncomfortable. A small Dutch yacht to the side of us actually dipped his rails under a few times, it must have been like trying to sleep inside a tumble drier in that boat. As the sun came up I gave up on sleep and started getting Spectra ready for sea there was no way I was spending another night there. By 0715 we were away just behind the Dutch boat who had also given up the struggle. As we passed HMS Severn at 0730 I was debating dipping the ensign again as I am a bit of a traditionalist but as they hadn’t even put there ensign up yet it seemed a bit pointless so I didn’t bother.  

            To day we are heading for St Kitts where we will spend two nights in the marina as my generator is playing up and I don’t want to fix it while we are rolling around. I have also got to go up the main mast again and re run the main halyard as that has broken, it never stops when you are using the boat a lot! As an aside we have just passed the islet of Redonda which is 9 miles from Montserrat but owned by Antigua. While reading up on its history I found that an Irishman from Montserrat had realised that it was unclaimed land back in 1865 and so seeing an opportunity or maybe just being eccentric claimed it for himself and a few years later crowned his son the King of Redonda. Not much came of the claim as it was generally ignored by the rest of the world but on the sons death a society was formed which to this day elects a new King of Redonda when needed. Apart from a few phosphate miners back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s the island has never been inhabited and remains abandoned today.

The Kingdom of Redonda

That’s it for now go on try and resist looking up Redonda on the internet I challenge you….

 PS: we are looking for some crew to come back across the Atlantic at the beginning of June. Three legs of about 2 weeks each, Norfolk to the Bahamas, Bahamas to the Azores, Azores to Cork….anyone interested in all or part? drop us a line.

Spectra {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com

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Paul {DOT} russell732 {CHANGE TO AT} hotmail {DOT} co {DOT} uk and I will pick it up when I am on WiFi