Montserrat

Then we get the redeeming answer we’ve been waiting for. The approval for Rajesh’s visa to the Bahamas. Joy, pride, happiness and a feeling of euphoria are the first emotions that pass through us, but immediately afterwards we also have emotions such as sadness and a sense of loss, because this means that we will soon say goodbye to our good friends, whom we met during sailing. We have always known once we get to the North of Guadeloupe that the seas will take Mabul’s crew and us sailing to other lands. It feels extra special when you have such a special click with the crew of another boat, which makes you decide to sail to the North together for a few months, celebrate the holidays together, discover countries together and to meet new people in those countries. We are therefore grateful for the experiences and memories we have shared with Mabul so far. We decide to postpone our farewell a little further and that we will discover another island together and that is Montserrat.

In the town of Deshaies, Guadeloupe, where we check out, it is very busy because of the day tourists who are there in buses at the same time, presumably from Pointe-à-Pitre where the cruise ships dock. When we arrive at the dinghy jetty in the evening to eat a tasty pizza, the whole city appears to have been affected by a power cut. That means cooking on board. The next morning, we sail towards Montserrat at 5:30 AM. A sailing trip of 40 NM that will take us about 7 hours. It is still dark when we raise the anchor and set course for Montserrat. Our eyes are still small when we hoist the sails and then take a sleepy seat in the cockpit, which reminds me of a comment from Rajesh about his brain. Rajesh sometimes says, “On the right side there is nothing left and on the left side there is nothing right.” It certainly feels that way right now, after nights tossed from left to right on rollery anchorages, often not getting a wink of sleep. Staring over the water, while the sun slowly rises behind the mountain peaks of Guadeloupe, from which we say goodbye, and Mabul sailing close behind us, we slowly wake up. The colours that the sunrise brings provide some beautiful photos.

I had never heard of the island of Montserrat before Mabul’s crew asked us to explore this island together. It is an island that has been hit by several types of natural disasters, the most important being Hurricane Hugo that hit Montserrat on September 17, 1989 and destroyed 90% of all houses and infrastructure and later, after everything was rebuilt in 1997, destroyed the Soufrière Hills- volcano the southern part of Montserrat. The Soufrière Hills Volcano, which is still active and has erupted several times in recent history, with the main eruptions occurring in 1997 and from 2010 to 2019.

As we sail closer to the southeast of the island of Montserrat, the path left by the volcanic activity is through the pyroclastic flows, which are fast-moving mixtures of hot gas, ash and rock fragments that descend the volcano’s slopes at high speeds, spilling everything onto destroy their path, clearly visible from the water. What appears to be a permanent cloud over the top of the volcano is later revealed to be the sulphur-scented gases rising from the still-active Soufrière Hills volcano. When we sail to the southwest side of the island, the complete destruction of the capital Plymouth can be seen. When we later walk over part of this devastated area during a tour of the island, it turns out that the height of the amount of rock fragments and ash is up to almost three floors. The sulfur gases, which smell like rotten eggs, we can smell well on the southwest side, where at first we think that something is spoiling in the freezer or refrigerator, but then we realize that it is the gases from the Soufrière Hills volcano. Slowly we sail further up and wonder how it feels for people who live on this island to be confronted again and again with the uncertainty that comes with living near an active volcano. In the distance, we see a boat approaching us at high speed, where we first quickly check whether we are sailing somewhere that may be off limits, after all we are sailing close to an exclusion zone that is off limits due to the ongoing volcanic activity and the ongoing risk of new pyroclastic flows, but we see that we take this into account. It is the maritime police, who come to check why you are sailing there. We are called to respond on VFH radio channel 16 and they ask us how many people are on board, what our last port of call was, what country we are sailing to and how long we will be there. After they are satisfied with our answers they wish us a nice day and you see them sailing on to Mabul, who get the same questions. The nice thing about a VFH radio is that you can listen in on each other’s interrogations. When we arrive in the bay of Montserrat two hours later, we see the boat of the maritime police neatly moored at the anchor buoy and we joke that their working day is probably over after such a busy day.

Both captains go ashore to register us all at Customs and Immigration. Everything is quite strict here on the island, but after an hour everything is arranged. At the end of the day we get together for a sun-downer and make something to eat together. The next morning Jeroen Rajesh and I take a walk on the island. We get a lift from a car who sees us walking up the mountain and tells us that the next village is still quite a bit of a walk. We decide to go with him and get dropped off in the next village. Here we find a bakery with fresh bread and buns and take this with us for both ourselves and Mabul. It was a nice hike back to the boat. In the afternoon, the Mabul crew went to a National Museum about slavery on the island, while Jeroen and Rajesh’s private hairdresser provided a smooth haircut on board My Motu.

In the evening, we meet ashore at a bar and in addition to Mabul’s crew, we also meet Vernaire and Allanas. Vernaire, who was born and raised on the island of Montserrat, works at the National Museum, where Mabul’s crew visited this afternoon. Her friend Allanas, born and raised in Trinidad, has been living on the island of Montserrat for four years now and is a pilot. They are the only lesbian couple on the small island, with only 3000 inhabitants, where homosexuality is not yet so obvious and everyone knows each other. That evening we all eat together on the boat Mabul and have an incredibly fun evening where Allanas and Vernaire tell us a lot about how life goes on, on the island of Montserrat, under the constant threat of the active Soufrière Hills volcano. That many people suffer from PTSD syndrome as a result and many have been given the opportunity to build a new life in England. Vernaire also tried to build a new life in England for a number of years, but her love for her island of Montserrat made her return in 2018. Allanas told us about her near plane crash, which luckily ended well.

The southern part of the island, including the volcano and the surrounding area, is now an exclusion zone and off limits due to the ongoing volcanic activity and the continued risk of new pyroclastic flows, with special permission from the police and a guide it was possible to us to walk through this area the next morning. While walking through a kind of lunar landscape with the remains of a building here and there from which new vegetation forms, we try to imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived here and had to leave their entire belongings behind. We now walk more than three floors higher than when everything was still lively here. Truly indescribable. We pass the roofs of a school, an office and even the house of the famous singer Arrow, from Montserrat, whose real name is Alphonsus Cassell and had the hit song “Hot Hot Hot” in 1982 that became a hit all over the world. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Montserrat became a popular recording studio destination for musicians seeking a unique, isolated location for their recordings. One of the most famous recording studios on the island was AIR Studios Montserrat, founded in 1979 by British producer and musician Sir George Martin. This studio was used by many famous musicians including Paul McCartney, Duran Duran, The Police and Stevie Wonder. Another famous recording studio on Montserrat was Carib Sound Studios, which was used by artists such as Elton John, Mariah Carey and Jimmy Buffett.The Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) is responsible for monitoring the still active Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat. Here we watch a film about the history of the Soufrière Hills volcano and meet José, a volcanologist from Spain who has been working here for 6 months now. Allanas and Vernaire invited us all that evening to go out for dinner at “restaurant uncle’s”. José the volcanologist also joins us and this creates another evening full of fun and delicious food. When we say goodbye to José, Allanas and Vernaire at the end of the evening, it will also be a farewell to Mabul’s crew. They will sail on to Antigua early in the morning, while we will sail on to Saint Martin around 11 am. Hopefully we will see them back in Guatemala in about seven months. At the last minute, we get some nice pictures from Allanas, which she took from her plane over the bay and our boats. We’ve only been on Montserrat for three days, but it feels like we’ve made friends with people we’ve known for half our lives. This is the beauty of sailing.