Monday October 31st, Cape Town part 2

While my crew mates took off for a three day tour north and east of here. I took the opportunity to get some quiet time, and slow down the cash flow. It was a peaceful change. I did get out to one of the mega malls that seem to infest the outskirts of too many large cities; harbingers of the extinction of a city's individuality. The exterior is somewhere between Disney and any Florida Mall. The interior is the depressingly familiar mashup that leaves you thinking you must have walked onto the set of The Truman Show.

(This is a bit of a rewrite of a paragraph. In the prior blog) Being a tourist city there is the usual open topped, hop on / hop off, double decker, big red London Bus. It is an easy, comfortable and at $15 (£12) a reasonable way to get the lay of the land. The long route circumnavigates Table Mountain leaving the city via District Six, (in the 1970's the coloured population was forcibly removed and area was razed), passing the remnants of Cecil Rhodes' estate, past the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, along the edge of the Constantia vineyards, past the black township of Imizamo Yethu, euphemistically dubbed an Informal Settlement by officialdom (33,000 people stuffed into 140 acres without water and sewers). The furthest point out is Hout Bay. Looking across the bay's white sand beach to the surrounding hills that run to Chapman's Peak it looks lightly developed and pretty as a picture. You would never guess that Cape Town lay just a dozen miles away over Constantia Nek. The run back to Cape Town along the narrow road that clings uneasily to the high cliffs that edge the coast and into the suburbs, a term that creates entirely the wrong impression. Llandudno is effectively a private enclave, Camps Bay is very coastal California, Clifton, Bantry Bay and Green Point lead the way into the downtown.

The more time we spend here, the more people we meet and the more interesting Cape Town becomes. 

Nora's dad has a buddy from his college days in North Carolina who has a strong reputation as a painter. He keeps a studio in the Woodstock district. That night we all found ourselves in a happening restaurant on Kloof street; a fancy dinner for the price of lunch in the US. The wine was not a steal, but was excellent. A welcome change from some of our recent viniculture ventures.

A friend of mine married a coloured woman from Cape Town which resulted in a two excellent lunches. One with his mother in law and very striking sister in law at the resolutely white Chapman's Hotel overlooking Hout Bay. The looks were worth the price of lunch. The following day we went to his mother in law's home in The Flats part of Cape Town. This is where the apartheid government relocated the non white population of Cape Town's District Six prior to its destruction. Her stories were heartbreaking, appalling and calmly told without resentment. The story of post apartheid South Africa, the reconciliation without a bloodbath,  continues to test ones credulity. If written as fiction, it would be dismissed as hopelessly naïve. Just thinking about it now leaves me unable to continue writing.

 

Saturday October 22nd, Cape Town

I contented myself hanging around the club for a couple of days, though some of our compatriots escaped the compound. Once again we find ourselves inside a secured port, and a 45 minute walk from the centre of town and the more touristy waterfront. Brazilian visa formalities have the Americans pulling their hair out. Brazil seems to have adopted a punitive stance in response to perceived difficulties for Brazilians getting into the US; it can't be that hard, the US is crawling with them. The remains of my own hair is threatened by email difficulties and by Google's evident assumption that I am some sort of full time remote diagnostic tech' for their cell phone service.

Whatever.

The club is very lively and people we've met are friendly. Wednesday night racing attracts a good crowd, this weekend is an insurance industry regatta (lots of high heels, team hats and velvet rope barriers), December brings the start to their Cape to Rio race, which looks like a blast.

I did take the long walk into town and ended up on the Victoria & Alfred (yes, Alfred) waterfront, an older commercial dockland nicely redone as a tourist attraction. It's a fun place to hang out for a couple of hours with a good range of attractive bars, restaurants, shops, street performers and the like. In one corner is V&A yacht marina filled with oligarch class super yachts and imported racing yachts, with their own stacks of monogrammed shipping containers alongside. Tough life.

We did mount an assault on Table Mountain. An Uber delivered us to the cable car station whence we walked a couple of kilometers to the start of the trail. Table Mountain stands at 3560ft, the trail started at around 1200. I bailed out in the heat at 1600 feet. Zeke & Nora made it to the top. It's a steep trail, and they were pretty tired, but well done them.

The crews took off into the hinterlands north and east of Cape Town for a couple days. They returned laden down with booze, telling tall tales of vineyards and ostrich riding. I had a couple of calm days reading, looking around the city and riding the open topped tour bus out to Hout Bay. That was a fine way to get the lay of the land; this whole area is spectacularly scenic; the coast south of the city, Bantry Bay, Llandudno and Camps Bay are very swish.

