March 23 - Ascension/Cruising the South Atlantic Ocean

We arrived in Ascension Island today under beautiful blue skies.  Unfortunately they have a very short dock here and waves were funneling in through a narrow opening in the harbor…making for large waves near the shore.  The waves were washing over the dock and the bobbing of the tenders (from top of the wave to the trough) was something like a couple of meters...so there was no going ashore.   Too bad but it didn’t sound like there was much we would be able to do there anyway.  Guess the visit was more for bragging rights.  Who do you know who has been to Ascension Island?

This British Territory island is very remote and just 700 miles south of the equator.  It is the home of a Royal Air Force station, and European Space Agency rocket tracking station, a signals intelligence facility, a GPS ground antenna, a NASA telescope and other top secret and restricted facilities.  Consequently much of the island is off limits to tourists anyway.  In fact, we had been told that we would be restricted to the capital town of Georgetown.  In addition, while the beaches looked lovely and are close to Georgetown, they were also off limits as they are subject to strong waves, riptides, and undertows. 

So we all took pictures and the Captain had the crew raise anchor and we are off for an extra day of cruising on our way to Senegal.  

The Cruise Director issued an amended activities list to help fill in the day.  We attended a “fireside chat” by Rob Caskie, the South African teller of stories about the Zulus and the Anglo-Boer Wars and all things South Africa.  He is a delight to listen to.  However, we spent most of the day working on photos and our blog.

The major highlight of the day was the Liar’s Club in the evening.  Four verrry obscure words were chosen and the panel of three each gave a different definition of the word, accompanied by hysterical stories and jokes to support their definition.  Then the audience voted on which panelist they thought had the correct definition.  Generally the audience was wrong.