St Helena to Brazil

As I sailed west from Saint Helena it took most of the day for the winds to stabilize.   Even though it is a relatively small island, it seems to have a substantial effect on the wind even after you are 10 or 20 miles off.  There were times when the boat speed would go from 3kts, to 6kts, and back to three without even changing sail.   I think I was thankful for the lighter winds which would prove to be the exception for the rest of the passage where for almost half of the trip I had too much wind to even carry the mainsail with three reefs, so I was down to just a few square meters of Jib for quite a while, running 4 to 5 knots down 8 to 12 foot seas.  It’s kind of funny how tender this Alberg 30 is.  Even with no sail up at all, if you are running down wind with a 30kt blow, you will be probably be making over 4kts already.  Now this might sound great to someone who hasn’t tried it, however, when you average 4kts running in a 3.5 meter swell, you end up surfing down each wave at around 8kts and then slow down to 2kts on the back side so your speed is erratic and on the occasionally breaking wave you get pushed faster than 10kts, way too fast for the wind vane to control your steering, leaving you no option other than to slow down even further.  Another factor on this passage that affected my progress was the endless procession of squalls (very small storms).  And most of them did not pack too much of a punch however I was getting several everyday so you either had to stay reefed with minimal sail, or constantly adjust the sails every time one of these squalls hit you.  On many occasions I could look out at the horizon and see five or six individual squalls, which is fine as long as you avoid direct contact, your winds stays more or less consistent.  Speaking of consistency, as much as I’m prepared to complain about the conditions, they were basically very consistent!  I think over 90% of the time the wind was from the SE (or at least somewhere between East and South East.  And I think it was between 15 and 30kts for about 85% of the time.  It wasn’t until the last four to five days that I started to get any real moderation with wind speeds under 15kts and seas around 2.5 meters or less.  There was cloud cover most of the time making solar charging difficult so I didn’t even bother using the Engel refrigerator at all in order to save power.  In fact I probably could have done the entire passage without using the engine to generate electricity but I did run it for about 2 or 3 hours to give the batteries a little boost.  Overall I think it was a good passage.  In the sense of, uneventful, plenty of wind and waves but almost all from behind making the sailing fairly easy even if extremely rolly.  I think I was even more fed up with the big swells and rolling motion of the boat considering that the anchorage at St. Helena didn’t really provide any protection, so essentially for about 2 months straight (South Africa to St Helena to Brazil) I had to be hanging on unless I was sitting down. Read the rest of this entry

Saint Helena Review and prices from July 2012

First off I didn’t find this place very special other than the fact that it does cut the Atlantic passage in half so one isn’t required to spend over a month at sea without supplies or rest.  It is however worth mentioning that most of the other cruisers at the time with larger boats and budgets and a stronger interest in the history of the island certainly thought it was worth the stop and several stayed quite a while longer than planned.  Secondly, other than the anchorage and the dinghy landing situation, this place didn’t seem as difficult as most people had reported.  There are a few walks and reasonably priced tours on the island to keep you busy for a few days.  People are generally friendly and helpful however they do seem to work on ‘island time’ and with no cell phone network it requires a bit of effort to organize anything, especially repairs or parts.  The prices of all goods seemed reasonable considering how remote the island is, most things were around double what you would expect on the mainland, but someone on a tight budget could certainly get by with local goods and things on discount.  The currency is locked to the British Pound (at the time about 1.6 USD to the pound) and is easy to obtain at the local bank with a credit card or by exchanging foreign notes for about a 5% fee.  Immigration is free for three days, however I paid 16 pounds for 3 weeks, and the port fee was 35 pounds for up to one month.  All very reasonable by world standards plus super fast and easy checking in and out.  If you opted to stay longer the weekly rate goes down further.  Some things were expensive, Slow speed internet was 6.5 pounds per hour, but WAS available in the anchorage.  Fast food like burgers on the street were around 2 pounds, beers in the pub were 1.5 to 2 pounds and not much less in the store.  Wine and Liquor was about 3x the price in South Africa, and cigarettes were 4.5 pounds a pack.   Fruit was limited but I did find apples, bananas, oranges, and grapefruit (25/30 pence each), plus you can normally find potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, not a huge selection or great quality and all at about 50% to 100% more than it would have cost in South Africa or the U.S.  There were a lot of bargains with non-perishable items that were just expired and if you provision well in South Africa I think the prices here are manageable.  Free Water is available at the dinghy-jetty but they recommended boiling before drinking.  Also there a wash room in the port with big sinks for doing hand laundry and 2 shower stalls; the previously reported hot-water was not working.  Most of the bars were very small however there was one ‘club’ that has a DJ and dancing on the weekend till very late mostly filled with locals from 15 to 75 years old, I don’t think there was more than 20 or so tourists on the entire island.   Read the rest of this entry