5th May 2008

The MV Edinburgh arrived from Cape Town on Thursday 1st May, which was a public holiday on Tristan. However the weather conditions, strong winds and heavy seas prevented any boat from getting out to the vessel, so the Edinburgh anchored in the lee of the island at Tripot Bay. The bad weather continued, and it was not until Sunday morning at 9am that two boats manage to get out to collect the passengers.

Onboard were a team from the BBC who will be making a film scheduled to be shown in the UK as part of the Horizon series. The team is led by Dr Noe Zamel who carried out work on the asthma gene whilst visiting Tristan da Cunha in the 1990s. There was also an electrical engineer, Mr van Niekerk who is going to try and solve some of the electrical problems, that Tristan has been experiencing since the installing of the new modern stand-by generator, which seems to be not really compatible with the old electrical system, which was installed in 1968. He will also be making recommendations to upgrade the electrical system in the future.

The weather continues to be dreadful and the vessel is currently anchored at the lee of the island. The vessel was due to depart Tristan on the 6th May, although now everything depends on when the islanders will be able to unload the cargo, and this does not look possible for the next few days, the nine bags of GPO mails also remains onboard.

Sarah Glass