Lines clear and still one or two things we could usefully do ashore we caught the next boat ferry and settled in at the Consulate Hotel for an hour. After coffee, wifi, more food provisioning and donating books to the public library we headed back to Vega and as we were making final preparations to leave, EmilyLuna gently motored by. It had proved too much of a swell to lift her out of the water and so with a diver beneath the boat and Adrian on board the severed prop shaft had been pushed back into the engine room and joined to the remaining part with a new coupling made up by Adrian. Intended for light engine use only to get them into a yard for a permanent repair we have yet to hear how the trial run went and whether Keith and Emily will be following us away from St Helena today.

During the night the wind veered and fell so that instead of the westerly course suggested by LuckGrib we actually followed the rhumb line to the north west. Earlier in our circumnavigation we would have been very happy with a speed of four knots at night. Now anything less than six knots seems pedestrian! Today the wind has gone back to the SSE and we have gybed and are following a more westerly course. This is to avoid an expanding low wind area to the north in ten days time - possibly the Doldrums - so we will sail nearer to the Brazilian coast than envisaged. Of course over the next ten days things may, and probably will, be completely different from today’s forecast!

As we left St Helena we were accompanied for a while by a large school of dolphins. After several minutes they seemed to have past by and then one appeared to be coming towards us but without regular surfacing for breath. As it neared it seemed a much paler colour than the others with a flatter head. Moments later it was gone but I strongly suspect it is one of the very few sharks we have seen out in the ocean. They do follow dolphins, hoping to pick off any young or stragglers.