Passage to Ascension Island

[Kyle]We untied from our mooring off Jamestown at dawn and motored through the crowd into clear water. The spinnaker went up and we slowly started moving. After a few miles, as we began to leave the lee of St Helena, we gradually picked up speed until the sea was going by with a satisfying hiss. By the time we lost sight of the island midafternoon, we were fifty miles away. It wasn’t completely over the horizon yet, but was engulfed by rain clouds that remained until dark.

Departing St Helena, we soon had the spinnaker up and were off

The next five days sailing to Ascension Island were about as good as it gets. The wind and waves were almost dead astern. Once or twice a day we would need to gybe if the wind got too far to the opposite side from the sail. A couple of times we even switched down to the jib when the wind would pick up just a little too much, but it was only ever for a few hours before we had the spinnaker ballooned out in front of the boat leading the way again. We never even bothered unzipping the mainsail cover. We overtook the sun again for one last time, passing directly under it on its way north. That made it necessary to stay under cover to cope with the midday heat.

We had a noddy visit several days to hitch a ride north all the way to Ascension Island, we also saw (and had land aboard) lots of flying fish. Kyle even spotted a particularly large blue bottle, and the night skies were clearly changing as we start to see some of our more familiar northern sky constallations.

At the beginning of Day Five, it was apparent that there was no way we were going to make it to Ascension and be safely anchored by nightfall. We would have to wait until the next morning. This gave us enough extra time to bring down the sail altogether and ‘sail’ the rest of the way under bare poles going about three knots. By the time we got to the island, everything was stowed away and tidied nicely. Nobody looking at us through a pair of binoculars would have believed we weren’t just motoring, except that we were going so slowly.

We arrived at Georgetown around sunrise, and once anchored we could see the green turtles returning to the sea after a night of egg laying on the nearby beach

At Georgetown, it is necessary for visiting boats to anchor in a narrow zone of deep water between local boats on moorings and a large floating fuel pipeline that takes up much of Clarence Bay. We had arrived on a weekend, expecting to stay aboard until we could clear in on Monday. There were several boats on moorings and two ships at anchor, but we seemed to be the only visiting boat.

As we were making our way to the designated anchoring area, a local boat zoomed up and led us to the anchorage. We were in deeper water than I would have liked, but they explained that the shallow areas that appear more appealing are all so foul that most who try there end up having to cut their anchors free when they leave. Well, this looks just fine then!