TEAM SA LOGBOOK - 11th May - Fernando Island

Monday, 11th May 2009 - Felix Kleinwort

Fernando Island

Our course is 283 ̊
Fernando is not far away, we can see it already
our Lat is 3 ̊50,7213
our Long is 32 ̊06,1818
we have no sails set, are running on engine
and it's 33 ̊C

Today we arrived in Fernando, which is a beautiful island. It took a while until we slowly motored into one of the many small bays of Fernando, where we anchored at around 15:00h. The island by itself appeared beautiful on the first sight already, when the sun was shining over the small hills of this paradise everybody's heart was beating faster, and you could feel the excitement in the air. Mr. Allman couldn't give us shore leave to day, because we first had to send Kent (1st mate) to speak to the person in charge of the island. Even though we still had class today, they were pretty relaxed and we were looking forward to the swim call at 5:30pm.

John attached lines to the course yacht, from which we swung into the water. Most of us also jumped from the bowsprit which was a great feeling, and Marx even tried to dive from there. After our swim call we had chicken for dinner, with jelly for dessert, that was delicious. After that we had a meeting in the mess, during which we were told that we will not go ashore tomorrow, because we have visited countries where we could have caught illnesses that they don't want on the island. So we will set sails again instead of visiting Fernando island.

We were all very disappointed. Mr. Allman also told us that we will have a home stay in Natal, that means we will stay two nights with local families. After that we saw a picture presentation from Mr. Hurley and Rob about the sail trip since Brazil. Then we were watching a sailing movie in the mess, which Axel used to watch when he was on the boat as a student and the movie reminds him of the time when he was still on the ship.

I liked today, even though we cannot go to Fernando, but I liked the swim call.