We arrived in James Bay, St Helena, at 07:00 UTC on Saturday. It took three tries before we were safely anchored and could shut down the engines. The saying goes "third time lucky" - don't believe it, as it turned out very unlucky for us, which I will explain later in the blog entry.

Having been to St Helena so many times before, a person tends to build friendships with the island folk which, I must point out, are the most friendly people I have ever come across. A few days before arriving, I had emailed Barry Williams, the Harbour Master, and informed him that I would be arriving on a Saturday morning when all the clearing-in facilities would be closed, and asked his permission for us to come ashore on arrival. It had been approved and the ferry service, immigration office and customs office had been informed. Two other yachts which arrived over the weekend were informed that they had to stay aboard their vessels until Monday morning - we also had to go through the formalities in Monday.

So, Saturday morning I introduced Byron and Wihan to the town and some of the local folk after a good breakfast at Ann's Place, the local yachtie restaurant. Arrangements were made to borrow Mikes car on Sunday morning and do a tour of the island, which is only about 10 by 15 kilometres. Byron and Wihan climbed Jacob's Ladder, a 699 very steep stairway from the town to the village at the top of the hill, and then, after a couple of beers at a local pub with Mike (Mike owns the local independent radio station and newspaper), it was back to the boat on the ferry for an early night to catch up on sleep lost the previous night.

Sunday started with a good breakfast on the boat before calling the ferry and going ashore to get Mikes car and do the island tour, which took us until after 2pm, when we arrived back in Jamestown and had a couple of beers before heading back to the boat to do some repairs to our roller-furller. The boat work took a bit longer than anticipated and thus we cooked up our supper on board and again had an early night.

Monday morning had us visiting immigration, the harbour office and customs, where we checked both in and out at the same time after being fleeced of 63 UK Pounds in fees. The lads did some shopping for the boat after which it was back to the boat to prepare for our departure. A fellow delivery skipper was on one of the other boats that had arrived over the weekend and we arranged for an early supper on shore before going back to the boat and departing on our next leg of the delivery.

The departure was not to be! We attempted to raise the anchor but could not - we appeared well attached to the bottom of James Bay! So, as it was already dark, we turned in for another early night and left the problem for the morning.

Tuesday morning had us again spend a few hours trying to raise the anchor, to no avail. I then got hold of Craig Yon, a qualified diver, to have a look at what we had hooked. The report was we were wrapped around both an old fisherman's anchor from the 1800's and a more modern engine block from a truck. Further arrangements were made for Craig to organise a second diver to assist him in cutting away our anchor chain and then retrieving the anchor and remaining chain - we would loose about five metres of chain in the process. This was done and only at 16:30 were we able to retrieve our anchor and chain and head for the horizon and start on the long 1850 nautical mile next leg of our delivery, which will take us to the coast of northern Brazil. And you do not want to know the cost of two divers for the better part of the day! "Ah", I hear you say, "yes we do!". A jaw breaking "just bring us some biltong on your next trip". Thanks Craig and Keith, the biltong will be delivered at the beginning of November!

So, until the next blog entry, greetings are sent, as usual, from Wihan, Byron and myself, John.