May 25 — Today was our last day on beautiful Ascension Island. I hitched a ride ashore from Max and Tanya. I enjoyed a quiet walk along the beach, the museum and the Saint’s Club. They call it that because people are all from St. Helena and get work contracts forever pretty easily.
Below are turtle shells with the names of Royal Navy men stationed on the island and length of their stay. This practice was halted of course in 1930 when hunting turtles was banned.
The building I’m standing on is Fort Ascension No. 6, established in 1810 to protect from the French. The only action Ascension ever saw was firing on a Nazi U-boat which quickly retreated. It also was the major supply point for the Falklands conflict and housed 15,000 troops. Today it hosts Wideawake Airforce base for the USAF but I never saw a plane move during the week we were here.
Ascension is one of five ground-based GPS stations in the world.
No one can live here permanently. It’s a pretty weird setup. It would be weird to grow up here. There are apparently 90 school children on the island. You can’t get into trouble because once trouble is identified, it’s shipped off the island!
Ascension is great! One of the most remote places you could ever visit. They get very few visitors. There is one flight on and off the island a month.
May 24 — A pretty mellow day today. We all toured around the island by car and saw some beautiful vistas. After we returned to the boat, we just chilled while watching the sunset and playing guitar. Fantastic smells were emanating from the kitchen.
If John isn’t fixing the tiller steerage assembly, he’s busy fixing Axel’s wheelchair front wheels. or making a Saffer — a delicious South African dish of sauteed onion gravy on a saffer farmer sausage on a bun with potatoes. Pretty damn good!
May 23 — Two days before we landed, we started to hear grinding noises coming from the tiller steerage assembly. After a brief investigation, Captain John determined that we couldn’t address this on the open seas and would diagnose again at anchorage on Ascension. We landed last Sunday and John stayed on the boat taking apart the tiller steerage assembly. We had radioed the harbour control of our intention to land but there was no reply so we went ashore.
John, back on the boat, found the wrong kind of epoxy had been used to fit a set of bushings on the tiller main bar and had degraded to the point that it needed re-gluing. Aside from his prodigious nautical skills, he is an accomplished electrician, mechanic and engineer. We’d be lost without him. Cracker on the other hand is an competent mutineer!
On Monday, we all came ashore to clear customs and immigration but our insurance situation wasn’t adequate so, after getting a few supplies, we returned to the boat. With the Victoria Day weekend back home, it took a little longer to take care of the issue and also had to wait for John and Cracker to get cleared. Meanwhile, we spent the day on the boat working on the steerage and diving and snorkeling.
Axel and I swam ashore on Monday but we got in crap for that from the port authorities. We’re trying hard not to anger them. They also had us move our anchorage back 50 metres.
Yesterday evening, Dustin, Max and Tanya (a couple from Mauritania) picked up Cracker and me in their dinghy and we went ashore. We hiked to a green sea turtle beach. It’s the one in front of which our boat is anchored. We brought a couple of beers and, as the sun set, witnessed lots of little baby turtles hatch and make their way to the ocean. The Frigate birds were trying to eat them so we chased them away and watched the baby turtles scramble like hell to get to the ocean. It was just incredible!
The large holes in the sand are what mom turtles make for their nests. There were hundreds of these holes over a 2 km beach. The baby turtle migration happens every night from dusk til dawn between April and July. Only 1 in 1,000 survive to maturity. It truly is amazing! Apparently pregnant turtles are still coming up and laying their eggs every night even now. This will be one of their biggest years ever!
All these little turtles will now struggle to make it to Brazil where they’ll feed and eventually return to Ascension to start the process all over again. Ascension Island is their largest nesting site.
Cracker and I hiked up Green Mountain today. This whole island was once a desolate desert volcanic island with very little plant and animal life. Charles Darwin, after visiting in 1835, suggested to his pal Joseph Hooker that it would make an excellent terraforming experiment. So in 1943 Joe started importing hundreds of different species of plants and evidently some sheep, rats and cats to eat the rats. They planted all these different species in the volcanic soil of Green Mountain and greened the place right up! There is now pine, banyon, juniper, guava, raspberries, bananas and flowers of all kinds. It’s a rainforest up there and an arid desert below. It’s called a cloud forest. The moisture from the plants induces the clouds coming in to lose their moisture and it just starts this beautiful cycle of life where there was little before. In 10,000 years the whole island may be a tropical paradise thanks to Darwin!
Gatineau Park ball cap!
Learnt how bananas are harvested here. The whole tree is hacked down. I couldn’t believe it! A worker from the park lent me the machete and said “Go at it!” I felt awful doing it, but it’s what everyone does here. Thank God banana trees grow back in a year but I’ll never waste a banana again!
