Monday, March 1, 2010

St Eustatius (Statia) Feb 26-28th


How exciting!! – the first time to a new island since I don’t know when….. busy reading the guidebook. Statia is a small island (about 3 miles by 4, population about 3,000) with a large history. It’s part of the Netherlands Antilles.

Back in the mid to late 1700s Statia was the trade capital of the Indies. From one to two hundred sailing ships lie at anchor, with hundreds of small boats going from ship to shore to the many shops and warehouses with goods available from all over the world – thousands of tons of commodities were traded daily. The major powers were fighting each other and wrapped their colonies in a mass of red tape and taxes, stifling trade. The Dutch, who owned Statia, remained neutral and opened Statia as a free port. Countries who could not deal with one another could deal with Statia, so Statia papers were attached to many things produced elsewhere. For example, in 1770 Statia produced about 600,000 pounds of sugar but exported 20 million pounds. It was officially approved smuggling and the inhabitants (Dutch Jewish and English merchants) got very rich.


Nowadays, the many sailing ships have been replaced by oil tankers (it has a huge storage facility) and we had to avoid all the oil floating pipes as we came past the north end of the island.

There were about 5 cruising boats in the bay (very different to St Martin), plus some dive boats and tugs and tenders from the tankers. The guide book talks about the swell here (that we did experience) but that was nothing compared to the wake from the tug boats and tenders that sped back and forth from the tankers.

It is a small nice quiet friendly island, where people still say hello and good morning. With no natural protected port it is not on the cruise ship schedule, but attracts tourists willing to make that extra flight, looking for a more out of the way island and good diving. There is also a US Medical school here (they seem to be on most islands!).

Much of the “Lower Town” was destroyed in hurricanes (still remnants of the warehouse walls that have dropped into the sea) and a “New Town” exists at the top of the cliff – which involves a steep walk up the cobbled “Old Salves Road” giving us some insight as to what life must have been like for some (especially when Charlotte wanted to be carried!)

While in Statia, we did a great 3 hour walk up to the top of the “Quill” – an extinct volcano. It was a great trail – Charlotte said the flat parts were hard but the steep parts were easy!!

Charlotte led the way on the steep part and was the first up to the very top (see beacon and solar panel), to the panoramic view, but unfortunately the clouds closed in around us so we could not see below

We also did an island taxi tour (didn’t take very long!) (see the top of the Quill that we climbed, behind the bus)

and on the last day, went to the beach to try and find the "Blue Beads" - the "currency" used for trading years ago - unfortunately we didn't find any.

We had a resident ramora swimming under the boat for a lot of our stay.

While is Statia, we were boarded by the Netherland Antilles Coastguard. A fairly routine inspection of boat checking in papers, passports and safety equipment but still a bit daunting! – I wanted to ask them to take off their big black DM boots when they came on the boat, but dare not.

We stayed 3 days in Statia, and then, at 7.30am we headed out to Antigua. The winds were very light, which was good as our course was just south of east, exactly where the winds were coming from (as per usual!!). We arrived Antigua about 6pm