Day 13 – 06.02.2026

« Arrival in Saint Helena Island ! »

This morning we all woke up earlier, maybe because of the excitement of seeing land after 12 days. The wind since yesterday has picked up to 18 kts so our ETA is a bit earlier than expected, we will arrive during daytime in the bay, around 16 :00. The boat is doing well in the high swell, crashing peacefully into every passing wave. The deck has remained dry for more than 10 days, the sides are high enough to avoid the spray.

Since 12 :30 pm (15Nm away) we started seeing the outline of the island, very faintly, the weather over the island is pretty cloudy. We are aiming for the north east side before turning into Jamestown. We spotted some birds as well.

We got close to land around 15 :30GMT and at 16 :00 I contacted St Helena radio on Ch. 16 with no answer, then contacted Port Control on Ch.14 and got a very friendly person on the other side, he told us we could anchor anywhere (at our own discretion) and informed us that we would have to wait office hours to do our check-in the following day…

So we’d have to wait before setting foot on land. After scouting different options, we set our anchor north of Rupert Bay in the shallowest waters we could find…in 15m depth ! We used 60m of chain and so far the anchorage is not rocky at all.

When we were busy anchoring a little yellow fishing boat came up to us, on it « Kenny » written on the side, he was the ferry guy. Kenny started to greet us and explain that we’d need to wait the next morning 9 :00 to do the check-in at customs etc. So here we are, enjoying a bottle of bubbly, some pasta and discussing what we plan on doing on the island in the coming days. A good nights sleep is going to be needed and I don’t think anyone is going to miss the alarm ringing for our respective 3h night watches.