To the Volcano

Our shakedown sail had been a resounding success. Loose things had been tightened, sticky things had been greased, the head had relapsed...all pretty standard stuff. The skipper felt Django was ready to go cruising. So, on Monday, November 9, we set off for Montserrat.

Dana, the Irish half of our Irish-Estonian Eager Crew, was keen to visit Montserrat which has a long history of Irish settlements. Irish indentured labourers on St. Kitt’s were sent to form new colonies on Montserrat and Antigua when the British feared these Catholics might side with the French in the event of war. Montserrat, whose first settlers were the Irish, soon became a haven for Roman Catholics from many islands seeking religious freedom. Names like Potato Hill, St. Patrick’s, Kinsale and Cork Hill – not to mention the island’s nickname ‘The Emerald Isle’ – all speak to its Irish colonial roots.

In the 1970s and 80s, Montserrat was the playground of pop and rock stars, much as Mustique was and is for the rich and famous. The Beatle’s producer George Martin founded Air Studio there. Elton John, Sting, the Stones, Stevie Wonder and many others made recordings there. Then, in 1989, the island was devastated by Hurricane Hugo and Air Studio, among other installations, was closed. As if that weren’t bad enough, in 1995, just as the island had fully recovered from Hugo, its “extinct” Soufrière volcano erupted, completely burying the capital city Plymouth in pyroclastic ash. Almost two thirds of the island’s population fled to new homes.The population dropped to just 4,000 souls.

Today, about two-thirds of the island is a gigantic volcano laboratory, with an observatory, open to visitors, on the edge of this Exclusion Zone. During periods of low activity, there is a Daytime Entry Zone which allows access to the abandoned city of Plymouth, preserved in its deep bed of ashes. The Monserrat Volcano Observatory posts weekly updates on the volcano on its website www.mvo.ms and sets the hazard level each day on a scale of 1­–5.

This, then, was our destination. We had been warned that the Daytime Entry Area has not been open recently due to a moderately high level of volcanic activity, including a great deal of ash venting and pyroclastic flows. Nothing daunted, we set off in glorious sunshine and, naturally, straight into the wind. It had taken us some time to get going, largely because of battles with the rather ornery Bank of Antigua and Barbuda (its ATMs accept only Visa cards, no debit cards or other denominations), so we arrived too late for customs and immigration clearance into Montserrat. During the passage, we watched clouds of debris rise from the volcano in spectacular billowing waves, with steaming smoking chunks of mountain rolling down its sides.

Approaching Montserrat from Antigua. See if you can spot the volcano.

We anchored off Port Little Bay, on the northwest side of the island. The volcano is in the southeast. We could smell the brimstone, see the dust clouds as they spewed upward over the intervening hills, and feel the grit as ash settled as a fine gray powder on every surface. A rather nasty swell was with us all night and, in the morning, a fearsome squall blew in just as we were preparing to reset our dragging anchor. WW yelled from the cockpit for us to get back (we were on the foredeck lashing down the kayaks) and, as we dove for cover, the heavens opened. Our freshly waterproofed bimini did its best, but it was fighting a losing battle. The EC were sent below, we closed the companionway and WW and I, soaked to the bone and shivering (a novel feeling in these parts), steered Django in small tight circles till the worst was over.

Once again at anchor, WW was able to make it ashore in Boffo to clear us in, but on his return he announced that he would not be comfortable leaving Django for our intended four or five hour hike in the interior as the anchor was, again, dragging. The EC and I prepared to go ashore. It was gray, another squall looked to be on its way and the volcanic ash covered everything. I thought we should just head to Nevis and give up on Montserrat for the time being. We could come back in fairer weather and hope the volcano would be better behaved. But the EC (and I, in fairness) really wanted to see this island. WW and I went to the foredeck to check the anchor...it was dragging, of course. “Let’s just go,” he said.

So we raised anchor and headed northwest , past the uninhabited rock of Redonda, to Nevis (pronounced NEE-vis, not like Ben Nevis in Scotland).