Author: kerrizane

Arrival at St. Helena Island…..Day 8.5

June 2nd, written aboard on the morning of June 3rd, 2013….(Western Hemisphere) +0 GMT/UTC

1380 miles, 8 days 8 hours – averaged 163 nm/day.

Yesterday started as a blustery sail with the somewhat diminishing winds from the night before\’s 30 & 40 knot gusts. I was a bit concerned as we would be arriving at St. Helena after dark, that we would have too much wind as we approached the island. However, around noon local time, the winds started to abate to the 20-25 knot range and by the time we hailed \”land ho\” at 3:30 pm, the winds were mostly in the low 20\’s.

Despite the overcast and haze, we spotted St. Helena which actually has peaks (on second review) as high as 850 meters (2,750 feet). As such, under ideal conditions it could be spotted at over 30 miles. At about 25 miles out, we shouted as the sailor\’s of old did….\”Land Ho\”.

Unfortunately, we would not arrive to the anchorage until around 9pm local time, but we did have pretty good visibility all the way and only lost the sun as we go to first contact with the island. Friends Dave & Kathie (now en route to Grenada from our next stop Ascension), gave us a nice email on what to look out for as we arrived. There are no real natural obstructions, but there is a mooring field with lots of lines and in the dark, it could have been an issue. Winds can gust on the NEast corner of the island, but they didn\’t seem too and we had two reefs in the main \”just in case\”.

We hailed St. Helena radio on channel 16 at about 20 miles out, not expecting to hear them yet. However in a clear and loud voice came back a young woman who welcomed us to St. Helena. She gave us directions to the mooring field and procedures for clearing in to the island.

Dave and Kathie had informed us of the nice, new big mooring here with only one issue. You have to get your own lines attached to the top. Now in day light with normal conditions, that would not be such an issue, but it was pitch black, it was blowing and it was bumpy. This anchorage is notorious as well for it\’s \”rock and roll\”.

When we were about a half mile from the mooring field, a nice young man\’s voice came on the radio and asked if we\’d like help finding the moorings and tying up to one! I immediately accepted his kind offer and in the smallest dinghy imaginable, James (a local), his wife Hannah and there three babies (too young to even call kids), arrived, led us to a mooring and helped us get the lines on. Wow!, now that\’s friendly folk. We\’ll find James and Hannah ashore and thank them again profusely.

This anchorage does rock and roll, but we \”rectangular boats\” (as Dave & Kathie like to call us), do a lot better than the \”monomarans\”. We are moving about a bit, but not like the three other monohulls here which look like bucking broncos. We might, as Dave suggested, tie our stern off to another mooring can to align us with the swell. There are 23 moorings here for small boats, six of them for larger small boats (like us).

We\’re charging the batteries, making water and doing the laundry. We had a great night\’s sleep and as soon as it\’s 8 a.m., we\’ll call ashore and see if they want to come to us or if they want us to come to them. There is a shore boat here (2 pounds sterling round trip per person) and we\’ll definitely take advantage of that. Also, they will bring fuel out here, right to the boat so we can top off. We\’ll need about 75 gallons (just less than 300 liters).

Feel free to write, we love to hear from you!
If we can find internet ashore, we\’ll try to do a blog on the overall trip and what we find here ashore in PHOTOS!
KIT,
Scott & Nikki

Namibia to St. Helena……Day 8

June 1st, written the morning of June 2nd, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: On GMT/UTC

What a different sail we\’ve had the last 24 hours. It started fairly light wind-ish again yesterday and steadily picked up during the day. We had one reef and the genoa out to weather on the spinnaker pole. Then, right around dark, I re-evaluated the prediction for a 10-20 knot night and saw we were going to get a lot more wind.

The GRIB files (grided imbedded binary files) are computer generated weather files which are graphically shown as to wind direction, strength, swell size and direction and a host of other very valuable information. These are generated by NOAA in the USA and freely available to anyone. They are updated every 6 hours. No person views or evaluates them at NOAA, they are raw output. This is so complex, it takes a \”super computer\” to crunch all the numbers. They are really quite accurate \”at sea\” (useless on land). However, you need to learn how to get a feel for them and read them. First, they are surprisingly accurate as to wind direction and the timing of when the wind will do what. They are also very accurate as to sea state and barometric pressure. They usually UNDERstate the wind speed by approximately 5 knots.

Part of the nuance of reading them is too look a a large area. If that area is showing a very consistent wind flow, it\’s likely to be much stronger than predicted.
This has been my experience sailing around the world. The area we viewed was from the African coast out to St. Helena, about 1000 miles. It showed the same \”15-20 knot\” wind feathers everywhere. Hence, look out, here comes a lot more breeze!

Last night, just before dark, we put the second reef in the main and changed the genoa out for the staysail. This was a smart thing!
Within a half an hour, the first squall came by at 42 knots for 10 minutes. Then it dropped off into the high mid 30 knot range. For several hours we had sustained 27-8 knots followed by gusts for 5-10 minutes in the 30 knot range. It has settled down since. Mostly in the mid 20\’s, Occasional 30\’s still come by.
Right now, it feels like the wind quit; it\’s only 24!

The sea state came way up too and an hour ago we started seeing consistent 4 meter swells. (Around 13-14 feet). The good news is that it\’s right in our wheelhouse as to how we like to sail.. Surfing down the waves, wing and wing (gull winging for our UK friends), we\’ve hit 14 knots several times and are rarely under 8.5 knots.

This increased our daily run to 177 which is just about low average for us, but the first half of yesterday was light. I suspect we\’d do a 200 plus mile day if we weren\’t going to be at St. Helena this evening! \”Beach House\” is smelling the barn!…ride em\’ pony!

Next blog will hopefully be from the mooring at St. Helena where we expect to arrive just after dark. We\’ve good recent information from Dave & Kathie on \”Sunflower\” as to where to moor and what to look out for.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki