We visited St Helena between 22/2/22 and 3/3/22 - here’s a few notes that may help those that come after us…

Arrival

• Call Port Control or St Helena Radio (see below) when you’re within 10 nm.

• Port Control/Harbour Master (Steve Kirk) works 8.30pm – 4.30pm. If you arrive within those hours, call him direct on Channel 14

• If you arrive outside of his hours, call St Helena Radio (runs 24/7 on VHF Channel 16) and they will take your details, invite you to take an empty buoy, and contact Steve when he’s back on duty.

Mooring Buoys

There are approx. 10 x Yellow (up to 20 tons) and 5 x Red (up to 60 tons)

• Yellow buoys cost $2 per day

• Red buoys cost $3 per day

Currently about 70% utilised, and numbers remaining constant – each week about 4 or 5 cruisers arrive, and 4 or 5 depart. Some of the buoys occupied permanently (long term cruisers, or local boats).

Each has a giant ring on top, and no pennants, so you need to attach your own.

Getting Ashore

You can either use your own dinghy, or use the ferry service – either way, only place to go ashore is at the wharf where the ferry comes and goes from.

Ferry Service costs 2 GBP per person for a round trip – they keep a tally, and you pay at the end. Ferries run on the hour every hour between 6am and 6pm – call them on VHF Channel 16 (hail “Ferry Service”) to go ashore. To get back to your boat, just turn up at the wharf around 5 minutes to the hour.

You can arrange an out of hours ferry ride for an extra fee with the ferry drivers. Johnny is the main guy (also runs whale shark tours for 20 GBP pp), and his helper is Colin

There are around 50 small boats moored in the bay between the yacht moorings and the wharf – many of these have long lines between them and the shore, or connecting boats in a string of moorings, so if you use your own dinghy, there are risks of getting your prop fouled. It’s definitely possible, but care is needed. Recommend taking the ferry a couple of times first of all to learn the route they take.

Landing on the wharf can be tricky in the swells, whether on the ferry or your dinghy. If using your dinghy, you’ll need to hold it off the wharf with a stern anchor or similar, as it will be pounded by the swell otherwise.

We ended up just using the ferry service, as it was too much hassle and stress with the dinghy. Most other cruisers concurred, although we saw a couple using their dinghies while we were here.

Checking In

Steve, the Harbour Master, will guide you through the process, but it’s very straightforward. [Edit: We visited towards the tail end of covid, so this Check-in section is no longer relevant - I’m leaving it here for posterity.]

There has not been a single case of Covid in the community in St Helena since the pandemic began, and with an elderly population, a high incidence of diabetes, and a very basic healthcare system, they understandably take it VERY seriously.

As we all know, St Helena is only conducting PCR tests once per week at the moment, on Thursday 1pm . If you miss your slot, you’ll need to wait until the following Thursday, no exceptions.

This is not popular among the tourist operators in town, who recognise that many yachts are choosing not to wait if they miss the Thursday slot. In our time here, at least 5 have come and gone without going ashore. All of which amounts to significant lost revenue at a time when every extra tourist counts. The official reason is that there’s only one person able to conduct the tests, and it was too disruptive to have her coming daily. Which is totally understandable.

But there seems to be consensus building among the locals that maybe twice per week might be more reasonable.

Anyway, it is what it is at the moment. The onus is on us, knowing what we know, to try and time our arrivals accordingly.

Once you’re ashore, you’ll go to the Harbour Masters office, where Immigration and Customs will come and see you, so it’s a one stop shop. 20 minutes later, and you’re all done.

Note that you need to pay immigration 40 GBP upon check-in. And a similar amount upon checkout to the harbour master, plus your mooring ball fees.

Garbage

There are bins right next to the ferry wharf. Note that from a BioSecurity perspective, foodstuffs that are not from the island are not permitted to go into the garbage here.

Fuel

Diesel (and I suspect petrol) can be delivered to your boat by barge – current price is 1.41 GBP per litre. Allegedly you can contact them on Channel 10 hailing “Solomons Wharf”, although there was no response when we tried it. But they’re easy to find as their office is 100m from the ferry wharf towards town on the left hand side – you can’t miss it – there’s a sign on the door. The guy who runs it is called Troy.

