NOT AS OBSERVANT AS I FIRST THOUGHT

St. Helena Independent, 28^th January 2011

OK, we don’t normally include items from the local press but this, from Vince Thompson’s “A Funny Thing Happened” column, warranted an exception.

I was checking the progress of the ARC Round the World yacht race after they left St. Helena. The leading yacht was just about to leave the South Atlantic.

The report from the yacht, sent to a website, included one observation that surprised me at first. Crew member Dee Caffari said, ‘I think we are going to start a new club, the St. Helena club, as we all float around going nowhere for awhile’.

My first reaction was to think this person was only here for 3 days at most, during that short time they must really have got to know how things are in this Island at the moment. Then I realised the report was talking about the weather. The yacht was being slowed down by the light winds in the South Atlantic high pressure belt, otherwise known as the St. Helena High.