Return Crew Day 18 – 25 February 2020

By Cam

Greetings all! We have had an amazing day on the island of Tristan da Cunha. We are going to keep this blog short as we are all quite exhausted from the full day we have had.

Some of us started the day slowly while others had decided to sort out the 25L tanks. Waking up I came onto deck to find empty canisters lining the side with a hard working Ollie and Rory emptying the diesel and water Jerry cans into the main tanks. With that easily out the way, you can just imagine the thoughts going through an oily Ollie and Robyn! It was freezing and the first thing I heard Robyn shout was “lets swim?“, as she looked at Ollie. Ollie being all for it took his top off and performed a bomb drop, but not before Robyn flipped into the water off the other side of the boat.

We got into comms with the people on the island and arranged lifts. Rory radioed the doctor in order to get clearance, with us all expecting a full examination. His exact words were “are any of the crew sick?” Rory replied “no, we are all in good health” to which the Doc responded “you are all clear!” We laughed hilariously as we had been waiting for 24 hours to just hear those words! We got picked up around 10 and off we went towards the island picking up the crew from Argonaut. Thankfully we got to split the cost for ferry for the day saving us income.

On arrival on Tristan we were welcomed with open arms by the lovely ladies from the tourism office and the harbour master, another Grant. The ladies took us to where we could get our passports stamped and do landing charges. We laughed watching each other head up the hill as we all wobbled all over the place swaying. Some even grabbing the poles!! It seems our leg muscles aren’t used to that much walking anymore! We worked out while chilling on the boat a few days ago that we walk an acerage of 180 steps a day on the boat and that is only when we have our phones on us (which is never).

From there we were taken to a café and the tourism office which was combined and we could buy anything from homemade Tristan knitted sweaters to pins and ties! It was hell of a cool! The ladies were so nice and helped us wherever they could. Sadly we were unable to have a shower but we had mini burgers from the supermarket. Before we moved onto the supermarket we got to admire the quite large specimens of meat on the island, aka cows. Lots and lots of cows! Although Ollie and François have been talking about eating them since we arrived and anchored we were told that the majority were pregnant and that only next year would the calves be born.

The volcanic island itself is very green and has such a peaceful town feeling to it. Just like the homey towns you see in the movies where everyone knows each other. The supermarket was cool and had a liquor store, knit shop (with knits everywhere), a little convenient store that sold boxers in singles as well as basic goods. Robyn’s comment was “oh look, the same card everyone uses. Oh look, the same deodorant everyone uses” and continued to do this until she found crocs, that apparently weren’t crocs, so who knows! After this Clare in her free time managed to score us some crayfish and with some chatting up I discovered that the man Clinton, who runs the fishing side of the island, was an ex-scout! He was at the 1st Monte Vista group; it is truly incredible how many doors scouting opens up!

Over the course of the next few days you will receive more news and info about the day in all its glory from the rest of the crew! We had some coconut rice tonight with some crayfish, and to finish off we had coffee. Yesterday we had an incredible braai and were able to do tons of swimming! Last night was interesting as it wasn’t 2 hour shifts but rather just 1 hour shifts. This is called anchor watch whereby you need to monitor the Garmin GPS to see whether we are drifting off our anchorage! I am glad to say we didn’t move at all. We did pick up a large chunk of the sea floor when we hoisted the anchor in but I will leave that tale to our diver Ollie Rambo!

Happy birthday to Kristy’s mom Chanel! We all hope you also had a fantastic day!
Today: 35 Nautical miles (only been sailing for a short while so far!)

Total: 2040 nm
Chow!