We left St. Helena yesterday at 1330. Chessie left a little after us. OJ will stay one more day in St. Helena and leave probably today. They had a couple of places they really wanted to see so they opted to stay.
We are really trying to catch up with the fleet and be sure to at least attend the party on Feb. 7 We also want to make sure we get to Salvador in time to have Rally control help us with the customs and immigration since it was such a hassle for us to get these Visas. We don't want any problems with that. So hopefully we will have a safe passage and wonderful sailing as we are having right now. We have the sails out in wing and wing again and are moving along at from 7-9 kts. It is a sunny pleasant day with no other boats on the horizon. At 1000 and 1930 Bill contacts Chessie on SSB. OJ will probably email us and we them daily to stay in contact with them. As we get closer to the fleet we hope to pick up their net control in the mornings.
What a wonderful tour we had at St. Helena. Keith picked us and Chessie up in his truck and Robert took OJ in his open air truck for a 4 hour long magnificent tour of the island. This was one of the most interesting tours we have taken so far on our World ARC trip.
Keith and Robert live there, and Robert was even there in a Boer camp during WWII. What an interesting perspective they had. There is a movement to put in an airport on St. Helena I. Many of the businessmen like Keith and Robert would love to see it but as I asked around the town not many others are excited about the infiltration of the tourist on the island. Can't say that I blame them because it is so unpoluted and natural right now. It is very clean and people take care of their properties. In the Jamestown area there is a rule of no modernization of any of the buildings and homes. They want to preserve them as historical.
One side of the island is a volcanic rock mountain but inactive. There are a lot of ridges and carving in the rock.There is even a heart shaped carving in the rock with a waterfall in the middle. However, there is only seasonal flow. As you drive to the other side of the island the interior is green and lush and filled with flowers, pine trees, ferns, and a plant that wants to take over the island -flax. They used to harvest the flax for ropes.
We visited Napoleon's burial site. It is taken care of by the French government now.There is forest and gardens surrounding the site. It felt serene and peaceful. He was exiled to that island by the British but it seems that he had a pretty good lifestyle there in a home that is now a museum. They had some wonderful gardens there at his former "prison". He may have had some female company also since he became good friends with an estate owner 's daughter there. We all decided it was a pretty good place to be exiled and quite relaxing to be able to view the gardens around one's home and see horse races in the valley. Napoleon didn't do too bad.
They have a distellery on the island which we didn't visit. They also make their own coffee which I tried to purchase but to no avail. Everyone was sold out. They have lots of cattle, sheep, and goats on the island so there is lots of meat eating by these folks. A delicacy is goat curry. They grow their own beautiful bananas, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant and lots of other veggies. We were missing the apples, citrus, and pineapples.
So today we are happily making our way to Salvador as we remenace about our fortune of visiting an island where there is no airport , friendly people, beautiful scenery and a feeling of what things must have been like before chaos of computers, instant messaging, and Skype took over our lives. It was a peaceful moment in time but I'm not sure most of us could go back there for long.
Rosemary, Bill, and Matt