Internet

You’ve got two options - buy a SIM card, or pay for hourly Wifi in a couple of places. Either way, it’s prohibitively expensive.

There’s only one provider (“Sure”), so they have a monopoly, and it shows. If you buy a SIM card, expect to pay 30-40 GBP for 350 mb – you read that right! Also, your SIM coverage is pretty patchy around the island, and you don’t get coverage in the anchorage.

We chose instead just to buy Wifi for 6 GBP per hour – there’s a couple of places in Jamestown. Either Anne’s Place on the main street, or the Hotel further up on the left hand side. The speed is pretty good, and your downloads are unlimited while you’re connected . The voucher you buy can only be used by one device at a time. But you can log on and off as much as you like (so you could spread your hour over several days, or several devices).

It works quite well, but it does make it stressful, as you’re watching the clock, and trying to batch your online time.

Note that you cannot use the wifi voucher from one place in the other – they are geofenced. Also, you cannot use WhatsApp video or Skype Video via Wifi (an attempt by Sure, I believe, to force you to buy a SIM Card). I’m told that they have not yet blocked zoom so that’s an option if you want to videoconference.

Allegedly the wifi from Annes Place can be seen from some of the moorings, but not all – it certainly wasn’t visible from our mooring.

One downside of not buying a SIM is you can’t phone anyone – all the islanders have landlines and most have mobile phones and they use this rather than whatsapp, to communicate. So it can be tricky trying to organise stuff (tours, car rental, taxis, restaurant bookings etc) without a SIM. The locals are VERY friendly though, so we just asked a stranger to try making a call for us once, and that seemed to be perfectly acceptable!

There are also about 20 pay phones around the island, so we intended to use these if required, but never did need to in the end.

Car Hire

We had intended to just hire a car cheaply from a local, but before we tried this, we asked at the Tourist Office about car hire. They were pessimistic, stating that since Covid, most of the hire cars had sold off, or were in long term rentals, and they didn’t fancy our chances.

They did have a list of providers though, which they gave us.

Before we tried calling them, we got chatting to a random dude on the wharf who was admiring his brand new (7 miles on the clock) Harley Davidson. When we asked him if he knew anyone that would hire us a car, it turned out he was one of the guys on the list provided by Tourist Office.

And yes, of course he had a car available. And what’s more, it was only 12 GBP per day – just about the only thing on St H which was cheap. It was an elderly 4WD, but everything worked, it was clean, and we were very happy to have it as it enabled us to do some of the awesome hikes which just wouldn’t have been possible without it.

There are other options available, but we’re happy to recommend Brendan on 23737 or 62083

A fun part of driving – every driver waves to every other driver every time. And every pedestrian.

I know we’ve all been in places which are so remote, and where there are so few other vehicles, that you wave on the odd occasion when you see someone.

That’s not what I’m talking about here.

There’s actually quite a lot of traffic here. There’s more cars than people, seemingly. And it’s a small island, which is very mountainous and thus everyone needs a car for getting around.

So if you drive lets say 5 or 10 miles to go do a hike in another part of the island, you might pass 50 cars, and 15 pedestrians en route, 75% of which will be highly concentrated in town.

And you’re expected to wave EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. to every single one of them.

In fact, everyone waves to everyone and says hello 100% of the time, not just when driving. If you don’t, you’re a surly freak. It’s hilarious, and charming, and one of the best things about St Helena.

Groceries

As you’d expect, fresh fruit and veggies are in very short supply. Surprisingly, despite lots of farmable land, there are no crops grown here in commercial quantities for a number of reasons - drought in previous years, lots of fruit flies, cost effectiveness, and (I suspect) a little bit of island inefficiencies.

There are two main supermarkets in Jamestown – Star, and Thorpes, both quite close to each other. They have a good selection of dried goods, a moderate supply of vegetables, and absolutely no fruit whatsover.