The photographs include some from others in the fleet from earlier in the trip. There is a time lapse video clip of the cloud rolling of table mountain, when this happens the wind howls through Cape Town and across the marina making a hell of a racket.

More amazing tales in part 2.

Link to today's pic's : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o6r8bhntppg3udc/AADWPVBwBllvxw039guHZuLpa?dl=0
(Includes some recently received pictures from crew mates)

Link to all photos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777m1sl5uebzqey/AABaKPwzXV0e_WlXZC0LDhDja?dl=0

Monday October 17th, To Kapstaad

Kapstaad being the Afrikaans name for Cape Town.

We left our slip an hour before the others to pick up a mooring in the bay off the beach and yacht club. Just behind our slip is where the shark cage boat ties up which makes for a tight spot and leaving while they were away gave us more room to manoeuvre. It was a brilliantly clear and sunny and an hour's waiting was a peaceful gift. We were entertained by a fleet of kids in sailing school going through their drills, sailing circles round a pair of bouys, practising crowded starts, jostling for position as they all rounded a mark together. They were pretty slick.

Our fleet mates emerged from the harbour, we sailed off our mooring and joined them to round Cape St. Blaise at the western end of the bay. The beach gave way to cave pocked, low (100ft or so)  sandstone cliffs topped with houses overlooking the open ocean. Today it  would make for a fine walk in the sunshine and light breezes. I can only imagine what it is like in a south easterly gale, the big rollers grinding themselves to smoke and being carried away, up and over the cliffs.

--------------------

Our forecasted tailwind was late coming and at 4:00am on Tuesday we were motoring. A pretty morning with a full moon overhead and the faintest promise of sunrise in the south eastern sky; it takes some getting used to having the sun rise and swing northward to midday. More wind would be nice, though I should be careful about what I wish for in these parts!

By 5:00am the wind was up to 10 knots aft. Off with engine, what a relief, deploy the hydrogenerater, push out the main, rig the preventer, snug down the mainsheet to keep things quiet and have a good look around. The fishermen are clear of us, and I could see our two compatriots' masthead lights winking in and out on the horizon across the moonlit sea. We are creeping along at 5 knots in the breeze. I set my alarm for ten minutes to doze.

By 7:00 Nora and Zeke were up, Zeke roused by our futzing with the port engine trying to convince ourselves that the prop was folded. It may have been, but more importantly, it was now time to choose a spinnaker. We were expecting fair winds to 30 knots, but at 10 knots the winds were now lighter than we expected. The big spinnaker can stay up in 18 knot winds, the small one can take 10 knots more. We were trailing the other boats who were still motorsailing so the bigger spinnaker was tempting. We set about rigging the lines, guys and halyards, the winds rose a couple of knots. We unzipped the large spinnaker's bag, we got a couple of knots more. We zipped the bag closed, and went for the smaller spinnaker. The wind held. Up she went, but wouldn't set cleanly in the main sail's wind shadow. Down came the main. We received a revised forecast showing our winds holding under 20 knots for the day. On went the engine and we swapped spinnakers, the wind dropped a knot, the boat speed increased a couple of knots. We shut off the engine, got the prop folded and were sorted. Time for tea.

At 13:28 we rounded Cape Agulhas, Africa's most southern point and meeting point of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. We marked the occasion with a toast of Mr. Garsons' whisky. Zeke adjusted our course northward, heading for home.

The rest of the day remained settled though overcast and grey. In the late afternoon the wind built to 17 knots. We doused the spinnaker and prepared supper. The western sky cleared for sunset. It is very quiet as we creep along at 5 knots.

At 3:00 am I came back on watch to 20 knot winds, a brightly moonlit sky and, six miles north west of us, the lighthouse on the Cape of Good Hope. It was something to see. It stands 285 feet above the sea and sweeps crystal bright across the moonlit seas. A call from Tahawus, abreast of the Cape, warned us of 40 knot winds; he was running at 6 knots under bare poles. With the wind dead behind us maybe that the cape's headlands are funneling the winds.

By 4:00 the cape was four miles off our starboard beam with the winds risen to 30 knots. The moon was partially obscured behind thin clouds but the sea around the cape's headland glittered brightly in a pool of moonlight. The headland itself clearly visible, a tall black silhouette against the faint loom of the lights around False Bay. This really is something, a very memorable place to be and a fantastical night. As we draw away we can see our next light at Slangkoppunt.

By six the sun was up and drove off the spell. I'll be happier when it drives off the clammy damp.

