Saint Helena Island to Recife
Posted by Graham Cox
One by one, the MGR skippers are doing what Napoleon could only dream of, sailing away from Saint Helena Island after their 7-day stopover. Unlike the good general, they didn’t really want to leave, having been treated royally by the Saint Helena Yacht Club and taken to the bosom of this island community.
Jasmine was so enamoured by her time on Saint Helena Island that she decided to swim around it, even though she was due to set sail for Recife a couple of days later, and had not completed any of the training or research usually required for such a feat. Not to mention that the weather had taken a turn for the worse with building wind and waves.
After leaping into the sea off the Jamestown wharf at 0200, and then swimming 30 NM nonstop in 19 hours, hypothermia brought her up just short of her starting point. Her experience in endurance swimming both helped her to keep going and allowed her to make the right call to stop, which took enormous self-discipline when so close to her goal.
Despite having to abandon her record attempt when a mere 1500m from the end, she had done it in the minds of the Saints, and brought fame to their little community. The Governor of Saint Helena, Air Commodore Nigel James Phillips, CBE, presented her with Saint Helena’s Recognition of Excellence Medal, and hundreds of islanders crowded the foreshore on her return, cheering jubilantly, waving the English flag, and serenading her with bagpipes as she made her way through the throng to an awaiting car.
With this record attempt, Jasmine has created a whole new chapter in the story of the MGR. She was already something of a wunderkind, now she is a LEGEND!
At 0800 UTC on 17 January, after Renaud had hoisted CAPUCINETTE’s mainsail and sailed off the mooring in James Bay, he was already 5 NM out. 12 hours later he was 73 NM on his way, sailing at 5.9 knots, with 1699 NM to go to Recife (according to the sometimes-misleading rhumb line!).
At 2300 UTC on 19 January, he said, “I left Saturday morning. It was a bit rainy at the beginning and the wind was not very regular – sometimes blowing, sometimes not. But now, nearly two days after, we have made nearly 250 miles, so sailing quite fast. The wind is a typical trade wind, between 15 to 20 knots. Just from the back. Sometimes there are clouds with a bit of rain and sometimes a bit more wind.
“So, the wind is changing a lot. There is a lot of work with the sails, sometimes the A5, sometimes the A7, sometimes both, sometimes the jib. It is pleasant sailing – with work to go fast. I am very happy. CAPUCINETTE slides on the waves. Tonight, there are no clouds for the moment, no moon. So, the stars are here – they are just wonderful. It is just magnificent to look to the sky. It’s a fantastic setting.
“The waves are okay, and the boat is normally balancing all the time. Sometimes the waves are foamy, and CAPUCINETTE goes for a surf at six, seven, eight knots. I had a surf at twelve knots just before.”
Renaud was very tired when he arrived at Saint Helena, but is well rested after his 7-day stopover. “So now it’s okay. I get sleeping each time that I can. I keep an eye on Dan and I try to keep this cushion with him of about 20 miles. Sometimes he comes closer, sometimes it’s farther. But that’s all right.”
He is back to his usual watch routine of sleeping one hour in every four, then spending the rest of the time navigating, refining his strategy, tending to the boat, hand-steering, whatever he feels is needed to keep ahead. “I think everyone needs to discover what works the best for him. But for me, it’s good.” Judging by CAPUCINETTE’s consistently higher average speed and straight course, one would have to agree.
He mentioned that this is the last predominantly-downwind stage of the MGR and he is enjoying it while it lasts! “I try to enjoy it as much as I can, because the next one will be wind from the side, and maybe strong. So, it will be a completely different way of sailing.
“On the last passage (to Antigua), we will have currents from the east point of Brazil going up to Guyana. This current is just on the east side of the 100m contour of the ocean. This will be between six or seven hundred miles of quite complex sailing.
“But I think the most challenging part will be the sailing after the doldrums, because we will have the wind from the side, maybe even upwind. And none of us, apart the two who came from the USA, have experienced hard conditions upwind for long periods of time. So it will be very interesting.”
