Adventure Sailing Diving Expedition

THE WRECKS OF ANEGADA, THE SECRET ISLAND OF SOMBRERO
AND THE PINNACLES OF SABA ADVENTURE

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10 nights/11 days $3600 per person

Join this Extra Special Sailing and Diving Adventure Trip exploring off the beaten track places of unbelievable beauty in the Caribbean. This is an incredible journey on the largest trimaran in the world, the 105' Cuan Law. Share in the experience of a lifetime with other adventure travel lovers like you.

Take advantage of the crew's knowledge of the Wrecks of Anegada, reopened to diving after being off limits for seven years, our experience at Sombrero, a one mile limestone rock fifty miles from any other land and only dived by Cuan Law, and our license to dive the Pinnacles of Saba (one of only two licensed yachts).

ITINERARY

Start and finish in Tortola, BVI (airport Beef Island EIS).
Day 1: Board at 12 noon at Trellis Bay, Beef Island. Cuan Law will set sail right away for the Wreck of the Chikuzen, one of the great dive sites of the BVI seven miles out. A light lunch will be served under sail. After the dive, Cuan Law will move to North Sound, Virgin Gorda for the night.

Day 2: Early next morning, Cuan Law will move out to Anegada Reef do a dive on the Paramatta. This is a 350 foot paddle wheeler that hit the reef on her maiden voyage in 1869. The next wreck which we shall dive in the afternoon, is “The Bone Wreck” . This is the Rocus which went down in 1927 with a cargo of animal bones. After this dive we set out for Sombrero in mid afternoon, 45 miles to the East and arrive at Sombrero for a late dinner.

Day 3, 4 and 5: We spend three days diving at the amazing little island, Sombrero, one mile long, 400 yards wide and 40 ft high. There is a ladder so you can climb onto the island to explore. The Island is a mass of birds as it is now uninhabited and is an important sanctuary and breeding ground as well as being an important rest point on the flyways of many migratory birds. It also has some interesting ruins and artifacts from when it was mined for phosphate in the 19th century. You will find some graves, a dungeon and a fine stone built powder store.

Underwater the clarity and fish life will amaze you. The limestone cliffs which surround the island go straight down at the North East point 100 ft and at the South 75 ft. They are heavily eroded, undercut and full of color and life. There are limestone pinnacles with their feet in white sand rising towards the surface which are riddled with holes and tunnels. All this makes for very dramatic underwater scenery. On the south west side is a huge cavern we call the Cathedral which has a entrance 60 ft high and 200 wide. Looking out into the blue with schools of silver barracuda parading across the entrance and strange sculptured shapes hanging down from the roof is an astonishingly beautiful sight.

We can easily spend three days diving here and when we’re not diving we can explore the island or snorkel into the rocky inlets and pools carved into the cliffs. After dinner, a the end of our third day here, we sail overnight the sixty miles to Saba, the famous diving Mecca in the Eastern Caribbean.

Day 6, 7 and 8: Saba is a Dutch island and a complete contrast to what has gone before. The Anegada Reef is a small barrier reef some 20 miles long. Sombrero is a flat limestone island which in pre-history must have been a reef as well and has been uplifted. Saba is a dormant volcano two miles in diameter and nearly three thousand feet high! About a thousand pleasant people live here and as you ascend it turns from foreboding bare volcanic cliffs to lush, but very steep rain forest. The Sabans have constructed, in this improbable place, three villages which are the prettiest in the Eastern Caribbean, a scary but safe network of hand built roads and an air strip that looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier and is about the same size. For the hiker there is a network of beautifully constructed trails.

The diving here is spectacular and is all protected. We started diving here more than twenty five years ago with Misty Law and so when the Marine Park was declared and visiting dive boats were banned, we were “grandfathered” in. The only other liveaboard diving here is Clay McCardle’s “Caribbean Explorer”.

Around Saba, rising up from unfathomable depths, are a number of remnants from undersea volcanic vents. These are the famous Pinnacles. They are deep, dramatically vertical and festooned in lush coral. Around them are schools of fish and wandering pelagics. Nearer the shore there are two that are shallower and break the surface and one that nearly does so. And then there are the lovely afternoon and night dives on the fringing reefs.

Again we will find lots for three days and shore exploration is a must. After dinner on the eighth day we will do a lovely down wind overnight sail to the BVI for a great finale.

Day 9: Wake up at Salt Island and dive the world famous Wreck of the Rhone all day. For those who have been with us in the BVI and would like something different, we offer other dives.

Day 10: Have an early dive at Ginger Island or Round Rock but after nine days of pretty intensive diving some off gassing is prudent before flying the next day, so we shall lay on a great beach barbecue at the Baths with an afternoon doing everything but diving, or nothing. There will be a gentle evening sail down to Peter Island where we will find night anchorage and our farewell dinner.

Day 11: After breakfast we sail across the channel to Tortola for disembarkation from a trip that will be imprinted on your memory for years.

As some of the diving will be quite advanced we would suggest you come only if you are very confident of your underwater abilities. Lets go adventure!

Details on the Trimaran Cuan Law