March 2026
On the morning of Sunday 1st March, Ally and Shawn got on with preparing for the arrival of friends Jane and Stephen who arrived at around 12.40 . They had a lovely relaxed afternoon onboard chatting over a couple of drinks and a delicious lunch of meats, cheeses, fresh bread and salad bits…a joint effort by all. Monday morning, riggers came to Imagination to fix a problem with the forestay, an issue that the rigger in Simon’s Town knew about for 2 months and when he did finally visit, said he would have to remove and replace it. Well, the guys today sorted the problem in situ within 20 minutes which was awesome! After lunch Ally and Shawn walked 40 minutes to a supermarket to start stocking up for the next couple of months – it was absolute bedlam in there as it was payday and the whole city seemed to be out buying groceries. It was a relief to get back to Imagination!
They were up early on the 3rd, so that they could refill fuel at the nearby pump within the marina, using jerry cans for 2 runs. Once that was done, they ordered an Uber to take them up to the start of the Patteklip Gorge hiking trail up Table Mountain. Almost as soon as it started, Ally was regretting her choices and was cross that she’d let herself be talked into doing yet another torturous hike! She loves walking and hiking, but not if it involves very steep, uneven inclines…which this did. The trail is a path of boulders, unevenly spaced and at differing heights but most were giant steps. For most, the unrelenting climb up takes around 1.5 to 2 hours….it took Ally, and as a consequence Shawn, 2.5, accompanied by much moaning, swearing, perspiring and gasping. The day was gorgeously clear and the views at the top certainly made up for the agony of the ascent! They walked along the top and made their way to a bar/restaurant and gift shop area ( unexpected by Ally but not a surprise….any chance to make money!) and they sat outside to eat the lunch they had taken with them before enjoying an Aperol spritz in the warm sunshine. The queue for the cable car down was long and so they had around 45 minutes to enjoy the changing vistas as everyone shuffled along. The cable car itself has a rotating floor and so everyone got to see the wonderful views on the surprisingly quick ride back down. Nice hot showers were enjoyed at the Yacht Club on their return before a very quiet, relaxed evening.
They were away from the dock at 06.55 on the 4th and had a long 10.5 hour motor (still running the new engines in) to Saldanha, taking in Dassen Island en route to bump the hours up a little. The anchor went down at 17.25 and it felt good to have privacy again after spending so long on docks and in a busy boatyard opposite the restaurant/bar! The anchorage was so, so quiet….lovely! They were out motoring for another 10 hours on the 5th and this time it was cloudy with some rain and wind. With a non functioning auto pilot after it finally gave up for good yesterday after a dodgy couple of months, it was a long, cold day with Ally and Shawn taking turns to hand steer and then retreat inside to warm up. They were rewarded for the discomfort by seeing a humpback whale and they had a short encounter with rare and very small Heaviside’s Dolphins that are endemic to this coast. It was another 5.5 hours out at sea on the 6th, this time in varying degrees of cold mist/fog before the sun broke through at around midday and today they spotted another big sunfish and had another brief glimpse of a Heaviside’s Dolphin as they were heading back into the Harbour. After having lunch, they spent the rest of the afternoon taking it easy while yesterdays laundry finished drying as well as it could in the 70%+ humidity!
On the 7th, Ally and Shawn enjoyed a lie in before heading over to the Yacht Club after breakfast to say hello and to find out a little about the area. They then walked for 15 minutes or so to the local Spar supermarket so that they could do a final ” big shop” in preparation for the next few months, making the most of the reasonable prices in South Africa. The area is quite remote and Ally and Shawn were a little concerned about how long it might take Uber to find a car ( the cost would have been around 66 Rand) and the taxi guy that the yacht club recommended wanted to charge 250 Rand ( approx £12!) for a 1.2km (2/3 mile) journey!! It was then that 2 ladies working at Spar, took a trolley each and told Shawn to take the other and they all walked in tandem all the way back to the Yacht Club. Those ladies were probably just waiting for a good excuse to get out of the store for half an hour or so, but Ally and Shawn were grateful that they took the lead, helped them out and saved them money – of course they were well rewarded for their assistance. On the morning of Sunday 8th March, they completed the engine run in over a couple of hours and motored across the bay to Mykonos, a small town built to resemble….Mykonos! The rest of the day was spent getting odd jobs done that were necessary before the upcoming long passage. That evening, out of frustration, Shawn went back down into the starboard engine room to try again to figure out the cause of the ongoing water leak…..and he found it!! One of the engine mounts was set at a lower level than the other which was causing a twist in the angle that the engine attached to the sail drive which meant the sail drive wasn’t sitting on it’s seal correctly. On delivery, Shawn was told that all the mounts were pre set and should not be altered, but there was a marked difference in that one mount and so Shawn adjusted it and the leak stopped! Fantastic! For some reason the mounts on the starboard engine were different from the ones in the port engine and didn’t have the required spacers on them to ensure they were all at the same height. It was such a relief to have the problem sorted especially with a long passage coming up.