Aussie Dan was underway a short time after Renaud, and at 2000 UTC on 17 January, IMMORTAL GAME was 17 NM astern of CAPUCINETTE. Two days later, Renaud had increased his lead to 27 NM. The old game between these two is once again shaping up to be a tussle all the way.
On 19 January, Dan said, “It’s nice to be back out here again. Just got a bit more breeze than predicted at the moment, plus a bit of a cross swell. I just have the poled-out headsail and the A7 up at the moment. Going along not too bad with that amount of sail up. Getting thrown around a bit, but it’s not too bad. I am just trying to keep it a little bit comfortable where I can.
“So far, I haven’t done much hand-steering since leaving Saint Helena. I’ve done a few hours each day but mostly IMMORTAL GAME has been under the Hydrovane. I’ve used the tiller-pilot a little, but it’s been a bit too windy so far – it works best in lighter winds.”
On the stage up to Saint Helena, Dan mentioned that he did not feel as competitive as he had done in the past. He felt that his priorities had changed, and so far on this passage, that mood seems to be persisting. “I’m not really too focused on the other competitors; I am just thinking about what’s best for me and the boat, and trying to enjoy the trip.”
However, that little word, ‘too’, as in ‘too focused’, needs watching! He was still adjusting to being back at sea, and may regain some of his racing mojo later, as seemed to happen in the last days approaching Saint Helena, when BIBI and PETER PUNK began closing in on IMMORTAL GAME. “It’s always difficult (going back to sea after a stopover)” he said. “You start settling into land life, and then before you know it, you have to get going again. It’s quite difficult doing that every few weeks.
“St. Helena Island is a fantastic place. I really enjoyed it there. Once again, people were really friendly. And the hospitality, like everywhere we’ve been, was fantastic. It was surprising how quiet it was, and they’re sort of struggling a bit in terms of tourism.
“I had the opportunity to go out and also visit Napoleon’s tomb and where he used to live. And we also went and saw the Governor’s house and old Jonathan, the tortoise. The scenery was fantastic, and the waters crystal clear with plenty of fish around, plus the food was nice. So yeah, really fantastic little place to visit, guys.”
IMMORTAL GAME is in very good condition for these last two stages back to Antigua. “I didn’t have any work to do in St. Helena, which was nice. Just restocking a bit.”
His focus now is to settle the boat down as it rolls along before the trade winds. “Downwind is often sometimes the hardest time to keep comfortable because the boat just rolls around. It reminds me of an IOR boat in that regard, rolling from side to side. I have to keep things tied down, otherwise stuff just flies around in the cabin.”
Maybe Dan should campaign an Open 40 next, what do you say, Nikki?
“But other than that, all’s good on board. It’s always been a fantastic little boat. And, as of today, we’ve crossed the longitude from where we set off (in Lagos). Obviously, we still have to finish the circumnavigation, but it’s nice to have crossed every longitude on the planet.”
Dan stayed on shore for a few days at St Helena, as the anchorage wasn’t particularly comfortable. “I stayed on shore at the Consulate Hotel. It’s 250 years old and like a museum inside. It’s an interesting old hotel that’s kind of closed down. The caretaker is an old sailor so he basically opens it up for sailors that need accommodation.”
By 0000 UTC on 18 January, Jakub, Pilar and Adam, were also at sea, followed later by Christian, and then, on the morning of 19 January, Eric and SUNBEAR set off in pursuit. Jasmine left later in the day, after resting from her marathon swim, followed by Ertan, then Keri, the next morning, leaving Josh to hold the fort. Thank goodness Napoleon is no longer a prisoner there!
At 0130 on 19 January, Jakub reported that he was still settling in to being back at sea, a few hours after leaving Saint Helena. “Mostly it’s a psychological adjustment because I don’t get seasick. But after such a good time ashore, you have to switch into the sailing mode and cope with the choppy sea, etc.”
Asked how he was dealing with the solitude, he said, “Usually I’m looking forward to this because our stays ashore are very busy. We do lots of partying, sightseeing and travelling. I’m always happy to go sailing and be on my own. But usually, I’m also very tired. So, when I go sailing, the first two, three days, I need to catch up with sleep, food, and changing the routine, like sleeping intervals and eating simple food.
