Nothing quite prepares you for St Helens, and I guess Napoleon felt the same way.
Friends who've been here said they really liked it and that the people are friendly, but there isn't really anything to compare it with. As I'm writing I'm looking up at towering brown and grey cliffs with the Atlantic rollers thundering against the rocky shore, throwing spectacular fountains 50 ft up the rock face. The island is volcanic but the cliffs are stratared like a badly made pancake stack with layers of brown, grey, ocre and charcoal colours. Right where we're moored the earthy colours are broken by a cascade of brilliant green vegetation tumbling from the top of the cliffs 800ft above us to the ocean. There is obviously water coming down at this point but there is no water to be seen. I suspect it's just a trickle at best. We don't even recognize the plants but they hang like a frozen waterfall.
There are caves along the shoreline and up the cliffs, totally inaccessible to anything but the birds. The snow white fairy terns stand out in sharp contrast as they glide across the face of tbe cliffs in the early evening and nest in the caves. From the boat we can see into one in particular that has a very distinct pillar in it, which we confirmed with binoculars. There is no access to the cave entrance and no obvious reason for a pillar. Well, it turns out that the birds are as proud of their island as the people and the pillar is guano. Droppings go in one place only keeping the rest of the cave clean.
There is one town on the island, Jamestown, and it's almost like a medieval village nestled in a steepsided valley with the waterfront just outside the castle gates and across the moat. It's quaint with many old buildings and feels like an mixture of old English village and Gibralta! One main road with a few tiny offshoots. in places so narrow there is no room for a pavement.
Up on the ridges there are various fortifications, one an actual fort built by manual labour in 1798. Apart from 6 cannons up there, there are cannons mounted in the castle, and believe it or not, lying around in the streets waiting for funds to make gun carraiges for them. And not a scrap of grafitti on them, or anywhere for that matter. It appears the kids here don't have a need to express themselves. Come to think of it we haven't seen any litter or drunkeness either.
There is a very long, ornate cannon in the museum that was from a Dutch ship. It was sailing past before there was any settlment here when they saw 2 Portuguese carracks at anchor and decided to attack them, figuring they would very likely have treasure from South America. Carracks were only lightly armed, but a lucky shot landed a cannon ball in the Dutch ship's powder magazine. It must have been spectacular!
The island was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 but the Dutch were the first to posess it followed by the British, but run by the East India Trading company. It was an important stop prior to the opening of the Suez Canal. It's only 47 sq. miles but it's remoteness made it a useful parking place to exile prisoners. Napoleon was the most famous after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but Chief Dinizulu, a few Bahraini princes and 6000 Boer pows also made the honours list.
The only access to St Helena is by sea with a unique ship, the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) St Helena that runs from Cape Town to St Helena, on to Ascention Island, back to St Helena and then Cape Town, taking around 4 weeks. Or you could sail here in a yacht!
The ship is half passengers and half cargo with it's own crane to lift the containers onto and off of the barges. The surge is too great to come along side so the ship anchors and everything goes out on barges that can take 3 x 20' containers at a time, usually with half a dozen workers perched on top. On shore there are a few cranes that lift them off and then a massive transporter (called TEREX!) that lifts them high into the air and roars along the dock at a frightening pace to a wider section where they get stacked in rows for customs inspection and emptying, and refilling. Want to go to Cape Town? Sure, it's fully booked until next August but any time after that...
Because the surge is so great everyone uses the little Popeye style ferry boat. We call him on VHF 16 and he turns up in about 10 minutes. Johnny is a local 'saint' who owns the ferry service and also a much bigger charter boat. He is typical of the folk here, always a big smile, happy disposition and loves to chat.
The first time we approached the dock we couldn't believe our eyes. The ferry was rising and falling a meter, but given that's quite normal, there is a jungle gym metal structure with knotted ropes hanging down so you can grab one and swing ashore on the 'up'. OH & S would have a limited future here. It's in places like this that we realize just how mollycoddled we've become in our controlled, comfortable, restricted first world societies.
Nothing happens quickly here because nothing happens without a chat. Enrty formalities took half a day of which form filling was about 10 minutes. Steve in port control is an expat Brit, married to a 'saint' and after many holidays here decided to trade the English climate for here, and the same goes for Carl, who we met on the ferry and seems to spend much of his time scuba diving. In fact it would seem that most expats here are from the Uk with a few from South Africa. Tourism happens for 2 days every time the ship comes in, with a few staying the 4 weeks until it returns.
Now that we've been here for a week it's not uncommon for a vehicle to stop in the middle of the road and Larry to call out, "How's it going? If you need anything just call me." Or it could be Steve, or Johnny, or Andy... We met expat Andy with his local wife, Pamela, in a supermarket. I use the term loosely because there are 4 or 5 shops that carry groceries but often you'll find lettuce in one, tomatoes in another, bread only at Star which used to be the bakery but now runs as a grocery store as well.
When Pamela heard we could be here for a while waiting for spares, she told us there are amazingly resourceful people on the island, which is the case in many isolated communities. She told us of an 80 year old relative who came to the rescue of a ship, a tanker with a broken propshaft. He made a propshaft out of hardwood that got the tanker all the way back to Southampton. Now I can accept the story in spite of my natural misgivings, I've seen stranger things in Ripley's Believe it or Not, but the story goes that it was working every bit as well as a steel one so they just left it in. That's the story and it's a good one.
Our first day on shore also happened to be the night of the much anticipated Christmas Light Parade. We decided to join in the fun and Johnny assured us he'd do a special ferry run to get us back to the boat at 10 pm at standard rate.
All 5000 of St Helena's inhabitants turn up for the Light Parade, plus RMS St Helena, lit up in all her glory, was at anchor so her passangers and crew added to the festival. We grabbed a pizza in a little park before the parade and watched the kids and young folk talking and laughing as they sat around waiting for the big event. And then it hit us. They were talking and having a great time, with not a mobile phone in sight. Cell phone services only arrived here a couple of months ago and the service is expensive. And you can't access the internet with them. It's like living in the 1960s. There isn't a single ATM on the island and when I asked the bank teller if the shops accept credit cards, she had no idea. She's obviously never needed one.
The light parade was about an hour and a half late but nobody seemed to mind. We found a vantage point on top of the arch of the main gate so the parade passed right beneath us. Trucks and mini busses and the fire engine, and paddy wagon were decked out with spectacular light displays and many had small generators on board and were playing all kinds of Christmas music. One float in particular had a model of the RMS St Helena complete with a 'captain' dancing on the back deck. When they piped out "Christmas at Sea" from the Goombay Dance Band there wasn't a dry eye in the place, ourselves included. It appears many people here are far from family.
Life will return to normal early in January. In the mean time we managed to locate the spare parts for the generator in Cape Town, and thanks to Errol the part was picked up and should be on the ship arriving here around the 4th of January. That should have our generator running again and we won't have to run the main engine to charge batteries.
Our failed transmission is another story. We don't know what has failed there but it seems likely it's a seal. We will have to wait until businesses get up and running next year to be sure we get the right stuff. They're talking about lifting us out onto the dock where they can get the transmission out and repair the broken strut. Hopefully we will have recieved the right seal on the late Jan early Feb ship. If all goes according to plan the work can be completed, and we're considering doing the antifoul here if we're out anyway, and we'll be back in the water in time for a mid Feb departure for the Caribbean.
I guess we set out for a life of adventure so we can hardly complain!
Until next time...