Transatlantic Sailing Voyage. Exploring St. Helena Island. A Jewel in the South Atlantic.

hi this is Craig and welcome back to cruising off-duty you've been watching the channel you know I took an exquisite x5 a 50 foot catamaran and sailed it from Cape Town South Africa across the equator all the way to the Caribbean it was an amazing adventure and definitely one of the jewels are the best stops on this whole voyage was st. Helena Island and that's the one we're on now will show you there's not only a lot to see and do here but there's a lot of history and a lot of intrigue and interest here so we're gonna get into some of that as well in this episode so whether st. Elena is one of those bucket-list places that you plan to visit with your boat or whether you're somebody who knows that there's no chance in the world you're gonna go all the way to the middle of South Atlantic I think you'll get a lot out of this episode before we go any further I just want to give a special shout out to the patrons that support the channel many of whom have been supporting this channel since long before I was doing these transatlantic sailing voyages and then in this particular voyage I had these sponsors jump on board to help defer the cost of me flying halfway around the world only to get on a catamaran and sail almost halfway around the world Paul while I had to leave my regular paying job thanks so much I couldn't have done it without you and hopefully you enjoyed this episode okay this stop at st. Helena Island was breathtaking let's get to know st. Helena in just a little bit better as you can probably tell by looking at the satellite photo it is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic it is 16 kilometres wide by 8 kilometers tall which makes it seem really really tiny when you try and find it on Google map in the middle of the South Atlantic you really have to zoom in a lot to see it and as of the 2016 census it has about 4,500 people that permanently live on the island it is very remote so very few sailors have probably ever visited this Island how remote you might ask it is 4,000 kilometers east of Rio de Janeiro Brazil and about 2,000 kilometers west of Angola in south western Africa so yeah it's out there you really have to make a point of trying to find it if you are you're not gonna accidentally bump into this island believe me when the Portuguese first discovered it in 1502 it was uninhabited as you can imagine since it's in the middle of nowhere but as you can tell from the Saint Elena flag it wasn't long before those big powerful British came along and pushed the Portuguese off and took control so it is part of the British overseas territory along with Ascension Island to the north and Tristan da Cunha Island to the so back then Islands like this were very valuable because all world trade was done by boat the East India Company used this island all the time for trading between Africa and Europe and Brazil or South America and Europe so this island became very valuable so they put ports like this on it just to make sure nobody else took the island back I don't think the sport ever saw any real action but they did use it for prisoners at one point more on that later we actually take a tour of this and we walk through it very cool some other interesting facts about Saint Elena it's the second oldest overseas British territory behind Bermuda I was a little surprised by that but yeah that's the truth another interesting fact about this island that some of you probably have already heard of is this is the island that Napoleon was exiled to in 1815 how Napoleon got to this island is kind of a long story but the little Coles Notes version is the French were defeated there was a tree Napoleon was exiled to an island called Elba in the Mediterranean and he was given full rein over the small island but at some point he got sick of being there and escaped and got back to France and then they decided okay we can't trust him to be in the Mediterranean so they exiled him to the most remote island they could think of and that was st. Helena Island and then he wasn't put in a jail cell because again he was a high and mighty guy back in those days so they gave him a house but he complained non-stop about this house and how cold and damp it was even though he had a couple of servants to help him so it wasn't a jail cell but then he later died and they found out there was arsenic in the wallpaper so maybe he did have reasons to complain about the house he died in 1821 on st. Elena so they made a tomb for him on the island but then in 1840 the French argued that they should be able to get his body back to France and they allowed it so now there's a tomb in France for Napoleon but there's one on the island as well although his body's not still there remember when I said this last episode does look like like a prison island you can't get off well I was only kidding only I was only saying that because the whole island seems to be built on cliffs and it looks impenetrable so how could anybody a get on this island or be get off this island without hurting themselves but it actually was a prison island first there was this Zulu King in like 1890 or something he fought against the British and no no no no you don't fight against the British oh they'll send you to say Hellena island and then later in the second Boer War they took all the Boer prisoners and they sent them again to say LAN island so it really was a prisoner Island for a while there now it's not that now it's a super friendly place everybody here's super nice there's no there's a prison on the island but I think it has like six prisoners according to what I was told so it's just locals to get in prisons it's more like a jail cell but yeah it's not a prison Island super friendly I highly suggest you go so let's learn about today's modern and friendly st. Helena this is Jamestown this is the only main town on the islands the only way to really get on the other especially for coming from a boat because it's the only its place on the other low enough that you can just get on it's not a cliff so yeah that's where I'm sure the first explorers ended up getting on the island as