can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

American Spirit II - Day 384; Our Last Full Day on St. Helena; We Go Swimming with a Whale Shark One More Time; & How St. Helena Got Its Name; Sunday, January 25, 2015



St. Helena was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Joao da Nova Castella on May 21, 1502; and was named after the mother of the Emperor Constantine. Her name was...Helena; and her birthday, you guessed it, was on May 21.

Up at 8:00 AM. Coffee and tea.

Breakfast at 10:00 AM: scrambled eggs; cut up spiced potato; fruit cocktail; and brown bread. For Joel and me. Jeanine had yogurt and granola. We turned on the generator to charge batteries and made water for 3 hours. Joel transferred pictures from his camera and mine to his computer so we can send some to the our rally web site later today.

We took the water taxi into the wharf at 11:40 AM, along with one empty jerry can that we had forgotten to have filled with diesel yesterday. When we got to the dock I asked our whale shark tour guide if he could help me fill the can with diesel, and he had his son (?) take his car, go to a gas station and have it filled. There are very few gas stations on the island; for all I know there is only one. And he had to hurry and get it filled right away as the gas station closed at 1:00 PM today.

Sixteen rally crew departed at 1:00 PM for our whale shark tour. 100% of the passengers were rally folks. On board were Joel and me from American Spirit II; 4 from Civetta II; 3 from Shaya Moya; 3 from Adela; 1 from Merlyn of Poole; and 3 from Sweet Pearl. For a while it looked like the trip would be a bust. However, Keith, the boat operator, finally found one whale shark. Yeah! I asked him how he spotted it and he said that he noticed a color difference in the water. I was looking for a tail or dorsal fin sticking out of the water. We had been driving the boat around for 45-60 minutes before we hit pay dirt.

Once Keith stopped the boat the first 8 people in the water were those people who had not swum with a whale shark before. The rules for swimming with these fish dictate that only 8 persons at a time can swim with one of them. After a while, the other eight got in the water as the first eight got out. Because the sun was high in the sky, we were able to take better pictures today than 2 days ago; and I was more aware of what type of video and pictures I wanted to take. Specifically, I wanted to get pictures and video from in front of the whale shark, especially with its mouth open coming at me.

Remoras were attached to the tail of the whale shark, along its sides and even on its lips. These remoras were 2 to 3 feet in length. They would even swim into its mouth when it was open, then come back out again when the mouth closed. Talk about a death wish! The whale shark we swam with today was much smaller than the one 2 days ago, maybe 25-30 feet; and it swam at a deeper depth, 10 to 15 feet instead of on the surface. Eventually it spiraled down and disappeared from view but not before everyone had had a chance to get in the water twice. The eyes on the whale shark are on the sides of its head, so I'm not sure if it can see straight ahead. And the eyes are big, measuring inches across.

The whale sharks have only started coming to St. Helena the last 2 or 3 years; and each year their population increases. They're in St. Helena waters from December/January thru March. The boat operator, Keith, told me that in Mexico the same tour we were on today would cost $150. Our cost was 15 pounds, or about $22.65.

We were dropped off at our boat at about 3:00 PM. After showers, Joel re-tied the jerry cans to the life lines and stanchions; and loaded more pictures onto his computer. I read up on the Brazilian cruising guide.

We took the water taxi in to town around 6:00 PM, as the last taxi stopped at 6:30 PM today. We had previously arranged to have a special pick up at 9:30 PM as a large number of us were going into town for dinner together tonight. The dinner locale, Anne's Place, was closed on Sunday evenings. But we had asked them earlier if they'd let us dine there tonight and were told no problem. Try that at a restaurant back home. Before entering the restaurant Tara from Adela, a 31 year old German lady from Hamburg, who joined the ARC in Cape Town, and whom we had met in Cocos Keeling months earlier when she was on a different, non-rally boat (Voyager), cut my hair. She had given me a hair cut in Cocos Keeling under the palm trees. Today it was on a park bench, wrapped in a barber's drape and cut with barber sheers and a straight edge razor. She even used the straight razor to trim the hair in my ears. That was quite weird. As they say on TV, don't try this at home!

Pre-dinner saw many of those in attendance doing email, as the restaurant had Wifi that worked but cost about $10 per hour. Joel downloaded to the ARC web page about 10 pictures of the whale sharks and sperm whale we'd seen. Ziggy form Merlyn of Poole copied my two videos of a green flash sunset onto his own I Pad. Dinner from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM was a buffet, followed by dessert; and cost 7 pounds or $10.57.

We departed Ann's Place at 9:10 PM to meet the specially scheduled 9:30 PM water taxi; and were back on our boat at 9:35 PM.

Once back we celebrated our last dinner on St. Helena with a a small measure of St. Helena Coffee Liqueur; poured out of a collectable tiered bottle.

Jeanine put on half of a Transderm Patch before going to bed; and Joel and her were both in bed by 10:35 PM.

I stayed up typing this log and hope to be in bed by 11:30 PM after using the satellite phone to send out 2 logs and some emails.

Brian Fox



Previous | Next