In a few hours I will finally be travelling to Tristan da Cunha. The ship has suffered one delay after another but Cape Town is a big and beautiful city, and I cannot say I haven’t been enjoying myself during the wait. I am sailing on the fishing vessel MV Edinburgh. I took S. A. Agulhas II, a research vessel, four years ago, and there was Internet on board, although sporadic. I was lucky to have it at all. The Edinburgh might be a different story. I have not asked anyone if there will be Internet on board. I do want to be surprised, as with the cabin situation. Will I have my own cabin? (I doubt it.) Will there be dorms with bunks? Will cabins have their own bathrooms and showers, or will the passengers have to share a common facility? I do not want to know anything before I board.

Once I am on Tristan, however, I will be back on-line. Or so I hope. My host family has already called me four times here at Tristan House. They are anxious to see me as I am to see them. Among the developments since 2013 is that WiFi is now available in private homes. I believe it only used to be available in the island’s coffee-less Internet café before, from Monday to Friday only. Yet the WiFi connection is s-l-o-w. I wonder if dial-up is still as slow as it was. I am not encouraged by what the island Administrator, Sean Burns, said in the February, 2017 edition of the Tristan da Cunha Newsletter:

“We struggle to download the simplest of things and services like Skype/Facetime are impossible…In the meantime, I am told we now officially have the slowest internet connection in the world.”

So, my travelogues will probably once again be without photos. I could not upload photos four years ago so my blog posts will be text only. I will blog whenever I can yet I feel most of my writing will be in the form of postcards. And a postcard always has a photo accompaniment.

Travel with me on the Edinburgh at this link.

You can see the Edinburgh’s last voyage (from Tristan to Cape Town in July) and track its position in the south Atlantic by satellite. If there’s Internet on board, I will see how close I am to Tristan day by day.

My wait is over. I travel to Tristan today.