An hours flight from Recife three hundred people a day come to (and leave) this popular holiday island that still retains an attractive, lush undeveloped feel. Half the island is National park with lovely walks through the rainforest, stunning bays and beautiful beaches. What is surprising is the size of the permanent local community, nearly all supporting the tourist trade. 

I have heard it said that if you want to see what much of the world population will look like in 100 years time look at Brazil. The population is now a complete racial mix and looking at the people here you can see they have south American, African, European influences reflecting the indigenous, colonial, trade and slavery history of the country. Sadly no supermodels that I could see or discern but nevertheless it seemed a relaxed, good looking and pretty harmonious community (to the extent that one can tell after five days looking at a load of holidaymakers).

We didn’t have time for more than a bus ride to the south end of the island and a walk along the beach. Beaches within the national park can only be accessed with a purchased permit but we were just outside and close to the “Two Brothers” - two small and almost identically shaped islets that are one of the landform features of the island. Most of our time was taken up with boat formalities, maintenance and repairs, finding a laundry, re provisioning and so forth. 

When we found the retaining screws for the outboard motor seized we soaked them in WD40 and postponed our first trip ashore for a few hours. No better time to look at the cooker with its sheered gimbal pin. Within two hours we had the cooker out, old pin removed, new bolt inserted, the repair offered up and fitting like a glove at first attempt! Things were looking up and we soon had the outboard back on the dinghy and were ashore drinking our sweet coffee with the port manager.

The following day a new arrival of fresh fruit and vegetables from the supply ship had been distributed to the island shops and we had the best selection you could imagine. A lady in the shop took us down to the the laundry - that we would never have otherwise found. We had heard that the island was expensive to stop at with high prices and limited facilities. We were finding it the perfect stopover on a long passage.

These being the tropics one might expect the odd downpour. Ours occurred on our beach walk and we were drenched. We were with Keith and Emily and Emily decided to walk further down the beach, dodging the big incoming waves and then back to the harbour as we and Keith climbed back on the bus, bedraggled but soon to be revived with more sweet coffee which seems to be the only way to drink it on Fernando.

On our last day we got some more diesel, picked up the laundry and had a final supper with Keith and Emily, now headed for Aruba in EmilyLuna. There are several good restaurants on the island doing brisk business and it did make us wonder how much more St Helena could do to develop its tourist trade, albeit along different lines to Fernando de Noronha.

As I write this on our first night at sea again we are motoring over a glassy sea. We left Noronha on a broad genoa reach and as the wind faded we put up the cruising chute to keep us sailing for as long as possible. By 1600 the wind had faded completely and big rain showers were bubbling up all around. Less cloud cover tonight and with a bright full moon we are motoring and it looks like we will need two or three days of this before we reach the north east trade winds north of the equator.