Adventure: Go on a cruise

By Andrea Weiss

• Print
• Email
• Bere

Hop aboard the RMS St. Helena and sail to St. Helena island.

It somehow seems easier to breathe more freely on a ship, surrounded by water, says Andrea Weiss, who cruised to St Helena and back with her family.

All aboard
The deep blue water fizzes like bath salts next to the ship. I’m leaning over the railing, watching the RMS St Helena carve a path through the South Atlantic. Next to me is Mervyn Peters, who was born on the island of St Helena, but has lived in England for decades. This is his second return visit and he’s coming to show his son and granddaughter where he was born. Mervyn talks about his philosophy of life. “You have to visualise what you want,” he says. “I wanted a nice car, an Audi, and so visualised it… then I went on to eBay and found one secondhand.” I smile. It’s true. If you’ve always wanted to do something, like visit St Helena, you can visualise it, plan it, save up, do it.

A calm day at sea
Sailing up the West Coast, the sea was a pale green. Then, when we left Walvis Bay, the Atlantic
bared its teeth a little. There were fewer people at dinner that night, and in the morning the waves were flecked with white. Lots of seabirds paid us a visit, including the Prince of the Ocean, the wandering albatross. But now, one day away from St Helena, two days off the coast of Namibia, we’re in calmer waters and there’s little sign of life, except a pod of dolphins that cruised past this morning. At lunchtime, the officer of the watch announced we were 660km from St Helena and there
was 5400 m of water below us (that’s almost 5½ km!). There’s not a ship in sight; we’re well off
the shipping lanes. “Look, a flying fish,” I shout to no one in particular. It scuds over the water like a locust for what looks like an impossibly long distance.

Good food and interesting company
In the afternoon, the crew start to set up tables and fairylights. Tonight we’ll have a deck braai
under the full moon. There are lots of interesting people on board. An archaeologist and his team joined us in Walvis Bay. There’s a man travelling to the island to repair the church organ in Jamestown, a professor from Rhodes leading a tour group, and an ornithologist who has to decide how best to deal with a plague of Indian mynah birds on the island. And because it’s the school holidays, there are two other families from Cape Town – like us. In all, there are 80 passengers on board. Meals are lavish, like at a family hotel on the Wild Coast or in the Drakensberg: starters, soup, mains, dessert, cheese and savouries. In-between, we entertain ourselves with old fashioned pastimes like card games, books and conversation.

Game on
There’s no internet, no cellphone reception, no e.tv or Sky News. No cars, no crime. In the mornings there are lectures by experts (ornithology, geology, botany, history) and in the evening organised activities like quizzes and bingo. There’s even a cricket match between the officers and the passengers. Nets go up around the deck, a bucket of cricket balls, which are fashioned out of rope, appears. Deck cricket, like garden cricket, has its own rules: If you hit the ball into the sea, for instance, you’re out and you lose your score. Captain Andrew Greentree, a former science teacher at St Helena’s only high school, puts in a tidy performance as a batsman.

St. Helena in sight
It’s day seven and the ship is due to drop anchor at 6am. I join the early risers as we peer into the gloom for our first glimpse of St Helena. “Look, lights,” a voice says and a group of us rushes excitedly to the starboard side of the deck, and then back again, as a landmass looms ahead of us. At its highest point the island is 800m above sea level. Someone wonders out loud what Napoleon must have thought when he first saw the island. (Napoleon Bonaparte was famously imprisoned here for the last six years of his life.) As the sun rises, Rupert’s Bay with its fishing factory and fuel
tanks comes into view; then Jamestown, the “capital”, wedged into a crevice between two sheer volcanic walls. To the right, I can see the famous 699 steps of Jacob’s Ladder threaded up the side of the rock, once the only way of ferrying goods to the island’s interior. Through my binoculars, above the wharf to the left, I can make out the words “Welcome to the RMS St Helena” painted in white on a cliff, and above it the words: “Farewell to the RMS St Helena”. As the sun rises even higher, the scene dissolves into something far friendlier. A small launch ferries passengers from the ship to the wharf and then by bus to a small customs shed to reclaim our luggage. Then, in the same way as famous visitors before us, like Charles Darwin, Captain James Cook and astronomer Edmond Halley, we enter Jamestown on foot, through the town gate up the main road lined with Georgian buildings. 

Into the distance
Behind us, the RMS St Helena lies at anchor, waiting to unload her cargo for the 3800 islanders
who eagerly await a consignment of fresh goods. Tomorrow she heads off to Ascension Island (1300 km away). In a week, she’ll be back. When she returns, we’ll hear her horn sound in the pre-dawn announcing that she’s here to sail us home to Cape Town.

Cruise 101

Published 1 January 2010

Back to destinations | Back to top

Comments

Submitted on 3 February 2010 | 15:42:58

Self catering accommodation starts at around 25 pounds a night. Contact Andrew Weir Shipping on 021 425 1165 for more details.

Submitted on 3 February 2010 | 15:10:36

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO STAY ON THE ISLAND FOR A WEEK

Report Abuse

Comment on this article

Comment

Email (optional)

Please complete the code

Code