On the morning of 15th February, we launched the dinghy and went ashore at Walvis Bay Yacht Club. Antoinette manages the yacht club affairs. She is friendly and efficient and goes out of her way to be helpful to visiting yachties. We had taken a bag of washing ashore intending to ask for the location of the nearest laundry. Antoinette said to leave it with her. Before 1600 the same day, we received a text message to say our laundry was washed, dried and ready to collect from the yacht club. Straight away we filled in forms for Customs. Antoinette drove us in her car to a port entrance. The officer was nearby and soon had us cleared in. Back at WBYC we met up with Wolfgang from Endo 2. Heike and Udo were on a desert safari and Wolfgang was waiting for his wife to arrive. We caught up with each other’s news and had lunch together.
The next day Jeremy went ashore for 145 litres of water. The yacht club has a long jetty with a water hose at the seaward end. This meant we did not have far to carry our water containers. We enjoyed hot showers at the yacht club. Antoinette drove us to Dunes Shopping Mall. We stocked up with lots of provisions. When we had finished, Antoinette came for us and drove us back to WBYC. In the afternoon, Woolfgang drove us to a garage in his hire car, where we filled our diesel cans and had a quick shop at Spar. We decided to leave for St Helena on Saturday. This meant clearing out the day before. We were at Antoinette’s office at 0830, filled in the required forms and she drove us to Immigration. Unfortunately, they were having a meeting so we had to wait for an hour before we could have our passports stamped and be cleared. Next was Customs where the formalities were done speedily. We paid WBYC 1000N$ (£50) for all their services. Moorings and tying alongside cost extra.
On Saturday 18th February we weighed anchor and motored out of the harbour, setting a course for St Helena, 1,223 miles away. We were at sea for 11 nights. Although we soon reached the SE Trade Wind belt, we found the Trades were not as dependable as we had hoped. Sometimes there was only 2-3 knots of wind. At other times there would be 16 or 17 knots. This required too many sail changes for only short periods of time, so we motored quite frequently. We were flying our ghoster or half spinnaker in light winds when quite suddenly, at midnight, the wind increased and we struggled to get the sail down. I was lowering the halyard and Jeremy was lying on his back on the bows gathering in the billowing sail, preventing it from filling and lifting him off the deck. I was quite happy not to repeat that performance. We had emailed St Helena Harbourmaster from Walvis Bay, so we were expected. As requested, we called St Helena Radio on VHF16 once we were within radio range. Then we called Port Control on VHF14 when we were a mile away and were directed to pick up any yellow mooring buoy.
To our surprise, there were 7 other visiting boats in the bay, three of them catamarans. One more catamaran arrived soon after us and we all took the water taxi together (£2.50 per person per return trip) to go ashore and see the officials. The order this time was Port Control, Immigration and Customs. All were in the same building close to the wharf. Immigration charged us £20 each. We will have to pay Port Control £35 and £2 per day for the mooring. There is a welcoming yacht club with a washing machine and showers. Water is available at the wharf. The most expensive thing is SIM card data from Sure - £16.50 for the SIM card and £20 for 350mb! WiFi costs £6 per hour, available at several local hostelries. We found out that the entry rules for Ascension Island have changed and a visa is now required. This has to be applied for online and can take 3 weeks. There are also strict requirements for medical insurance. We have decided, sadly, to give Ascension a miss and we will probably head for French Guayana as a stopover on our way to the Carribean.
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