Ascension visit
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Sun 9 Mar 2008 10:09
Our visit to Ascension
Island
7:51S 14:35W
0830hrs Sunday 9th March
2008
On the 5th March in the middle of the afternoon the
shape of Green mountain, Ascension Island hove into sight. It was alas
still fifty miles away and with the onset of an unusually black, cloudy and
rainy night we elected to stay offshore until the morning. Thus it was
0700hrs just after a grey dawn that the anchor went down in Clarence Bay.
702 miles logged since St Helena at an average speed of 5.8 knots which for us
is very slow.
Ascension Island is a British possession of which
large amounts including Wide Awake airfield are leased from us by the
Americans. It was here that the moon buggy was tested and a lot of early
NASA tracking was carried out. It is rumoured that it was via Ascension
Island that Neil Armstrong's voice from the moon came to the public at
large. Apart from Wide Awake the Americans still have many installations
on the island. The British maintain a military base and most civilian
workers who keep the island running are St Helenans. The BBC World Service
and Cable and wireless have operations here. The deal is that as soon as a
person retires he and his/her family have to leave the island. There are
no people resident who do not have a connection with either the American base or
are indirectly working for the British Government. There have been
difficulties over this as the British Government relaxed this to the extent that
some St Helenan's invested in businesses on the island. This right was
then rescinded under pressure from Uncle Sam. Aparently the St Helenans were not
reimbursed.
We rented a car from a St Helenan couple who had
been on the island since 1966, the husband is due to retire from his job as
a shift controller at the power station next year and he and his wife will
then return, happily in their case, to St Helena. We were also very lucky
to strike up a conversation in the settlement of Georgetown coffee
shop/bistro with a Scottish couple. Derrick Guild a very non arty looking
person turned out to be an artist of international fame. His works
hang in such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate, both the
IBM and Unilever art collections and are sold through a very famous gallery in
New York. Any they care to sell that is as I gather they keep a lot of his
work for their own collection. His wife Lorna with her trim figure,
sparkling eyes and blond hair looked like a lady cast as a TV female
barrister. In reality she is a real barrister and is doing a stint as
Public Prosecutor on the island. We were able to show them and their
lovely two young girls our floating home and they in turn helped us to organise
a dive on a local wreck and to show us round the island.
Ascension is really like a huge ash heap that has
emerged out of the ocean with one higher mountain that is green due to its own
micro climate. All the time we were there a cloud hung over the top of
it. In the 19th C a set of concrete channels were built and it was from
here that the island got its water. Today a desalinator does the
job. Hiking to the dew pond at the top of this mountain was rather
deja vu for me because I had been there in 1984 when British Airways
had a troop contract for the MOD and Ascension was our stop on the way to the
Falklands. Similarly the same feeling came when we dragged ourselves
out of bed at 00something awful hours and went to the beach to watch the giant
green turtles lay their eggs. These 250kg females lumber out of the surf,
spend an hour or so digging a hole, lay hundreds of eggs, cover them and somehow
lumber back to the sea. Here the males await them and after a few 'unions'
they return one night to do the same thing over again. Watching these huge
creatures mate in the sea is very similar in some ways to watching drakes in
action. The males do not fight each other but as soon as one has finished
another climbs on. This all goes on at sea and the poor females head can
be seen gasping air whenever she can. Watching the females on shore is a
very primeval experience.
I am writing this after leaving Ascension at
0700hrs this morning just twenty minutes before a Maersk tanker came and dropped
its anchor to offload some oil for the island. This operation with its
long surface pipe would have made leaving difficult for us. I have to
confess to a slight hangover as last night we celebrated my birthday on board
our South African friend's catamaran. I seem to have a penchant for
island birthdays as two years ago my 60th was in the Recherche group off Western
Australia after our crossing of the Bight. Much delightful wine from south
Africa went down with Annette's fish curry and cake desert. We had dived
together, hiked together and toured the island together and we both sincerely
hope that our paths will cross sometime in the future. They are setting
out on their circumnavigation as we draw ours to a close so it will probably not
be a boat meeting. (they now use the same ISP, ie mailasail as we do
and are starting to write a blog, their yacht is called Indigo). They
have just been on the radio as they head out for Brazil. For some time the
SSB will keep us up to date with each other. So as you can see we made the
most of our short stay and now need to get to sea for a rest. With
just over 3000 miles in front of us and the likelihood of light winds we may
well be at sea for over twenty days. Watch this space.
David
PS sorry no photos as I am short of Iridium time,
not I hasten to add for sending or receiving ordinary emails but for the long
time required to send photos. I will make up a collection when we are in
harbour and can use a wireless connection to the
internet.