Ascension
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 – Georgetown, Ascension Island
We have had a very fun couple of days exploring the island by car, foot and dingy. We hiked out to a spot along the coast called Northeast Point on a trail that started out as a huge beach and then turned into a massive lava field. It was kinda like being on the moon, except for the ocean of course. In amazing contrast, we later hiked through mud, rain, and mist on the highest peak on the island called Green Mountain. It’s obviously called Green Mountain for a reason and near the top there is a small pond in the middle of a very dense bamboo forest. We also took the dingies around to a really nice beach and snorkeling spot called Comfortless Cove. It’s a really bad name for such a wonderful place, but it used to be a leper colony and just behind the beach is a cemetery that serves as a grim reminder of how it got its name.
In the bay where we are anchored, there are thousands of trigger fish that nibble away at the bottom of Hokule’a, eating everything that has grown since we left South Africa. If only these fish would travel with us everywhere we go, so that I would never have to scrub the bottom of the boat. One day we tossed an orange peel over the side and dozens of trigger fish attacked it and devoured it within seconds. After seeing that I was a little afraid to get in the water. So I stuck my foot in first and they immediately came to investigate but never took a bite. Check out the video (Feeding Frenzy) of what happened when we tossed a potato in the water.
Ascension is one of the most important nesting areas in the world for the Green Turtle. Every year thousands of huge green turtles swim from Brazil to Ascension to mate and lay their eggs. Pretty amazing that they can swim the 1500 miles each way, but even more impressive is how in the heck they navigate to this tiny rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Additionally it is believed that the female turtles return to the same exact beach on the island where they were born to lay their eggs each year.
Both male and female turtles start arriving at Ascension in December. Females will mate with multiple males and actually store sperm for later fertilization of eggs. The males only hang around for a couple months and then swim back to Brazil without the females. The females will fertilize a “clutch” of eggs, drag themselves up on to the beach, dig a large hole, lay the eggs, cover them by filling the hole, and then drag themselves back down the beach to the ocean. The process starts just after dark and finishes around sunrise. The females will repeat this process up to 10 times during one nesting season. It takes about 50 days for the eggs to hatch and often a day or two for the hatchlings to dig their way to the surface, where they wait just below the surface until dark. They then make the mad scramble down the beach towards the ocean trying to evade all of the birds, crabs and land animals that want to eat them. I can only imagine what happens when they get in the water and the trigger fish are waiting. As such, it is estimated that only 1 hatchling out of 1000 will make it to full maturity.
By May or early June the females start their trip back to Brazil. Another amazing fact about this whole process is that neither the male or female turtles eat at all from the time they leave Brazil until the time they get back. Even if they got hungry the types of plants they eat don’t exist in Ascension waters. Several mornings, we went to the beach next to where Hokule’a and Kite are anchored and watched these massive females fill their holes and drag their exhausted bodies back to the ocean (seeTired Turtle video). One night we went with some local research biologists to get an up close view of the turtles laying their eggs. We also got to help a few of the new hatchlings make it to the water safely. What a cool experience!
We took a trip out to the airport (surprise - Jake wanted to visit another airport). Very near the airport is a nesting area for a type of bird called Sooty Terns which are more appropriately named Wideawake Terns because of loud noise they make when nesting. These terns are true seabirds spending most of each year at sea, but they return to Ascension approximately once a year to nest. The noise level from the thousands of terns certainly competes with any noise issues coming from the airport.
While at the airport we also went and visited the Ascension meteorological office. The folks there were super helpful giving us forecasts and utilizing their equipment to help us look at possible routes for crossing the Atlantic to Trinidad. The trip is way too long (3 weeks or more) to get a realistic forecast, but we are concerned about where to cross equator and the ITCZ (that is the windless and squally area either side of the equator). The traditional sailing route from Ascension to the Caribbean goes more or less on straight line because it crosses the ITCZ at its historically narrowest part. However the folks at the meteo office here are showing us that for some reason over the next several days the narrowest part of the ITCZ is shifting eastward and would be directly north of Ascension. So in theory, we could defy traditional wisdom and sail due north (actually towards Africa), cross quickly through the ITCZ, then make a hard left turn and head west when we reach the trade winds. It adds several hundred miles to the already 3000 and some odd mile trip, but if there is a chance to minimize the nastiness and duration of being in the ITCZ…we will take it!
So we have done a final bit of provisioning, cleared out of the country, and readied our sea berths (or as Jackie likes to call them …sick beds). Tomorrow we head out on our longest mileage passage ever…Trinidad here we come.
Sunday, April 12, 2015 – Georgetown, Ascension Island
We made landfall here in Ascension on Friday morning after a wonderful 5 day sail from St. Helena. The spinnaker got a major workout as we flew it both day and night for most of the trip. Gotta love sailing in the South Atlantic Ocean! We couldn’t quite make it in time for a daylight arrival on Thursday, so we had to sail really slowly for the last 8 hours with only a reefed main as we approached the island. Those 8 hours were amazingly peaceful as we ghosted along in flat seas and very light wind listening to sound of green sea turtles surfacing to take a breath.
Like St. Helena, Ascension is a British territory and it is incredibly remote. There is no indigenous population and the majority of the 800 or so people that live there are military or contact workers It was first settled by the British in the early 1800’s and the US built an airfield on the island during WWII. The airfield is still occupied today by the US Air Force and there are a couple of commercial flights that utilize the runway each week. The island is a major hub for communications systems housing equipment for the US and European Space Programs, the GPS system, the primary BBC relay station, and all kinds of military surveillance systems.
The island itself is volcanic, dry and barren at sea level, but incredibly green and wet at elevation. The water and beaches are gorgeous and best of all Kite and Hokule’a are the only 2 boats here. We are anchored in Clarence Bay off of Georgetown which is the only real harbor on the island. Like St. Helena, access to shore can be difficult and they have a similar set up with a small concrete landing and a couple of knotted ropes hanging down to pull yourself up. However unlike St. Helena there is no shore boat so you have to use your own dingy. So in addition to a challenging landing, now you have to figure out what to do with your dingy while ashore. We ended up putting a block (pulley) on a nearby mooring and used a very long line to pull the dingy away from the waves crashing on the concrete landing.
Ascension is also one of the few places in the world where they have an annual land crab migration. These yellowish orange crabs travel all the way down from the mountains to the sea in order to release their eggs into the ocean. We are at the tail end of the migration as it primarily occurs from January to March, but still there are crabs everywhere. We are renting a car with Jack and Zdenka for a few days to explore the island and looks like we will have to be dodging crabs trying to cross the roads…