The journey: Cape Town to Ascension
Emmanuelle | Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 8:57AM A quick note from Ascension Island.
It is 29deg and 70% humidity!
The sea is really blue and the vis quite impressive. There are lots and lots of small fish which come to eat our crumbs. We also saw some turtles.
We left Cape Town the 15th of Nov with the Volvo Ocean Race. There was a huge sailing activity in Table Bay and it was great to leave in such atmosphere. Lots of emotions to say bye to friends, family, to Cape Town and to realize that our dream was coming true.
We took 12 days to cross to St Helena.
The 1st few days were bumpy and we had to acclimatize to our new environment. It took 2-3 days to have better sea legs and feel hungry again. The kids were fine, enjoying some DVDs and most of all their Legos. Some technical problems kept Greg busy, although nothing too serious.
A valve of the watermaker broke and we had to empty the bilges as fast as possible! We manage to do fine (about 100L in 15 min). The valve was changed straight away by Greg. Our wind indicator was giving us strange wind speed and direction before deciding to stop working at all. We are now checking our boat speed closely before taking a reef or two and we try to anticipate any wind change.
Our spinnaker exploded! ...and we lost a piece somewhere in the ocean so we really can’t fix it. We were then doing really well, between 10 and 14 knots before it broke ...maybe we were going too fast in fact!
In St Helena 8 dolphins welcomed us and showed us our anchorage sport. Two days latter we also saw a humpback whale close to Merlin. In St Helena, we fixed few things. We relaxed and enjoyed not having night watches.
We went ashore to do some exercise. The kids were so happy to find a little park and trees to climb on.
We went on a tour done by a local taxi driver. It was really nice to see the island that way. We had lots of local stories, saw typical landscapes, and we positively surprised by that island. Of course we also visited the houses were Napoleon stayed, giving a great history lesson to the boys.
After 4 days, we left St Helena to Ascension. On our way, we caught a 15kg tuna. Great excitement on board as it was our 1st fish!
We arrived there 2 days ago (Sunday night).
We are going for a little tour this afternoon.
We should then depart tomorrow morning. Our next stop being Fortaleza, Brazil where we should be just before Xmas.
Life on board is good. The kids are doing some schooling most of the days for 2-3 hours. Clea is doing lots of magazine cutting. Mamouss (=Anne-Dominique, the French grand’mother) is the best cook you can find in the Atlantic (we do really eat well!). We are baking some fresh bread every 2-3 days and making our own yoghurts. We are spending time together, playing cards, chatting, watching movies or enjoying our adventure.
We’ll keep in touch there hoping it would be easier than here where Internet is really expensive.