By lunchtime, in the dead calm of a hot day, we were all tied up in Cape Town at the Royal Cape Yacht Club, and were met at the slip by a club member who guided us through the formalities and on to lunch, courtesy of the BPO. The RCYC is the biggest club so far and is a hive of activity, and not just in the bar and restaurant. The boat yard, chandlery (we have been asked what use we have on a boat for chandeliers), committee rooms and large media room (packed with enough gear to warm a retired video and sound engineer's heart) are all busy and they run an aggressive outreach to the city's youth to get them into sailing. It is quite a place, nice showers too. Each stall has its own private changing room though first place in my heart for showers remains at Algoa Bay Yacht Club.

Link to today's pic's :
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s4cyi38biou1irt/AABoTP5k21fE3LLmwVXI5rqma?dl=0
Most of these pictures have captions that you may be able to see.

Link to all photos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777m1sl5uebzqey/AABaKPwzXV0e_WlXZC0LDhDja?dl=0

Friday, October 14th, To Mossel Bay

Leaving Port Elizabeth was easy enough, and it was good to be moving again. After a calm exit, we rounded Cape Recife and the wind picked up to around 22 knots, and pretty much from dead ahead so we found ourselves doing what we all agreed we wouldn't do by sailing with the Agulhas current and against the wind. It was pretty lively with a building cross seas and the cat's two hulls bickering about which way to go. The cat is pretty light for a boat of this size, somewhere around 17,000lbs displacement. With its shallow draft it is easily pushed around. It wasn't very comfortable, though still a far cry from leaving Durban. Eight knots close hauled (sailing as much into the wind as could) was pretty good.

(The short video clip in the photos folder is of our companion Maggie, a 47ft Bob Perry design. It is not often we cross tracks away from port. I had to cut it short for a course change.)

That continued for the rest of the daylight. As forecast, the wind lightened and came around behind us and then built to 30 knots and gusty. I was tucked in by that time, sometimes calm and peaceful, sometimes being tossed around. .

At daylight we swung in closer to the coast. This is pretty country. The land is green and pastoral, dotted with small farms and villages and backed by higher hills rising to I guess two or three thousand feet.

The town of Mossel Bay is on a much smaller scale than Durban and Port Elizabeth, though we are again on port authority property, so inside a security guarded gate and on the wrong side of the tracks. Not that that matters much here, the town and yacht club are steps away.

In 1488 the Portuguese  Bartolomeu Dias landed here and so became the first european to make it round the southern African capes into the Indian Ocean. The irony was that he didn't know he had done it. He had sailed away from the Africa's western coast and headed south to avoid the coast in contrary winds. When he headed back to the coast he essentially missed it. He then sailed north and found himself on Africa's south eastern coast. There is a really fine museum here based on that accomplishment which houses a replica of his ship, a caravel with two lateen sails, that was built in Portugal and sailed here in 1986. The bay is reasonably well sheltered and offers an easy beach landing. Dias found a good fresh water spring that ensured subsequent voyagers would also stop here thus forming the basis for a permanent settlement. The spring still runs clear and is on the museum grounds.

The town itself is very Dutch Afrikaans, English is not the first language for the locals. The town is clean and tidy with a funky tourist vibe. Regular businesses vie  for your eyeballs with dive shops, shark cage dive trips, surfing shacks (one with a crazed proprietor who seems to have been long denied any human contact),  fishing gear and charter shops, dozens of coffee shops and restaurants, antiques businesses and tourist tat establishments. "Tat" is probably unkind since most of their wares are very good. One chap makes and sells bullwhips and was happy to bring the ten footers into the street to demonstrate the ear splitting crack they produce. I am very tempted, but then again, the boys are now grown. The Peacock in the pictures is one of a dozen that wander freely around one funky coffee establishment that hews to the junky end of the spectrum.

It looks like will be on our way tomorrow, Monday. The winds look favourable until the end of the week and this leg will be just a couple of days. It will be an event to round Cape Agulhas, our southernmost point though unlike The Cape of Good Hope, it is not much to look it.  For our fleet it marks the final turn for home in their two year circumnavigation.

And, an update from Petro, one of my new best friends in Durban. Her son has just released his first record and video. Sounds very good to me, but then again I don't understand a word of Afrikaans. Take a look and write something nice! He is the chap with the hat.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=xlpwBXZemKE

Link to today's pic's:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3ts2vh41odytxko/AAAkoM2sqlKriG02RFQM3laHa?dl=0

Link to all photos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777m1sl5uebzqey/AABaKPwzXV0e_WlXZC0LDhDja?dl=0

Thursday October 13, It's about bloody time!!