“Although this time, we couldn’t buy the fresh fruits, so I only managed to get six tomatoes, one cucumber, and ten onions. That’s all the veggies I have. And I have one orange left from South Africa. I have a lot of freeze-dry food and those ready-to-eat meals, but my stomach does not like them anymore. So, I’m struggling with this a little bit. And I’m too lazy to cook something properly – I just don’t have an appetite. Whatever I do, however I prepare, the first two, three days I am always trying to adjust.”
At least the weather is benign. “The wind from the beginning has been pretty much the same, from about 16 knots to 20 and gusting 25. The sea is a little bit more regular than the one between Cape Town and Saint Helena. But the wind is strange – sometimes it is strong but it’s fluky. So probably the waves are changing, too. It’s not the worst time, but it just annoys me sometimes.
“I’m sailing with the A7 and A5 goosewinged. The A5 is rolled in to match the size of the A7. If the wind picks up tonight, I’m going to roll them in some more, and then I will go to sleep. I think I need a full night of sleep. I’m also a little bit stressed because my kids went snowboarding in Poland and my son broke both hands. His mother and sister are with him, and when he gets back to Ireland, he will have good medical support, but it is difficult for me, being here and not having the possibility to go and see him”.
People sometimes forget that it is not only the families left behind who suffer anxiety about their loved ones out on the ocean – being separated from the people you love takes its toll on the sailors as well.
It will be some time before Jakub gets home. He still has to recross the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland. “We will be in Antigua in March, and then I think that the best time to start from Antigua will be the beginning of May, so probably a month and a half journey – three, three and a half weeks to Azores, a few days in Azores, and then about ten days to Ireland. So, sometime in the middle of June.
“But I’m looking forward to seeing the Carnivale in Recife, and all those dressed-up people,” he added. Knowing Jakub, he’s likely to become an active participant in the parades! Our man knows a bit about dressing up. So far, he has appeared as a pirate, a leprechaun and, in Cape Town, as Snoopy.
“The boat keeps very well,” he added. “There’s no damage. Sails are good, and I hope to have them good all the time. As I keep saying, I don’t push things too hard. I want to sail efficiently, but without doing crazy things. My strongest point is sailing efficiently in light winds. Also, if the wind is changing direction, I always manage to keep the course steady and change the sails in time.
“By the time we made the last passage, I’d worked out a couple of things. The first was that a steady course gives me an advantage. I was doing everything to keep my wake as straight as possible. It helped that the wind was steady all the time. Second thing was there were a few days with lighter winds, and I managed to trim the boat and the sails to achieve the most efficient way of sailing.
“And another thing, when I was building the boat, I followed advice from the boat builder, Piotr Czarniecki, and made my dagger boards 20cm longer than the design showed, plus I built them and their cases super strong. They were a game changer.
“In these fluky winds, I need to do a lot of hand-steering. Today I probably did eight hours in total. And I should be hand-steering tonight too, but I’m a bit tired and I’m going to roll the sails a little bit more and go to sleep until the morning. Usually, I sleep when the night comes, waking up every 40 minutes or an hour, just checking the course and the conditions.
“I have not seen any wildlife so far, except some small birds, and a few flying fish, (one of which came into the cabin while Jakub was speaking to me, and he had to interrupt the conversation to throw it back overboard, then wash his slimy hands). There has been only one ship in the distance, probably 30 miles, but it must have been a big one, because I picked up the signal and then saw him on the screen.”
Even though it was 0200 BIBI time (UTC) by the time we finished talking, Jakub thought he might stay up for a bit and read some more of his current book, 1421, which he finds fascinating. BIBI has an excellent electrical system, so he has plenty of light to read by, etc. He is never short of power.
“This is another amazing story, because my system was not built by an electrician, but he is a real sailor. My system is so robust that I have never had power issues on this voyage. I have two LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries, 100 amps each.”
