At Sea, bound for Ascension

A day to reflect on St.Helena, the unusual community of 4000 souls isolated on their green island 1000 miles from Africa, 2000miles from Brazil and 5000 miles from the mother country, Britain. How strange the tides of history which swirl around the globe. The "Saints" are all desperate for an airport which will boost their faltering economy by bringing the outside world to their door. Yet 200 years ago they were a maritime motorway service station on all routes south, with up to 1000 ships a year calling. Now barely half a dozen tourist ships visit a year, and supply ships less than once a month.

500 years ago there was only one lone Portuguese Robinson Crusoe, Dom Fernando Lopez living on the island. He was his own king, courtier and subject for 30 years.

600 years ago, St.Helena was undiscovered, still clad in its own unique forest of gumwoods and cabbage trees evolved from pioneer South African seeds, plants now extinct on this arid continent. They were passive castaways, wafted on southeast winds, cast up by swirling currents, or preened ashore by seabirds on passage. It took them perhaps 10 million years to populate this barren island, which first reared up out of the sea 14 million years ago. Before that, the face of the southern Atlantic here had not a single pimple to disfigure it. Seeds, flowers, trees, seals, seabirds, slaves, settlers and Saints all drifted here by accident, each adding to the diversity of a lonely ocean citadel.

Now we have set course 311° for Ascension, 700 miles to the NE. The sea is a deep (2000 fathoms deep) ultramarine, the sky pristine azure, distant flotillas of clouds sailing along the horizon in company with us. The whole ocean is urging us on: running north before SE trades, drifting north with the subtropical current and surfing north on long swells from windier latitudes behind us. Sadly, hurtling north at 12 knots, we did run over this flying fish, found on the foredeck.....but have seen many more skittering out of our path, singletons banking away like tiny gliders, occasionally a whole "flock" bursting from the sea, scattering to leeward like startled birds. From Antarctica, where the birds swim, we have reached the tropics, where fish fly.

There is time, blessed time, to contemplate these wonders and the infinity of the ocean, as we putter north across our true Blue Planet.