Having ordered a new auto pilot last Friday, at 8am on Monday morning ( 9th), 2 guys were at the yacht club ready to be picked up to go onboard Imagination and install the new system, which included routing new wiring under the cockpit floor and down into the underbed area of the port aft cabin. Ally was so pleased it was them scrabbling around under the flooring for a change, but that was short lived as later in the day she had to go under there to route ethernet cables for the solar management system as Shawn had accidently cut 2 when he was installing the starboard engine. That evening, they walked to a hotel restaurant for dinner and enjoyed a lovely evening together.
They had 2 more guys onboard on the morning of the 10th, this time from the company that sold the engines – they had come to do the 50 hour service and they also bought new engine mounts to swap out the ones on the starboard engine. Shawn asked them to leave the engine mounts with him and he would replace them next time Imagination was out of water in Grenada, but they didn’t want to leave them with him and so they forced Shawn’s hand and proceeded to manoeuvre the engine to replace them. The water leak started again as they had lifted the engine so high without disconnecting it from the sail drive and when Shawn pointed it out to them, they tried to deny that the leak was caused by what they were doing, even though they admitted the engine room was dry before they started. They put the engine back in place and agreed to leave just the spacers, not the whole mount, so that they could be fitted onto the current mounts by Shawn when Imagination is next out of water.. which is all he’d wanted in the first place! SO frustrating that the leak problem had been resolved and they had set it off again by not thinking things through…and just before the imminent ocean passage! Ally and Shawn were fuming!
After the mechanics had gone, Shawn and Ally walked back to the supermarket to pick up last minute supplies. It was a super hot day, with no breeze ( they have been longing for warmth for a very long time!) so they stopped half way back to the Yacht Club at a bar/restaurant ,“ Captains Cabin”, where they had a beer to cool down, destress after the engine fiasco and to spend their last few Rand. As they continued their walk back, a guy drove passed and then stopped and explained that while he didn’t have much room in his vehicle as he was loaded up, he could take their shopping to the Yacht Club. Ally and Shawn were more than happy to take him up on that offer even though they were only a few minutes away from the club. On arrival, they retrieved their bags and made their way to the bar where the Manager had told them they could pay their dues for using the club dock. There were several chaps already in there and they gave Ally and Shawn a very warm welcome and they slipped very easily into friendly chat and banter so they bought a round of drinks for everyone and stayed longer than they planned before returning to Imagination.
At around 08.30 on the 11th , having put fenders and ropes out, they picked up anchor and moved the short distance to Yachtport where they went alongside ready to go to the office at 09.30 to do the paperwork for clearing out of the country as they wanted to depart the following day. Once again, everyone was so friendly and the process was quick and easy ( mostly!). There is no Customs office on site and so once Immigration have done their thing, all the paperwork was emailed to them for final clearance which can take anything from 1 to 24 hours, and Ally and Shawn were still awaiting theirs at the end of the working day. It had been another stiflingly hot and breezeless day at 37.1 degrees C and 20% humidity, but they managed to return the port engine room flooring back into position before putting everything back into the engine room that had been removed to make access easier over the last couple of months. Due to the return of the leak on the starboard side, it was decided to hold off returning everything down there for now. The cockpit cushions were washed down with fresh water, they refuelled, with the onsite staff doing all the fetching and carrying of jerry cans, they refilled the fresh water tank and the cockpit was cleaned. Imagination was feeling more like home again, rather than a workshop!
By 09.30 on Thursday 12th, they still hadn’t received their Customs clearance and so they went to Jean-Marie in the office to see if anything more could be done as she had already sent them 3 emails. She said she had done what she could and it was just a waiting game and added that the occasionally it can take up to 72 hours! She went on to say that the officials in St Helena would accept just the Immigration clearance that had already been given and the Customs clearance would be emailed to Ally directly, so they returned to Imagination and left for St Helena immediately. It was another beautiful day with very little wind and calm seas as they encountered many seals, a sunfish and a whale ( in the distance and going the opposite way) all before 13.30. By that time, the wind had increased a little bit and so the sails were set and engines off by 14.15. They were in fairly thick fog for around 1.5 hours that seemed to dissipate very quickly once it decided to lift late afternoon, and they sailed into a lovely evening.
The 13 day sail was remarkably “uneventful” with settled conditions. There was a mix of sun, cloud, bursts of rain, reasonable winds and no winds and there was a steady stream of cargo ships and tankers passing by ( some a little too close bearing in mind they have the whole ocean) and Ally and Shawn did 3 hourly shifts overnight and 4 hourly shifts during the day. During those 2 weeks, they had one pod of dolphins pass by quickly, some gorgeous sunsets, and one night they saw something they had never seen before – a string of Starlink satellites whizzing by overhead.