well this is where you're gonna find almost all the bars restaurants grocery stores and of course the one and only Bank you definitely need to hit the bank because they don't take credit card anywhere on this island so we needed to get cash as soon as we got on because it was a Saturday and they were almost closed Sunday they're closed and Monday was a stet holiday so they'd be closed we would have no way to buy anything and that would have sucked now as you see me panning you'll see a stairway that goes up and that's called Jacob's Ladder so there is another part of the island where people are populated at the top of this cliff but as you see me trying to gain elevation I realized my drone is capped at the factory setting of 400 feet and I couldn't get high enough to show you that but luckily there was another drone Sean had his drone and don't know how but somehow his drone got high enough to see it so let's see that now so there you go there is the footage of the upper part of Jamestown on the top of the cliff there's two ways to get up there you can either take that Jacob's Ladder long long steep staircase all at the top so you can do that or you can take a cab take a windy road up the up the hill and you can get to the top up there there is mostly houses not a lot in the way of groceries or businesses that you'd want to go to except for Rosie's bar it is there it is bold probably the best bar on the island according to many many people unfortunately by the time we got there and saw it it was closed I've can't remember we were there on the Sunday or that stout Holiday Monday but needless to say it was not lively underwhelming but anyways it's right at the top of Jacob's gate which is that ladder up so if you do want to go up there at the very top you can have a beverage and then go all the way back down again oh yeah and if you're saying I really want to see Santa Lena but I don't own a sailboat Craig so how do I get there there's one another way and that's this Airport and they spent millions of dollars to build this Airport assuming there'd be tons of tourism and the engineering company that built it built it the wrong direction the prevailing winds are up over that cliff and the wind shear coming sideways across the airport is crazy so most airlines won't even try flying because sometimes they get there and they have to turn around go back because a wind shear is too much so there's one company that will fly there from Johannesburg one time a week they come in on Saturday and leave right again on Saturday so anybody who flies to st. Elena has to stay there an entire week later you'll see we pick up Rudolph was the designer of the x5 Iran he wants to do a little service work he's stuck there for an entire week because of that so he brings his wife and makes a little bit of a vacation out of it so good for him but yeah he also told us that the airline tickets to fly from Johannesburg to Santa Lena and back were crazy expensive so if you don't live anywhere near Johannesburg it might be cheaper for you to buy a sailboat and sail there just kidding it won't it'll be cheaper to fly but still supposedly it's highway robbery whether they're charging for airline tickets to st. Elena so be prepared okay now that I've convinced you the best way to see this island is on your own sailboat let's see how our experience was first of all when we started sailing towards this island they must have spotters out or something cuz out of nowhere they called our boat over the VHF by name so they obviously have a is or something where we were showing up on their system with our name showing so they knew who we were before we even tried to hail them when we got close they said grab one of the red buoys now we eventually found this field of red and yellow buoys you can see us tied to the red buoy they asked us our weight and our dimensions and they told us we needed to catch a red buoy not a yellow buoy yellow buoys are for the lighter boats so that's good to know now this visitor mooring field could probably hold 15 boats we're kind of offseason here so we were the only bow on one of these red or yellow boys and then this is the kind of the mooring field for the local boaters and they're much closer to where the water taxi will drop you off on the cement jetty and that's right there is no dingy docks on this island that's right they spent millions and millions of dollars to build an airport in hopes of bringing in more tourism but they didn't spend $2,000 to build a wooden dock so you could bring your dinghy to shore I don't understand the logic there but it is what it is the only way to get from your boat on a mooring field and that's even if you're local is to call the water taxi on the VHF and have them rvu over to a cement wall this is the cement wall over here where the water taxi will bring you and then you have to find a way to swing on to the cement wall to get on to say Elena I'm sure many of you are thinking I'm kidding I wish I was but I'm not if you've watched SB Dallos they actually visited this island and showcased this as well where they had their dinghy on a very wavy bouncy day and they were trying to swing off their dinghy onto Shore and then Brian ended up bringing their dinghy out into the water and throwing an anchor and swimming to the wall and climbing out no lie it actually happened and it's a little chillier now that it's wintertime so we did not want to swim to shore and do all that so we took the water taxi and just did the old Tarzan swing I don't know what they do when there's like a nine-year-old with like bad hips who's got to get off the water taxi on the shore it's it's a it's a head-scratcher but anyways that is the situation here at st. Elena so just be prepared and in case you still think I'm kidding you see the bar with the ropes hanging on the right yep that's how you get off this water taxi and the tides kind of high right now so it's not much of a step-up but when the water levels no needless to say you have to swing and go up to get onto the cement and fun stuff then after you swing to safety you walk down this sort of road towards the town to check in notice the measure the chain maille holding