15 knots wind, bright and sunny. This hardly sucks at all.

Thursday, October 13, Outta Here

Weather Wallah divines that the wind dragons will be napping for the next couple of days, so we're off to Mossel Bay, just under two hundred miles, less than a day and half.

It's an altogether smaller place than Port Elizabeth and Durban, so we hoping for a more congenial billet. I'm told there is public transport, (a train, well what did you expect?) to Knysna, which I'm told is lovely so perhaps I'll sneak in a day trip.

For those interested, here is our go-to wind forecasting page https://www.windytv.com/?-30.758,22.669,5

Wednesday, October 12th, Trains, not boats. (Sorry, J.E.)

The temptation to go rooting around old steam engine graveyards proved to be too much, particularly given that there was precious little else going on on the boat. Google earth showed the depot was an easy walk, and soon I found myself trying to blag my way past the guard at the gate. He was having none of it and marched me off to the office to plead my case. After a few minutes there, dropping the few facts I had about the place, and flagrantly fibbing about growing up right next to the Beyer Peacock locomotive works in Gorton and I was in and free to roam around at will.

I got a handful of photos but was wondering where the reputed locos were, the online sources had shown a string of them left outside to rot. There were some fairly large engine sheds, not too old, locked up tight and giving nothing away through their grimy windows. A TransNet, (the railway authority), pickup truck showed up and parked by the sheds and I thought I was done. I asked driver what he knew about the sheds and things rapidly took a turn for the better. Not only was he a TransNet employee, but he started out as a fireman on this line's steam locos and is the son of a former railway man. He knew exactly what was in the sheds and got on the phone demanding to know where laddo-with-the-key was.

Said laddo duly arrived, I was ushered into an Aladdin's cave and given free run of the place. Plenty of passenger rolling stock in rather nice condition, a handful of diesel electric locos, two 2-8-2 Henschel NG15 Mikado steam locos and a really lovely NG G16 2-6-2+2-6-2 Bayer Peacock Garratt. The locos' boilers are certified and the running gear is being worked on. All the serious work is done by a single steam fitter, now in his sixties. They are unable to find younger engineers and apprentices to train to take over from him.

My benefactor was a treasure trove of information and likely knows the name, number, location and condition of every steam loco in South Africa. I found out the condition of the 177 miles of track all the way to Avontuur (all there and pretty good bar the lack of maintenance and a couple of washouts). I heard the story of the engineer who went 100 miles up the line to fix a loco's brakes only to find the engine was not in steam and arranged to return when it was.  He returned the following day to find it missing, taken to work further up the line. He chased it down to find it on its side down a ravine. I learned that their rolling stock is being poached by other lines; a low loader shows up with some paperwork and a little bit more line's life ebbs away. It was a wonderful couple of hours rummaging through the place and piles of memorabilia sharing tea and stories. They have great shop facilities, plenty of motive power and rolling stock, a unique line and yet its future looks grim. There is talk by an upcountry fruit grower about reverting to rail haulage; the roads have become so rough that too much of the produce is lost to bruising. There is not enough passenger demand. The tourist runs didn't generate enough revenue. I have to wonder what one would find here in five years and fear it will be a bike path, or a trail of weeds.

Link to today's photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sitdt5lm35h7tg/AABQqEXSz0lJPUGhd_lqZJfJa?dl=0

Link to all photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777m1sl5uebzqey/AABaKPwzXV0e_WlXZC0LDhDja?dl=0

Friday, October 7th, Marooned in Port Elizabeth

Port Elizabeth may be a very nice place, but you wouldn't know it from our spot on the overripe fish pier. The Algoa Bay Yacht Club is inside the gates of the docks of Port Elizabeth and we are separated from what we are assured is a lovely city on South Africa's Sun Coast by a thicket of railway and multi-lane highways. The port itself is not on the scale of Durban, but we are surrounded by good collection of freighters and other industrial scale shipping.

The yacht club is an odd place. We arrived Wednesday night. It is now Monday, and though we make full use of their facilities, I am sure the club is completely unaware of our presence. The office has been closed every time we have been there. No one has approached us for dues or the like despite the fact that the three of us are the largest boats in the place and impossible to miss. It stands in stark contrast to the Point Yacht Club in Durban where we couldn't escape anything and they positively went out of their way to welcome us in. That said, they do have the most fabulous hot showers where you could drown and scald yourself in an unending deluge. I could do an entire blog post on the dissolute hedonism of it. The restaurant is not bad either.

