"Arctracer" Letters

Update 4 - St. Helena 20 February 2013

Good morning!

I am at Ann(e)'s Place (with an E on one side of the sign and without the E on the other) eating a bacon, egg & cheese "toastie".

First I'll talk about technical difficulties and then get on to the island of St. Helena! Feel free to skip ahead... :)

I'm typing on my iPad because for whatever reason there is no power at the cafe to plug in my laptop. When I asked the woman at the restaurant, she shrugged and said the outlets are taken care of by Cable and Wireless and that she has electricity in the kitchen. Oh, well.

I am very happy that I prepared for my adventure and thought "have two ways of doing everything"! Yesterday the glass fell right off one of my lenses. It was the result of being dropped at the beginning of the trip, but I didn't know it was in danger. I put it all back together (with the help of the ferry driver), but now for whatever reason, I can't focus on anything far away. Huh? I will take it apart, clean it, and put it back together, but luckily I've got three more lenses to use.

Another thing that has gone kaput is my port to plug in my external hard drives. I tried different cables and different drives, so I'm pretty sure it's the port. Luckily I got drives that ALSO have USB connections, so I can still connect them. Trouble is I only have one working USB port in my laptop, which means transferring all video files to the computer and then to the external drive and then deleting the files from the computer to make room for the next batch. It's a bit frustrating and time consuming, but as long as there's sun it works. (We rely heavily on solar power. It's possible, but not ideal, to run the engine to charge things as well.)

It's raining today. It's true, but it's also meant to make you laugh. My friend Miguel mentioned several times before my departure that by the end I may only have my iPhone left to record on. Of course, I tend to break every iPhone I have, so we'll see how it goes!

So! St. Helena! We arrived 8 days ago and will leave tomorrow (Thursday 2/21).

Arctracer (the catamaran) is at a mooring near several other sailboats. The water is a bit rough and there's no beach - just rocky cliffs and a cement (?) dock. It's difficult and sometimes dangerous to get ashore by dinghy, so we rely on a ferry service. The ferry runs 9 am to 7 PM, one trip every odd hour. So...9,11,1,3,5,7. This means there are limited opportunities to get back and forth between the boat and the island. If you miss your intended ferry, you have to wait 2 hours for the next one. And you basically can't stay on the island after dark unless you stay at a hotel. No nightlife for Hilary!

Yesterday I mentioned to Steven, the afternoon ferry driver who helped me with my lens, that it was sad I couldn't see the island after dark. He said if he'd known, he would have taken me out Saturday night and then brought me back to Arctracer. "I would have brought you to the bar and then a birthday party! You would have gotten so drunk!" I'm not sure I would have gotten "so drunk", but I would have taken an opportunity to go out on the town with a local. And, you know, film it.

I did manage to have a couple of whiskeys at a local bar called The Standard with Sailor Harry. Harry knows my parents - he left Walvis Bay on the same day we did and arrived in St. Helena a few days after we did. He's a "singlehander" - sails alone. He is from Germany and was on the Olympic hockey team in 1976. He is a character! He bought me one whiskey and then told me I needed one more "for the other leg". Makes sense, right?

I've met lots of other people who are sailing. Many are retired couples like my parents, but also a lot of young people. Mostly couples and single young men. At first I was thinking of the younger people as my peers, but then I realized most of them are likely 15-20 years younger than I am. I'm turning 40 in November this year and I've already started telling people I'm 40. How did that happen?

I keep meaning to tell you about St. Helena... :) I guess you could Google most of it...

I climbed Jacob's Ladder, which is an extremely steep stairway (699 steps) up the side of a cliff. It wasn't bad. It took me 25 minutes with a few stops to take photos and rest, but I think the record is around 5 or so...?

We went on a tour of the island with an older gentleman named Robert, who seems to have done every job on the island at some point in his life. He brought us to Longwood, where Napoleon lived and died after he was exiled to the island. If you have to be exiled, this is the way to do it, I'd say. We also saw his tomb. It no longer has him or even the stone, though - everything was shipped back to France ages ago. We went to the Millennium Forest, which is a project to try to re-establish gumwood trees to the island. We saw Jonathan, the oldest living resident - a tortoise estimated to be over 170 years old. We saw some cows, which are only used for beef, not milk because of the rules/standards in place for such things that they don't have the ability to adhere to.

Part of the island is just volcanic rock, some is desert-like with cacti, and some is green and lush. Parts are almost always sunny and parts are often cloud covered. It's a tiny little place with so many different landscapes! Some hills are covered with flax, which was the main industry for decades, but the industry collapsed in the 60s and it's mostly unused now.

One day we took a walk/hike to the heart-shaped waterfall. It's the wrong season, so there's no waterfall right now, but the walk was really beautiful and green. It rained on us a few times along the way. We saw some strange spider webs that went into holes in rocks. I'm curious about what lives in there. I read that there is a type of spider here which can't be found anywhere else in the world, but I'm not sure if they are the ones that spun those webs...

I've enjoyed my stay here - the people are incredibly friendly! I'm wondering how much it will change when they get an airport in a few years? I'm happy to have seen it now.

Tomorrow we are off to Ascension Island! I will write to Rick via Sailmail (which I have access to at sea) and will have him forward the emails to my list and post them to my Facebook wall at least once per week. There may be Internet at Ascension, but I've heard conflicting reports. So! It's possible I'll be on Facebook again in a week, but also possible I won't have access for over a month...

Till next time!

Sailor Hilary