Wednesday 25th, the anchor went down near Jamestown, St Helena at 07.27 local time, and once all the usual arrival jobs had been done, Shawn contacted Port Control who told him to head ashore along with Ally to clear in. The anchorage is very exposed here and subject to a swell of varying degrees depending on weather conditions and so the safest way to get ashore is by ferry boat to the landing steps. Ally and Shawn were picked up just after 10am and went into Rupert’s Bay to first visit the Port Authority, before walking a very short distance to complete Customs and Immigration. It was all very informal and everyone was super friendly, helpful and welcoming. From the sea at first glance, St Helena just looks like a giant lump of rock sticking up out of the South Atlantic, but once ashore, you get to feel the genuine warmth and friendly hospitality of the islands people, and realise how attractive the island really is. After the formalities, they walked up and around the headland on a dusty pathway into Jamestown, taking in the views and spotting a whale shark in the anchorage along the way. They sorted out a SIM card for navigational purposes while ashore over the next few days and then had lunch in a great restaurant, Anne’s Place, who serve good portions at reasonable prices as well as beer! Next was a visit to the Tourist Office for information before catching the ferry boat back to Imagination at 2pm for a well earned rest.
On the 26th, Ally made a packed lunch to take ashore with them on the 11am ferry run. The plan was to visit the Museum and then climb the infamous Jacobs Ladder, 699 steep steps built in 1829 to facilitate the transportation of goods between Jamestown and the Fort at the top. It is one challenge that all visitors to the island do, and Ally ( for once) and Shawn were looking forward to completing it. The entrance to the ladder is next to the Museum and as they got closer, they were very disappointed to see that it was closed for renovations! What are the chances? They visited the museum and spent an hour or so in there looking at the artefacts and reading of the history of the island and then decided to hike to Heart Shaped Waterfall. First though, they sat in the gardens to eat lunch as it started to rain which continued on and off for the rest of the day. That probably wasn’t a bad thing as it made the uphill walk, first on road and then on tracks, easier to bear. They went from barren rock into lush,shady forest, spotting rabbits and colourful birds along the way. When they caught site of the heart shaped waterfall through the bushes, there was no waterfall haha. They also realised after continuing on the hike, that they must have missed a turning somewhere as they thought they were going to visit the bottom of the falls, but were going up and up and up. Eventually, they decided to return back to town by connecting to the nearest road and the walk back down took a good couple of hours, but they did get to see the top of Jacobs Ladder and a full rainbow over Jamestown. During the constant downward journey, every person they came across said hello and every driver of every car gave a wave and smile…so very friendly. By the time they got back to the landing steps to board the ferry back to Imagination at 6pm, they had hiked a total of 17.5 kms (11 miles)!
Friday was busy in town when they went ashore again at midday – it seems there must have been a delivery of goods in the supermarkets as everyone was buying the fresh salad items that Ally and Shawn also took advantage of, having not seen any the day before. They visited the Tourist Information Centre to book a trip for the following day and “mooched” for a while before heading back to Imagination for the rest of the day. After yesterday’s adventure, it was a welcome time of rest. They had arranged to go on a trip to snorkel with Whalesharks on Saturday morning ( 28th), along with crew from a couple of other yachts and several other people so it was an almost full boat. Everyone was in high spirits in anticipation of a close encounter with the huge creatures, but try as they might, the crew couldn’t find them and so after a fruitless trip along the coast, they returned to the wharf just after midday. It was so disappointing, but that’s nature for you and it is coming towards the end of the season for them.
Sunday 29th was a day of rest onboard, but on Monday they went ashore to meet Eric, their driver for the day. Eric is such a nice guy and they had a great day with him visiting various points of interest and view points although there was a great deal of low cloud/mist around which obliterated the views a lot of the time. Ally and Shawn though, were most interested in the Napoleonic sites. St Helena is the island Napoleon was exiled on, arriving on 17th October 1815, and he lived here until his death on 5th May 1821, and there are 3 sites open to visitors that are now all owned by France. He initially stayed in a one room building named The Briars Pavilion ( which has since been extended) while what was to become his permanent residence was modified to accommodate his entourage. The tour guide, Michel, was so knowledgeable and passionate about the history, he really made it special and told us that while many people don’t want to believe it, Napoleon was very happy living at the Briars due to the privacy and peace and quiet having been onboard a noisy ship for 2 months. Michel has written several books about Napoleon and his life on the island and the relationships he had with certain people there, so he really bought the story of his time there alive. The self guided tour at his permanent residence, Longwood House was interesting too, with many items of furniture still in place. It was a surreal feeling to be stood at the side of the bed and on the spot where he died and Ally felt quite moved by the experience. When they left here, they drove a few minutes to where Napoleon was buried on 9th May 1821, at his request. He had chosen it while out on one of his many horse rides and used to visit there to sit with the sounds, sights and smells of nature and it sure is a tranquil, very pretty spot. The grave remains marked and fenced, but his body was exhumed on 15th October 1840 and returned to France for a full burial with honours. There was time for a quick visit to see Jonathon, the oldest living land creature on earth at 194 years old – a giant Tortoise. He lives in the grounds of the Plantation House along with 3 other tortoises. The house was built as a country residence for the St Helena Governor, which is still the case. It only opens to the public for tours a couple of times a week and today was not one of those. There is usually a fee to visit Jonathon, but Eric went to school with the House Manageress, so gave her a call and they were able to visit for free as it was later in the day with no other visitors around. After that, it was back to the wharf after a full and fabulous day.
On the 31st, they were ashore just after 9am, to visit the Port Office, Immigration and Customs to clear out. They were back onboard with the anchor up at 11.05 and were on their way in settled conditions, to Ascension Island.
