Lennard + Emily + Kati + Arne

Hi all, this morning we left St. Helena to sail to Ascension Island, 700 nm to the NW. St. Helena was a very remote and therefore special place to visit. The people are very friendly, relaxed and talkative; it must be one of the last places on earrth without mobil telephones. The more than 500 year long history as a stopover place in the South Atlantic and Napoleon's imprisonment is very interesting but nowadays the 3.500 inhabitants are mainly busy adminstrating themselfs - almost all people are working directly or inddirectly for the (British) Government in a museum village atmosphere. They just started to build an airport which is scheduled to open in 2015 - that will bring big changes to the island. We have again crew on board: Annemarie, a retired swiss biology teacher, is joining us until Brazil. She came to St. Helena last monday with the "Pachamama" / ToptoTop expedition but as they are staying for longer and she wants to be back in Switzerland beginning of March, we could offer her a ride. Annemarie is an experienced sailor who we met first 4 1/2 years ago in Fiji when she was also crewing on the "Pachamama". It was a hard farewell this morning, when we all had to say good-bye to Sabine, Dario and their 4 children, again we wonderful time together. We are planning to stay only a few days at Ascension and from there will sail onn to Cabadelo in NE Brazil (between Recife and Natal).

A SE wind of 12-15 kn is pushing us with 5-6 kn forward and all is well on board. Cheers + AHOI! the Iemanja crew