Location: St Helena
Hello everyone! It’s Kiki back as skipper for our last full day in one of the most remote towns in the world Jamestown, St. Helena. I think it’s very fitting that the omnipotent job wheel has chosen me for both our first and last day of the Capetown to St. Helena passage. In my last blog post, I shared the exciting picture of our trip log sitting at 2nm in the V&A Port. I am happy to say that as I write this post, we are at 1931 total nautical miles! All of the student crew are just 69nm from hitting our first 2000nm at sea. This puts us at an impressive 92% accuracy rate along our path as the crow flies, including any deviations for optimal wind under sail.
As we entered our last day on St. Helena, the Argo crew all woke up for a packed day both on and off the boat. A quick breakfast was eaten alongside sandwich prep for lunch on the move. After cleanup and day packing were done,
the student crew all packed into the salon for a quick marine biology lecture with Ben, our marine biology professor, and an overview of the planned activities. Every research team was given some equipment with a plan to take measurements
of the biodiversity in a segment of St. Helena’s tidal pools. Once we all had a good overview of our task and the species we may find, we rushed off the boat to drive to the less inhabited side of the island. While we left the boat, the
members of the staff crew left on Argo and started their packed day overseeing a full refuel, rig check, hill scrub, laundry, and hours of work taking apart the engine and fixing the chaffed injector wiring. But we’ll get back to that not-so-
small task in a bit.
While those tasks were all being started, the student crew arrived at the start of the hike to Lot’s Wife’s Pools a set of famous tidal pools watched over by two large rock pillars thought to have been left by volcanic eruption soon after the
creation of St. Helena named Lot’s wife and Lot respectively. Everyone started the hike in good spirits and with plenty of water and sunscreen. We got to our first peak in the first 45 minutes, where we could see the beautiful volcanic “beach.”
with black ferrous sand spread out below. (side note: we found out that the sand was ferrous because we found some pebbles with characteristic rust red mottling and verified our findings when Ces put her phone in the sand, and it came away
with a perfect black sand ring on the back tracing her iphone’s induction coil!) At this point, we entered the lawless territory of the masked boobies that we were warned about by our lecturer yesterday. I even found a beautiful juvenile boobie
skull on the beach. Knowing they were protected, we did our best to dodge them as they tried their hardest to sit right in the only path. As we crested our next big hill, we were able to see the crystal-clear tidal pools! We were eager to get in the
water after a long, hot hike, so we quickly passed through a small region of sand dunes and used a rope to slide down to the pools.
Speaking of, did I mention that St. Helena has the most intriguing geography? The sharp mountains and ridges create their own microclimate, and the centuries of trade have deposited just about every seed known to man on
the island. This has led to a peculiar island that has bamboo forests, perpetually misty rain forest-esk mountain tops full of everything from lemon trees to ironwood to firs, a few beaches, and sheer rock faces of igneous and sedimentary
rock that drop into tidal pools and caves that riddle the edge of the island. As we approached one such tidal pool, we realized that the plan to categorize the species would be impossible as the pools were much too large and lacked the
ready delineations that we were banking on for our project. So, instead, we got to swim around the pools, finding the infamous blenny, wrasse, massive lobster, crabs, urchins, and so much more marine life. We got perhaps a bit too much sun,
the perfect amount of flips and got back on the trail happy and sufficiently tired. After our hike back, we sat on the beach and had a rare chill moment before the vans picked us up to bring us back to town. I fear I have no personal conception
of what happened at this point,t as I fell asleep as soon as the van took off.
However, in what felt like a minute, we were back in Jamestown, where we had an hour and a half to stock up on personal provisions, some bakery treats, and a bit of Wi-Fi before our passage to Fernando. During our free time, I took the
chance to wander around the town a bit and found such odds and ends as a life-size statue of Napolean looking out of a hotel balcony. After our time was up, we jumped into the dinghies, weighed down with our bags of snacks, and made our
way back to the boat for dinner. Once our goodies had been hastily stashed, everyone jumped into the ocean for our last swim and ocean shower for the next two weeks. We then rinsed off and ate dinner. At the end of our dinner, we got a
surprise announcement. Due to the aforementioned engine troubles, our captain decided to hold off on our departure until tomorrow morning, and thus, we all would get a nice full night of sleep before our passage! With the enthusiasm
this brought, we all threw ourselves into passage prep. As the skipper, I am writing this in between assigning everyone their jobs to get Argo in ship shape for our departure tomorrow morning. Once that is all over, we are hoping to sit down
and watch White Squall get in the passage mood!