St Helena - Monday 16th April

We arrived at St Helena at around 8am in beautiful calm waters.  The fear was that there would be too much swell to go ashore which is often the problem.

Some of the ship’s staff went ashore in the tenders to check out the situation at the wharf and guess what the swell was too erratic a the wharf.  This would make the tender operation unsafe as the tenders could rise or fall by approximately 1m.  You can guess there were a lot of unhappy people on board.  Some people have been to St Helena 7 times before and have not manage to land yet!  You would think that it should not be included as a port if there is such a problem with the swell.  A bit like our Norfolk Island which seems to have the same problems with getting ashore.  The Captain did sail around the island so that we could see if from all angles which took about 2.5 hours.  The island is very rugged with lots of steep rocky cliffs around the water’s edge and not much vegetation at all. So that means that we now have 8 days at sea.  I decided to have a quiet day and didn’t go to the gym or my art class but lazed around catching up on this blog and generally wasting time.

I bet there were a lot of disappointed locals that 2,000 passengers didn’t come ashore and spend their money.  Apparently there was a lady waiting at the dock that had made a lot of homemade cakes to welcome us.  How nice… or I should say it would have been a nice gesture. 

Some facts:

-          Situated in the South Atlantic ocean and is approximately 47 sq miles in size.

-          One of the world’s remote islands

-          Often known as the fortress island because of all it high barren rugged cliffs on the coastline

-          The 4,100 islanders are known as Saints and consist of the island’s past masters, its soldiers, its sailors and slaves.

-          A mix of Portuguese, Dutch, British, Africans, Malays, Madagascans, Goans and Boers.

-          Speak English but often change V for W

-          Subsidised by Britain

-          St Helenian currency or Sterling