And BIBI has another excellent feature. “The keel does not vibrate like it does on some other 580s. I spent a lot of time measuring with laser levels to install the keel. If my keel was vibrating, I would never go sailing in the ocean. When I was building the boat, every measurement had to be like two-tenths, or even one-tenth of a millimetre accurate. I probably spent too much time measuring and adjusting things, but there is no single vibration, no strange sound on this boat.”
Because he has little fresh food onboard, he may have to get used to eating freeze-dried stuff on this passage, or find the time to do some fishing. His son reckons he’ll find the time to fish when he gets hungry! He does like fresh tuna, straight off the bone. “You marinate it in soya sauce, and then put a little bit of wasabi on the top. Dan told me how to do it, and it is fantastic.”
In a brief phone message shortly before PETER PUNK set off from Saint Helena, Pilar said, “The welcome in Saint Helena was fantastic. Now we are off to Recife in Brazil. My plan is to sail fast and try to catch the one in front of me, and keep the others behind.” She appears to be doing a good job, slowly reeling Jakub and BIBI in after two days at sea. The phone message was not completely clear, but she appeared to say that she had discovered some damage to the front of PETER PUNK’s keel shortly before departure, but obviously it is not structural.
SKOOKUM is the last 580 still anchored at Saint Helena, with Josh scheduled to leave shortly. While waiting, he looked back at the final days of his passage from Cape Town. “Yeah, it was rough. I thought, oh, it’s got to be just me, and then I got here and I talked to everybody and they all had pretty much the same opinion.
“For the last five days of the passage, it was probably the most challenging conditions, mentally, that we’ve sailed through yet. The waves weren’t terribly big – they were no more than 2m, maybe only 1.5m – but they were going in two diametrically different directions, and to try to sail anywhere in between them was really difficult. The boat just wanted to fall off to one side or the other.
“So, if you’re trying to steer 330°, it would either want to fall off to 000° and go north, or it would want to fall off to 280° and go west. I tried everything, but I had to do lots of hand-steering, and probably only slept like four hours in as many days. And I mean everything – both sails on one side; sails wing and wing; adjusting the windvane one way, then the other; giving the windvane bias on the tiller by adjusting the strings, having one string be longer and pulling the tiller more to one side than the other. Nothing worked.
“I tried all kinds of stacking inside the boat, to get weight where I needed it. I would even sleep with stuff in the windward bunk, trying to get as much weight as possible on the one side. I’d be in the bed with the ditch bag and the outboard battery on the bed with me.
“And then, you know, that would work for a little while, and then I’d have to put it over to the other side. That would be effective for a little while also, and then I’d have to put it on the floor. So yeah, constantly, constantly, adjusting the windvane, moving weight around, changing sails, and hand-steering.
“There were times when I was standing in the cockpit and shaking my fist at the sky, shouting, like, ‘What is going on out here?’ I would get really mad at the windvane, like, ‘What’s your problem? How come you can’t steer the boat?’ And then I would try to hand-steer for a while, and I couldn’t do it either.
“I ended up having to sail back and forth, put the sails on one side and go 300°, 315° for a while, then put the sails on the other side and go, like, 240°, 250° for a while, half a day one way, half a day back the other way, just to try to stay close to the rhumb line. I was exhausted by the time I got here. I was so out of it, I didn’t really know where I was.”
Being short of money meant that he had to sleep on the boat, apart from the night after Jasmine’s epic swim, when he stayed in the hotel room that she got for free from the Saint Helena Tourist Board. “To be honest, the anchorage hasn’t been that bad. The last two nights were the first time that SKOOKUM’s actually been rolling. It’s been pretty smooth in here. They say the swell gets pretty bad sometimes.
“I haven’t had any problem with the boat moving around too much. It was a bit crowded when I got here, and that was difficult because to have enough scope out to feel comfortable, to sleep at night, you then run the risk of swinging into other boats. I’ve got lots of rope out, so you swing in a wide arc. There were a lot of boats here when I arrived, but they’re all pretty much gone now.”
