Ascension Island

ASCENSION ISLAND (7.95°S, 14.37°W)

Our trip from St Helena to Ascension took us five days of fairly easy downwind sailing. Naturally something had to wrong. Immediately after leaving St Helena and waving goodbye to those aboard the RMS St Helena, we lost our 'George'.

Now Calypso has three means of steering. Firstly, the good old fashioned way of hand steering but, for day after day, 24 hours a day, that becomes a bit much. So, we also have 'Manuel' our non electric windvane and 'George', our electronic autohelm system. During our trip from Cape Town, Manuel' and I had a personal problem as he chose to go walkabout nearly every time I was on watch (he behaved exceedingly well for everyone else though) so I would rely on good ol' 'George' who, unfortunately, is a major drain on the battery system. Anyway, Murphy arrived on the scene and both 'George' and 'Manuel' chose to die (or at least go into a coma) at the same time. As soon as the autohelm started giving us grief, Paul connected up the windvane. Not five minutes passed before it, too, decided to go on strike.

We always knew that cruising was going to be a case of "fixing your boat in exotic locations" so I guess there was no time like the present to get started. We tied off the wheel to stay on course and proceeded to work on the various problems. One has to be a double-jointed, gymnastic leprechaun to work on a boat and this was certainly the case when it came time to work on the course computer for the autohelm. Naturally, it was located in the most inaccessible spot but perserverence reigned and we managed to fix some faulty wiring. Paul replaced a couple of lines to 'Manuel' and he, too, got back on the job. We felt quite chuffed with ourselves that we'd managed to work through the first curved ball of the trip.

We loved Ascension Island. We dropped anchor by Georgetown (the capital) in the bay on the northwest end of the island surrounded by beautiful white sand beaches and crystal clear waters.

The people were outstandingly friendly and the terrain was amazing. Being a volcanic island and quite a young one at that, it was like a moonscape on the lower levels, but Green mountain, in the centre, was almost tropical - what a contrast! We were constantly surrounded by enormous green turtles, all of which were busy mating (interesting site!) and then would go up onto the beaches at night to lay their eggs. The bird life was also amazing, some birds being totally unique to Ascension.

The tiny town up in the hills is named "Two Boat" (why, we never found out) and the crossroad further down is referred to as "One Boat" and that is literally all there is there - one boat standing on its end in the middle of nowhere!

On one trip ashore, we met a local fisherman who gave us a huge piece of a fresh tuna that he was busy cutting. This ended up feeding us sushi the first night, grilled on the braai (BBQ) for 4 of us the following night and then another braai for Paul & me en route. All this was a simple gesture by one of the locals as we passed the landing jetty one morning - WOW! We lived in Simon´s Town forever and that never happened despite the tons of fish we saw being brought in. Such wonderful and warm people.

Ascension Island is a dependency of St. Helena which lies some 800 miles to the southeast with a population of about 1,250. It is as remote as St. Helena, being almost exactly in the middle of the South Atlantic, but is a smaller island (98 sq. km). The island is a British Overseas Territory which, together with St Helena and Tristan da Cunha, forms a single territorial grouping under the sovereignty of the British Crown.

It is volcanic in origin, but has superb white sand beaches (the sand is shell and coral sand). It is a rugged, dry, barren, and inhospitable island. Most of the surface of Ascension is covered by basalt lava flows and cinder cones.

Although Ascension has an airstrip it is effectively inaccessible to the casual visitor as it is a "closed" island. There are no commercial flights to Ascension; RAF flights to the Falkands stop here and USAF flights serve the US Base on the island. There are no facilities for tourists or casual visitors. The only way to briefly visit Ascension is as a passenger on the RMS St. Helena or, as we have done, via private yacht.

Life on the island appears to be very laid back and unhurried. We hiked around with two single handed chaps who were also anchored in the bay and enjoyed the crystal clear waters for snorkeling and scuba diving. We could easily have stayed on longer but we wanted to move on towards Brazil in time for the Carnival.

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