the cliff back I'm guessing that's to stop rocks from coming down and crushing you like a bug which made me feel a little more secure that that was there thank you very much what a unique place that buildings built into the side of cliffs over here a little town at the bottom over here and then Jacob's Ladder is that ladder that goes up to the top and then there's a whole other town up there we're definitely gonna have to try climbing that it's gonna be a workout from hell but well worth doing once coming down will be a hell of a lot easier I'm guessing so now we're just walking into town to find the jail where we supposedly do our customs clearing and then go find a place called Anne's local told us that's where we should go to eat somewhere near that church over there let me save you some confusion on how to check in the lady on the radio said head towards the church because there was a police station or a jail and we would sign in there but no no no no when we started walking down the road somebody hailed us from this building and told us that was where customs was so we had to go there first to do customs and then we headed to the police station which actually has nothing to do with the church it's further up the road way up here and that's where the police station is so you do customs and immigration no customs at the white building here and immigration at the police station up there so there we go it actually wasn't that hard it was just you know we got misinformation about which building we're supposed to head to so hopefully I saved you some time checking in with port captain and was that customs just now okay that was pretty great pretty easy pretty non-stressful now we got to go to the police station which is some weird location that's not obvious so we got to find that and we also have to the bank in with 15 minutes because they close at noon and that's the only place we get money and supposedly nobody here takes the credit card so we're kind of fubar if we don't get money hope for the best now something else that is interesting about this town is this built behind a fortified wall this structure or this group of buildings over here was actually called a fort as you can see there's a big wall and in front of the big wall there's actually a moat now there's no water in there anymore but when we walked through this it was quite cool from ground level and it's obviously quite cool to see from an aerial perspective but yeah back in the day everybody was afraid this harbour was going to get attacked so they built the town on the other side of a protective wall just in case that you know the Portuguese try and get their island back or something I don't know there's that church we saw from a distance the cute little town very cute and there's cars everywhere so no much these people would have to pay to import these cars there's tiny little island in the middle of the South Atlantic but they're here I kind of half expected to be electric golf carts there's like nothing we're gonna get our exercise here everything is up we haven't even done Jacobs Gate that's a staircase that goes to the top of the upper upper City this is the lower City so you want to get it work out and come here you don't see anymore an actual video library with DVDs we just barely made it to the bank before it closed thank God or we would have been fubar there are plenty of little meat shops and smaller grocery stores and places for us to provision which is good but like I said before none of them take credit cards so have cash in hand or you're out of luck okay we just checked in here at the police station pretty simple again pretty friendly people when you say super friendly absolutely so far so good now we just have to go the airport because we have to see other customs people to see if we can sign out because tomorrow sunday is great immigration not customs yes immigration and we're gonna try and sign out today as well because tomorrow Sunday everything's closed and Monday is a holiday for some reason so yeah we can't get out unless we get somebody to agree to sign us out now so that's the next step is another example of why scheduling and cruising never enemies being on a schedule and never works and cruising is a bad idea well the friendly people at the police station called us cab so that we could get to the airport in a rush because well as I mentioned earlier there's only one flight in and out of st. Helena and it's on Saturday so all the high ranking immigration people that could have checked us out now for Monday or Tuesday or whenever we were leaving we're at the airport so we had to hightail it up there and get there before they leave the airport because who knows where we'd find them after that now the one good thing about going to the airport is it's almost like a free tour because it's on the opposite end of the island so you got to take these windy twisty roads through the mountains to get there and it's a bunch of different kind of climates so you get some areas that are lush greens and you get some deserts with cactuses it's amazing the transitions as you go up in elevation and whatnot so yeah if you don't have time to do with a full guided tour like we do later yeah just catch a cab and ask him to drive you around show you some sights it's pretty much an amazing Drive no matter where you go on the island so we get to the airport no problem pick up Rudolph which was awesome but the immigration people clearly were tied up with the playing people so they couldn't do us they said just just meet us back at the police station at 3:00 p.m. and we'll get it all sorted out for you so yeah I'm glad we had a reason to go there to pick up anyway because otherwise there was actually no reason to go so we get to take the fun and windy roads back to Jamestown to check route off into the consulate hotel if you need a hotel in st. Elena I highly suggest the consulate because it is going to blow your mind as we pull up we see Napoleon on the second floor there and then we go in we're not sure what to think we've never been here before and we walk in and it is wall-to-wall Napoleon Bonaparte everywhere as far as the eye can see and this was just