Georgetown, Ascension Island UK

Today we learned that Mckay had been hospitalized in Orlando while on vacation with his family for the past three days. Hearing that was an awful feeling, knowing we were so far away.  The down side of travel.  We were relieved to learn that after two more days, he was released and on the way to recovery.

 

Prior to arriving at this port, the Captain announced that our next two ports of call in West Africa; Bunjul, Gambia, and Dakar, Senegal have been cancelled due to the recent increase in Ebola virus there. Also, it is possible the Cape Verde, our next stop would not let us in if we had come from Senegal. Cape Verde is a refueling stop, so we must dock there. Many of us are disappointed, but others are relieved. So we now have an extra stop in Praia, Ilha De Santigo, and an extra day in Mindelo, both in the Cape Verde Islands, and one more stop in the Caribbean, St. Lucia. This journey is like life, you know where you are when you start, but not how you get to the end. 

 

Upon arrival at Jamestown, Ascension Island, the only landing possibility for the island, we found the swells coming to the island to be 8-10 feet high.  A tender was sent in to check it out and we could see it bouncing around quite a bit due to the swells.  I took pictures of the tender at the dock through my telephoto lens and I was relieved that we did not try to chance it, as the movement of the tender in the swells while at the docking area was so erratic that it would be difficult to get onto the dock and more importantly more difficult to get back on to the tender to return to the ship.  Ascension Island is a long way from nowhere if one gets stranded.

 

Notice to the right of the tender the turtle tracks on the beach, where the green sea turtles left the sea during the night to deposit their eggs.  Approximately 150 eggs are laid in a clutch.  The turtles hatch and “run” to the sea, with a low percentage making it safely due to the birds who feed on them.  Nature at its cruelest.   

 

Ascension Island is a small island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an undersea, volcanically active ridge that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean north to south.  Similar to St. Helena Island, Ascension Island is completely volcanic.  It is a very beautiful island as evident with the picture of Green Mountain.

 

The island is used by several countries as a midway stop for planes crossing the South Atlantic.  It is a communications center for several countries.  It has also been used as a NASA tracking station.   It is a research center for the study of many different kinds of flora and fauna, especially the green sea turtle.  The green sea turtles travel from the east coast of South America to Ascension Island to mate and lay their eggs and then return some 2000 miles to South America.   

The Captain decided not to attempt at tender here. Instead, we boarded about two dozen people from Ascension (immigration officers, post office personnel, scientists, and a few vendors selling t-shirts, etc.) and we circumnavigated the island.

After a two hour circumnavigation of Ascension Island, a small boat was sent out to the ship to pick up the people who had boarded the ship.  It was going to take two trips to get all the people and equipment onto shore.  The seas were very rough and in doing so, the steering in the pick-up boat malfunctioned.  They drifted for a while as they attempted to fix the steering.  Many people adrift in a small boat in rough seas, not good. Eventually they were able to do a temporary fix to the steering, head close to shore where they then boarded a much larger boat and returned to the ship to pick up the remaining people and equipment.  A small drama at sea.

FYI – Last night, about 11:30, we were awakened with a jolt, as the ship went over the equator again, this time northbound, for the fourth time on our cruise.  Just saying.