All three of us, yes including Ken, a British citizen, had applied for a visa online. We had all visited the bank in St Helena and transferred twenty pounds each into an account belonging to the Ascension Island government.
We had sent proof of insurance, including evacuation insurance, to Gavin, quickly becoming our main man, serving in the Ascension Island police force, overseeing the visa applications, and, more importantly, the medical insurance requirements.
Gavin and I had quite a correspondence going. His first email to me was addressed to mr. Gysbertus, my middle name. When I called him on that, said that the email looked a little like a poorly worded scam attempt, he apologized, saying they had had a glitch in the system, but all was running correctly now.
I don’t know why he picked on me, I probably have more insurance than all other yachties visiting Ascension Island this year combined. Sheena wouldn’t let me leave the house without it.
I’ve already written about the cost of internet in St Helena, indeed outrageous, and quite a bit was spent on getting and sending insurance information to Gavin. I almost felt I was the insurance salesman at times, trying to sell him insurance, rather than being the insured, showing him what I had. I could almost quote from the policies, now saved on my computer.
So we left on the morning of the 22nd, not knowing if our visa applications were approved because that could take 21 days, and not knowing if Gavin was happy with our medical insurances, although I was the only one questioned on that subject. In the end, nothing of that really mattered.
Ascension Island is part of the British Overseas Territory called St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. Being part of the British Overseas Territory, it surprised me that Ken would need a visa. And really, for that matter, the three of us, as non was required for St Helena, belonging to the same territory.
The island is the second largest green turtle nesting site in the world, and Clarence Bay, our destination, is one of the best places for this to see between January and May. End of March now, couldn’t be better timing.
The human population is almost entirely made up of contract workers, with their families, mostly from St Helena. The island is a huge communication hub, cable and wireless – you’d think they have wifi – for the RAF, the USAF, and the European Ariadne project.
Early in the morning of the 27th the island came into view, with low clouds hugging the higher elevations, obscuring the peaks and plateaus. St Helena had looked solidly like a base of a volcano, and I think Ascension Island is probably that too, but looked more like an island on which there had been multiple volcanoes, rather than just one big one. There was land sloping to sea level with trees and beeches. Quite a few small beaches, but no swimming on account of an abundance of sharks.
There was quite a breeze, mostly overcast, with intermittent rain. We rounded the bottom of the island and made our way to Clarence Bay on the west side.
A large commercial dock protruded into the sea with the administrative center, Georgetown, right behind it, nothing more than a small collection of commercial and residential buildings, and, of course, the inevitable, church.
The big dock was also the approach for dinghy traffic. And the way waves were breaking onto the dock, there was no way we could get to shore. Port Control told us to anchor and then call them on channel 8 to talk about how to proceed.
A flexible floating fuel line lay in the water, coming from shore and ending in a station a ship could connect to and offload fuel onto the island. The tube, about a meter in diameter, made from some sort of a very thick synthetic polymer, colored red and white, was covered with barnacles at, and below, the water line. “Don’t anchor too close to it.” Port Control’s famous last words to us, along with the “No swimming with the sharks” comment.
We dropped anchor just after noon and decided not to go ashore until the weather was a little better. Probably tomorrow. But tomorrow came, and the weather wasn’t any better, nor was the forecast for the next few days.
The anchor chain, lying on the ocean floor, transmitted a lot of noise by rubbing against the rocks around it. When anchoring a boat the depth is one of the main factors deciding how much chain gets put out. Generally a one to three to a one to five ratio is applied. Also depending on what the ocean floor is made of.
The bottom is about ten meters away, and we had 50 meters of chain out. A lot of that chain lies on the bottom, you need that to keep the anchor secure in the ground. The idea that a chain goes in a straight line to the anchor, not touching the sea bottom at all, only happens in children’s drawings.
When the boat moves around because of winds or currents, and there are rocks littering the bottom of the sea, big rocks, there is always the danger the chain wraps around one or more of these rocks and is then impossible to hoist. So a noisy chain is never a good sign and Ken decided to move. He was actually ready to take off altogether, but I still wanted to give it a day, hoping for better weather so we could go ashore. Ken had no objection to that.
That night, around four, we were awoken by a scraping sound against the hull. Lo and behold, it was the fuel line. No damage done, and after an hour we were a good twenty meters away from it again. But not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that that fuel line would travel so much because of winds, tides, and currents.
