St. Helena to Ascension lsland……Day 1
June 10th, written the morning of the 11th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT
It\’s always nice to have a few regrets leaving a place. That means, you enjoyed it and would consider coming back or at least recommending it to others.
St. Helena fit nicely into both categories. We took our last photos and memories and about 30 miles out finally lost sight of St. Helena.
We said our goodbye\’s and waved to fellow sailor\’s aboard s/v \”This Side Up\” (out of Texas) and departed the anchorage at 0900 local/GMT time.
The weather looked excellent for the expected 4.5-5 day passage of 700 nautical miles and the was as advertised.
We set the full main, genoa to windward on the pole and our big reacher to leeward and were off. I\’ve gotten in the habit of making our passage plans for 160 mile days down from the usual 180 miles as the conditions are very benign compared to many other passages we\’ve done around the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Believe me, I\’m not complaining. If it was this nice out here all the time, you\’d all be doing this….:-)
Indeed, the 15-20 knot, very steady winds and 2.0 meter (6 foot) swell is easy stuff. Mile after mile of just \”onward\”.
We did see lots of flying fish today which is a first for us, but none errantly \”flew\” aboard so none on deck to report.
It was an exercise day yesterday. We shook up the routine a bit and are on our day off today.
Yesterday, we\’d put up a brief blog about St. Helena and were able to upload the photos to the website system, but alas a small glitch has prevented them from being posted. Hopefully web guru Jeremiah will be able to resolve this soon.
525 miles to go. We HOPE? to be there on Friday before dark as we will have to anchor in close to shore. No moorings here. The dinghy landing is supposed to be quite tricky too. Hopefully Customs/Immigration will be working a half day Saturday as well as we are not likely to get ashore on Friday at our current speed.
More tomorrow, position report is up as well.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKYE!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki