May 19 — Landed in Ascension! We actually arrived last night but drifted a bit and waited until this morning to anchor. It was very difficult to get onto the island. You have to hold on to a rope and swing yourself onto the pillar on the harbour while the boat moves with the waves. We’re only going to do this once more, and that is to get back onto the boat.
Here are some pictures and videos taken between St. Helena and Ascension.
Meet Dustin Reynolds, a fellow sailor from Hawaii who’s been sailing solo around the world for six years. His journey began October 18th 2008 though he didn’t know it at the time. In the early hours of that morning, he was in a head on collision with a drunk driver which cost him his left arm, left leg, and nearly his life. Here is his blog: The single-handed sailor.
“I find myself knocking on the door of understanding abundance
in its true form.”
May 16 — One of the fishing lines started buzzing and it was a pack of dolphins behind us! We were afraid that we might have hooked one of them but the experienced guys said we had a fish and that they came to steal it. I was so busy getting the lines out of the water that I didn’t get any shots. Next time! They were huge and magnificent!
Shortly after, I spotted a whale!
Running out of fruit and vegetables. It will be meat and pasta if we can’t get supplies in Ascension.
May 15 — Just chilling’ on the boat. Fish are jumping all over the place but they’re not biting. There are some birds out here too. It’s a beautiful empty yet bountiful seascape. We haven’t seen signs of humanity since we left St. Helena. No planes, not even a satellite.
Captain John has navigated us so that the wind is directly behind us all the way to Ascension. We have the sails out in a “full wing” formation that the wind fills and pulls us straight there. No sailing involved. We still keep watch, of course, to make sure nature cooperates and we don’t run into anyone.
The generator (or “gennie”) is working better as the solar panels are charging more efficiently for some reason. We’re not using as much power either because we only turn the ice maker on for six hours a day.
Cracker lost the filter basket to the coffee pot overboard. He will be dead by morning! Well maybe not, we love him!
May 14 — While I was scheduled to be on the 9-midnight watch and again on the 6-9 morning shift, I slept through my first watch and Axel couldn’t wake me. Thank God for friends! He sat that watch for me so I sat his. My shift ended up being 7 hours long (from 3-9 plus an extra hour because of the time change here). A darn long shift.
May 13 — Had a great snorkel on this last morning on St. Helena. There were hundreds of little and some big fish beneath the onshore cliffs.
A brand new adventure begins, at least that’s how it feels. We set sail for Ascension Island this morning and we will be at sea for about five to six days.
We already went through a tight spot — an electrical issue in fact. The generator is supposed to come on automatically when the batteries are at 40% but it didn’t. The inverter which changes the direct current into 120 volts AC needed to be rebooted but there were no diagnostics nor warning lights. By the time Captain John noticed, the batteries were down to 25%. It was only after researching and trying to restart it for about 30 minutes that we switched the main breaker off then back on, and it worked! Hail Mary! It would have been navigating and steering by hand — sailing a la Columbus — all the way to Ascension Island in the dark. We would’ve been on backup water supply too! And our frozen and fresh fish would have gone bad. The worst scare we’ve had yet!