Even so, there have been regular wind gusts coming off the mountains to keep the skippers on their toes. “That’s how it was coming in. The wind was light when SKOOKUM came around the corner at the north end of the island. I figured I was in the wind shadow, so I put up the A3. As soon as I was in sight of Jamestown, I was immediately overpowered.
I ran up on the foredeck and pulled the A3 down, then put up the main and jib, because once I crossed the finish line, I was going to have to beat against the wind all the way back to the anchorage. And it was tough, because you would get these gusts that knocked the boat down – they would last like a minute or two – and then it would be back to nothing and you’d be just drifting.
SKOOKUM, as usual, is in excellent condition, with little to do before departing, apart from cleaning the bottom. “I’m going to jump in the water later today. The bottom looks clean – there’s no grass, no algae, just ten or so little barnacles on the transom.”
He was pleasantly surprised by the Saint Helena stopover. “I wasn’t really looking forward to this stop. I was kind of worried about it because obviously the deep anchorage is something you have to deal with, plus they require you to have health insurance. And being American, I can’t afford health insurance. I wasn’t sure if they were going to let me in, but I was able to obtain a week’s worth of insurance here on the island.
“The Saints are proud of where they come from. They’re very proud of St. Helena and really love their island. Plus, all those old buildings have so much history. The Consulate Hotel was built in 1729 or something like that. You can really feel the maritime history here.
Talking about fresh provisions, he said, “Eggs are really hard to come by. Everybody has really been struggling to get eggs. If you want to have a good business, just move to St. Helena and start an egg farm. To get eggs from the grocery store, you pretty much have to reserve them two weeks in advance. But I have plenty of food aboard, so I’m not worried about that. I’ll just eat what’s on board. I’ve actually been pretty lazy and just cooking two-minute noodles and stuff like that.”
He is already beginning to feel nostalgic about the MGR and knows that he will miss the adventure and camaraderie when the event is over. However, there is still one last adventure with SKOOKUM ahead. “I think it would be really cool to sail back to Oriental in North Carolina, right back to the little town dock where I set off from. The community there really supported me. Also, that’s where my trailer and van are.”
Looking back, Josh has refined his ideas about SKOOKUM’s sails and their handling, in particular his headsails. “I won’t say my A5 is brand new, but it certainly doesn’t look beaten or worn. The A3 is faded, it used to be yellow, and now it’s kind of more whitish, but the A5 is still has good colour.
“I got my A7 from Niels, after he had sailed BIGGEST MONKEY in the 2024 Globe 580 Transat, so it was used when I got it. And it’s still holding up great. I had a couple repairs done on it in Mauritius – the foot needed to be repaired and there was a couple of spots where some of the stitching was coming loose, but all my spinnakers are in great shape. I think it’s because I don’t furl them. I just launch them by hand and they’re either up or down.
“I lamented not having furlers for a long time, but after seeing and hearing about other people’s experiences, I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both ways of doing it. Obviously, it’s more convenient with a furler – when the wind is up you can just roll it away – whereas I have to go up on the bow to take it down if I’m using the pole.
“So, although I spend a lot a lot more time up forward than people with furlers, my sails are still in great shape – they just go into the bag and then straight down below, unless they get wet. Then, I’ll dry them in the cockpit before I put them away. But for the most part, they stay in the bag, loosely packed, and I think that has done a lot to preserve their integrity.
“Working on the foredeck is quite an issue when you’re single-handed, because it causes the boat to be a bit unbalanced, and then it wants to round up slightly. I’m quite comfortable up there, but most skippers seem to avoid it as much as possible. It depends on the sea state. And it depends on what side the wind is on, and what side I’m trying to set the sail on. Basically, if you’re on the high (windward) side, it’s fine. If you’re trying to crawl on the low (leeward) side, the boat wants to round up. As long as you stay on the high side, it seems to hold its course okay.”
I remember John Guzzwell’s comment while working across the mercurial Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and South Africa. “Fortunately,” he said “I was so used to TREKKA’s gear by this time that I could change any sail on the blackest night without getting into a tangle.” The MGR skippers are all veteran ocean voyagers by now, and worthy successors to our MGR patron’s legacy.