Some of this is bad luck in our timing. The supply ship comes approximately once per month, and at that point there’s a frenzy in the shops. The next one is due on 11th March, one week after we leave. And the previous one was here 10 days before we got ashore. So if your timing is better than ours, you may have a different experience. But I’d suggest planning for nothing and anything you find is a bonus.

Having said all of that, lots of people do grow fruit and vegetables, and some of them have extra to sell (either to the cafes and restaurants, friends and family, or if you’re very luck, grotty yachties). You just need to ask around, and befriend people, neither of which is hard to do in this environment.

Talking of which, during Covid, yachties are pretty much the only tourists here. And we’re VERY welcome. Everyone will know you’re a yachty, and most will want to chat to you about it.

Stuff to Do

We ended up with 6 days ashore at St Helena (We arrived on a Tuesday, but due to Covid couldn’t get PCR tested until Thursday and ashore on Friday).

We packed a lot in, but could easily have spent another week or more here. And it’s one of those places that can suck you right in. There are three yachts on the moorings that have been here for 2 years plus – partly due to Covid, but also because it’s just a special place.

There’s great diving here, but since it’s not our thing, we didn’t partake. But the water is crystal clear, and there’s also a submerged wreck that you can easily snorkel in the anchorage – we ran out of time.

We took an island tour with Derek from Island Images (phone 24620 or 51213, email office@islandimages.co.sh) which was excellent, although a little pricey at 30 GBP pp. This is quite a common thing to do, and you’ll find a list of other tour operators offering similar handed out by the tourist Office.

They recommended Derek, and we weren’t disappointed. We spent around 7 hours with him, during which he showed us many of the highlights of the island. We also stopped at Longwood House (where Napoleon lived and died) and did the self guided audio tour there, which was excellent and well worth the 10 GBP entrance fee and 2 GBP for the audio.

The real value with Derek was his wealth of information that he was able to share in response to the incessant questions we asked. St Helena is a REALLY interesting place – you just need someone who is knowledgeable and can explain stuff well, and he excelled at that.

His wife also runs the Sandwich Bar in the markets, and they have a B&B and home restaurant – she’s an excellent chef, and a lovely lunch was provided on our tour.

You could definitely get away without doing the tour if you self drive as we subsequently did, but I think we got a lot more out of our time on the island (including the self driving) because we’d been so well orientated and informed from the tour.

We did a whale shark snorkel with Johnny, the Ferry driver for 20 GBP per person. There was only one on the day we went, but he was a biggy, and swam lazily in circles for the 40 minutes we were in the water with him, in crystal clear water. It’s the third time I’ve done that now, and I’d do it again. And again. And again. They’re magnificent beasts.

There was a Whale Shark Festival on while we were here, which was really just an excuse for a bunch of food stalls, a bar, and a band. What’s not to like there.

I get the sense the islanders try and make events out of all sorts of things – it was Pancake Tuesday yesterday, and although we didn’t attend, the main street was taken over with a sausage sizzle, kids running a race flipping pancakes, and a curry dish being served street side. It’s that kind of place.

By far the highlight of our activities though were the hikes we did. There are 21 so called “post box” hikes, named as such because at the destination of each hike is a box inside which is an ink stamp and a visitor book. The Tourist Information place sells a book for 12 GBP which lists the walks along with vital information about where exactly to find them, and how to self guide your way through them.

We asked our lovely guide Derek for his top 3 (he also does guided hikes) and we went with his recommendations - namely Blue Point, Diana’s Peak and Sugar Loaf. They were each spectacular, and will live long in the memory. I wish we had the time, as we’d gladly try and attempt all 21. Technically, you don’t need a car to do these – you can get taxis instead. But the cost would add up, plus you’d have the inconvenience of having to call (assuming you have a SIM card and coverage) and wait for them to come, or the stress of trying to meet a predetermined deadline to meet one you’ve previously booked for the end of the hike. Much better to hire a car and tick off a few at your own pace.

We also visited High Knoll Fort, which is pretty cool. And of course climbed Jacobs Ladder, which was not too bad at all really – It helped that we did it at sunrise before it got too hot.