in the lobby and already we were blown away and then later we had a beer out in the back and there's just more stuff out there and then the nice lady who owns this hotel she was nice enough to organize a guided tour for us by a guy named Robert and this is not just any tour guide he's got to be pushing 85 90 years old because he was telling us stories about when World War Two was on and German u-boat sunk a British oil refueling tanker called the dark Dale and he was alive when it happened he remembers hearing the explosions and the town members all came down and watched as this thing was burning unfortunately people lost their lives during this and I believe that boat was towed out further and is still out there to be a dive site and that's one thing this island has tons of shipwrecks in fact there's one right in the harbor that you've seen with my drone footage now I may be mistaken because there's actually two wrecks right there in the harbor but I think it's the spanker Reed which is a three-masted coal carrying ship that actually had its coal catch on fire so the captain deliberately had the boat dragged close to shore and then he partially sunk the boat to put the fire out and then they salvaged a lot of the materials from inside the boat and when we went back to the consulate hotel the next day for breakfast we found that many parts of this ship are actually part of the consulates dining room the mast is actually this beam along the top and this ship's wheel is from that boat and this massive block that was on the wall was from that boat there's just so much in the console hotel I think it's more like a museum than a hotel but it's well worth the stay ok after a day and st. Halina gonna head back to the boat for now we might come back for some beverages but there's only one little Fairey that shuttles you between your boat and Shore and we heard it might close at 6:00 so we got about 15 minutes the sunset and Santa Lena there's a catamaran way out there on the edge up against these rocky cliffs the next day we had a full day plan so we called for an early morning water taxi to get us to shore first we were meeting Rudolph and his wife at the consulate hotel to have that amazing breakfast than that extra amazing dining room something I'd never seen like that before and then we're gonna do that full day two or throbber so yeah let's get on with the day yeah we're going for a breakfast at the hotel they're talking about whether we're gonna have time today I'm doing a tour around the island whether we have time to do Jacob's Ladder here I'm thinking no but their meals a little more eager to do it we shall see and he's off he has good strides I think he's taking two at a time no maybe not so the whole town closes down on Sunday as you can see and then Mondays is holiday here so it's gonna be pretty quiet very quiet but it's a cute town okay we're here on the brand of the hotel but to have breakfast is just checking his progress he's probably halfway there let me zoom in he's just past the cutoff there he stopped he stopped yeah okay we're inside the hotel and we found out we've always hung out down here which is where we have beers but I suppose the breakfast is up here which is very cool oh this is nice that's usually where we hang out down there there's a bar right here how cool is this place we're cool hotel so Neil just arrived how was it exhausting and if it's exhausting for you it would have been really exhausting for us got up in ten Wow wow that's awesome all of it came off the rack here's the wall there's the gate we usually go through and this is the old fort wall that the towns within and with that it was time to start our guided to with Robert and again he was a wealth of knowledge talking about things he'd actually experienced not things he'd heard like the torpedoing of the dark Dale and this monuments there to remember those that died only two people from the boat survived and were taken from the water everybody else perished there were a handful of others that survived just happened to be on shore leave at the time I guess it was their lucky day then he took us to the top and looked down to the valley and pointed out all the historical buildings and the important people that lived in certain things like that Zulu King and Napoleon's first home before Longwood and while we were looking down at the homes he pointed up at a fort you could almost barely tell was there at the top of the mountain and he told us about it and said that we'd be seeing it later and it was definitely one of the highlights goodnight you go up yeah I tend to do that man I gotta leave with people it's called high no for high no for of course the whole tour is done by driving through these windy roads which is kind of just visually stunning on its own of course he took us to where Napoleon's tomb is now it's about a mile walk from the road and we decided not to bother with that but if you're into that you can go check that out as I said Robert is a wealth of knowledge and almost every house seemed to have a story or some anecdote or some important person lived there but it wouldn't be a tour without seeing Napoleon's house so he brought us to Longwood now of course this is a civic holiday when we did this tour so it wasn't open for a guided tour you can pay to have somebody take you through the house but we were happy just seeing it from the outside then he took us to a place called Haley's mounds so you get out of the van you walk up kind of a small mountain to an observation level where Haley from Haley's comment yeah that guy had his telescope set up so he would chart all different things in the sky and that's who was credited with Haley's comments so there you go then he took us over to the other side of the island to a bay called Sandy Bay and you can see this kind of big rock in the middle that's actually the center of the volcano that created this island it's very cool so there was a prison here for the board six thousand they wouldn't fight in the Boer War and that's what they they've done they bring him here the prison was that you yeah three thousand here and three thousand that Deadwood we arrived Longwood vu event and