Leeward Islands

Saba and Nevis

We had about 12 teenagers each trip. They came up with creative ways to entertain themselves while without TV. These girls put on a lip synch show for us on the bow of the boat. Pretty soon we had other boats pulling up next to us to watch the shows. In the evenings, we'd play games like "assassin" or cards.

There are two roads on the Dutch Island of Saba...the road that couldn't of been build and the road that shouldn't of been built. It also had spectacular dive sites, however the mooring was pretty eerie...cooky currents and sudden winds.

We took a great hike to the top of Mt. Scenery. The vegetation would change to moist rainforest and opened up to great views of the island, such as Windwardside Town. Saba supposedly has one of the worlds shortest runways. You'd have to be crazy to land.

The Caribbean program for Broadreach was a hard, but rewarding program to lead. Aside from teaching SCUBA diving, you had to oversee the cooking and cleaning. Most of the students had never cooked a meal before. It was not uncommon to be asked how to boil water...and yes, it is possible to ruin pasta.

Mr. Watusi is a bit of an icon in Nevis and for Broadreach. He greeted all our boats when we came to shore and showed off his reggae CDs. A couple of kids bought them and he would sign them. When we got back to the boat to play them, every song sounded the same...still he was legend on our trips.

Living in such close quarters inevitably led to some problems between some kids. One kid did the math of how many people we were to how many square feet was available to each of us. It came to just a couple of feet per person. We never lost anyone overboard however, just lots of plates and silverware.

Saba was very windy and we had a problem with wetsuits disappearing overboard. However, the students ingeniously solved the problem by weaving them through the front trampoline to dry.