six thousand altogether and this is same coming up Park Napoleon first house there was each other so mmm-hmm this is perfect [Laughter] this is the governor's house next Robert said he was gonna take us to the governor's house and I thought seriously we're gonna go to the governor's house okay but it wasn't the governor's house that was as impressive as their guests okay this is unique so not only we get to see the governor's house but there's a tortoise were you in the corridor they call it so there's tortoises down here check out that governor's like we could have driven right up to the front door so much for security the two highlights of this day-long tour was this tortoise viewing area and then later you're gonna see this fort that we go to which is very cool as well but these tortoises were huge I don't know the cameras gonna do it justice one of them is a hundred and eighty-seven years old the one with a cataract on its right eye but wow you they come right up to you there are just as curious to see you as you are to see them so I check in it just came over to try and kiss Steve Petrie right in there yeah coming your way Craig don't baby the red button since the reich's worried you didn't get to be a hundred and eighty-seven years old by putting up my Schmucks yeah took any artists from humanity Louis noise also missing is fangs out when they tries to bite you we can't we normally geez this is a little intimidating so seeing these tortoises was quite fun and it's actually completely free which I was surprised you just drive down to the governor's house walk along this little Gateway area and you can check him out up close and personal now it was time to drive up a long windy road to get to high note for it this is the fort we saw from the lower valley we're now way up there and in quite the view let's go check that out surprisingly just like the tortoises getting into this fort was absolutely free all you needed to do is drive to the top of this mountain and walk around as much as you want check out all the sights go inside very cool and very clean there's no graffiti this whole island was amazingly clean these areas in the interior of the fort down low was where they kept all their cannonballs and their gunpowder and whatnot so that if it got hit by a ship shooting them with cannons it didn't blow the whole fort to bits so yeah it was kind of neat to get in here we also heard that this fort was used at some point to house some war prisoners maybe before they'd built that prison that you saw earlier in the tour well they built this too so that people could hide from bombing in World War two they started another one over here maybe though oh that was the top the one from the other remember it's a window to the top you're trying to figure out what these were we figured they might have been little like serving areas for kitchen feed the prisoners during prison or are the soldiers during wartime not really hundred percent sure though of course all the way around this fort there were these little openings which is meant for your musket to stick out and shoot at people as they're charging the fort although before it's so high up I can't imagine anybody ever charging this port there's also this placard that shows you the different things like there's a school down there a bunch of things you can see from this vantage point pretty much can see everywhere in all directions and of course everybody on the island told us that the best bar was Rosie's bar as the greatest nightlife unfortunately when we got there at the last stop of this tour we were supposed to have a beverage to like celebrate the day it was closed because it was a stat holiday much to the disappointment of most of the members of the crew and yeah but if you want to go come to the island get your hiking shoes on because it's right at the top of Jacob's Ladder from the lower town to the upper town you can't miss it just as an indication of just how high up this upper town is look at how small or 50 foot catamaran looks from here just tiny little toy and that was the end of our guided to earth thank you to Robert and it was time to get back on the boat because we'd made arrangements to meet Rudolph and his wife to do a sunset cruise I mean that's the least we could do since Rudolph flew all the way out here to service the boat he got the water maker fixed it ended up being a membrane issue we finally confirmed it we put two brand new membranes in that he'd brought with them and now our water maker works perfectly and yeah and tweaked a few other things as well but the boat was pretty much in shipshape condition other than the water maker so thank you to Rudolph for that and then we just enjoyed our sunset on our very last night here at se Halina Island so that's it hopefully you can tell from this that there is tons of things to see and do if you come to Saint Helena Island it's not going to be easy to get there but once you're there it'll be well worth the trip hopefully you enjoyed this episode if so show the channel some love by giving it a thumbs up I really appreciate it of course subscribe to the channel and hit that Bell notification so you know when the next episode is up the next episode we're gonna be heading off to a Brazilian island called Fernando de Noronha and until next time this is Craig signing off wishing you safe cruising and make sure you go out and explore the beauty around you life's just way too short and ciao for now in this edition of cruising off-duty and American attempts to treat an ignorant British citizen how to retrieve a mooring buoy please sir [Music] what's the secret Steve oh look it's low [Music]

Channel: Cruising Off Duty

Views: 24,307

Rating: 4.9644179 out of 5

Keywords: xquisite x5, xquisite catamaran, South Africa, Cape Town, Sailing, Catamaran, catamaran sailing, best catamaran, cruising off duty, liveaboard boats, liveaboard catamarans, Namibia, walvis bay, transatlantic, xquisite yachts, Sailing in Fog, open ocean sailing, St. Helena, St. Helena Island, napoleon bonaparte, Exile, prison island, Transatlantic Sailing

Id: DI4Qd0uKGMg

Length: 28min 9sec (1689 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019