A rather tired looking ketch motorsailor tied up the day after we arrived, the Howard Davis, a 54 ton, 66ft ketch rigged motor sailor with a generously glazed deck saloon that is destined to find an afterlife as a greenhouse. Built in the 60's as a sales training vessel it continues in that role now that it is in private ownership. It is crewed by ten or so students enaged in a five month RYA course that takes them from competent crew to Ocean Yachtmaster. Their skipper is one Dave (Wavy) Immelman, a colourful character who has, brace yourself, rowed across the Atlantic solo in a race for two man crew, raced in the: Governor's Cup (Cape Town to St Helena), Cape Town to Rio, the Fastnet, the Americas cup, the Volvo round the world race among others. He likes his rough weather and is making sure his crew is comfortable in 50 knot winds, something I could do with. We talked a lot about the weather and seas around the south coast. He was gone the following day while we still cower on the fishing pier.

I did of course escape the confines of the port and struck out for the beaches and away from the town centre. One does not, however, just walk out of the portal of the port of Port Elizabeth, oh no, one is escorted through a galvanised turnstile, that wouldn't look out of place in a 14th century castle, by a guard with a key and strictly one at a time.  A stiff walk soon offered up a breezy and comfortable tea room. Suitably fortified, I continued on to King's Beach, a spectacular stretch of quiet sand that must be a great place to learn to surf on a calm day and punishing place when the on shore gales get up. It is backed by an attractive run of restaurants, promenade (boardwalk), and the like. It is very well kept with clipped and trimmed landscaping.

On the way back I hopped a fence to take a closer look at an abandoned narrow gauge railway yard. A little digging revealed that this was the coastal end of the 177 mile long Avontuur two foot gauge railway built at the turn of the 20th century to serve the Langkloof fruit growing region. Road haulage killed it off though it struggled on as a tourist steam train, using a Beyer Peacock Garrett locomotive, until 2011. It would be a real shame to lose this one, being the longest two foot gauge line in the world that has the highest narrow gauge bridge, at 252ft, in the world where it crosses the Van Stadens river.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avontuur_Railway

Link to today's photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xzcy17z6m5hg2lr/AAAVT1YzBnaWFPuZchJIfKVMa?dl=0

Link to all photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777m1sl5uebzqey/AABaKPwzXV0e_WlXZC0LDhDja?dl=0

Wednesday October 5th, Durban to East London

We decided to leave Durban on Monday at sundown, 6:00pm. We were the last of our little fleet of three to pull out and by time we were in the exit channel proper it was dark. We passed the seaward side breakwater and could only see fierce looking seas breaking over it. We knew we were in for rough night when we left the exit channel and found ourselves in very large seas. It wasn't long before we were all feeling grim and a 30 second task of looking for a socket wrench had me confined to my bunk and the head. Zeke pulled an epic watch covering for myself and Nora while feeling the effects himself. He shouldn't have done it for me, but I was very grateful that he did.

Tuesday morning things improved, but it took us most of the day to feel almost recovered. The radio chatter told us that the Durban authorities had closed the port to freight traffic due to 21ft breaking seas at the harbor entrance. I think I'm glad I couldn't see it.

Wednesday made up for it with a fantastic day's sailing. Thirty knots knots of wind and large orderly seas both dead behind us and making around 13 knots the on a reefed jib. We blew by East London in brilliant sunshine and set our course for Port Elizabeth. The forecast showed the wind would come around from a northerly to an in-our-faces 30 knot southerly just as we arrived, we just squeaked in ahead of the change and are tied up on a concrete wall fishing pier. One of our fleet bailed and put into East London, the other came in a couple of hours behind us and had a bit of a slog getting in.

Saturday October 1st, Still hanging around.

ByThe wind continues to blow the wrong way, that is from the south rather than from the north. This link
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=28.87,-38.03,1238/loc=29.592,-32.618
Should show the current wind conditions. Our weather wallah gets our hopes up with "it looks promising in a couple days" only to retract as weather systems collapse and reform. Our single hander shoved off a couple days ago  for Cape Verde, only to duck into East London;  my wind map showed he would have been taking it on the nose. The wind dragons are restless.

We continue to fix things to fill the time. Spinnaker snuffers, obdurate life line fittings, reefing rigging, minor deck leaks, deck hatch seals, hatch dogs, the wind generator, which continues to defy all logical behaviour, the starboard diesel engine. That became reluctant to start and made a right racket while running. Zeke brought in a diesel dude who removed a bucketful of parts to his lair. He brought them back today, pronouncing them good. He'll be back tomorrow to continue his ministrations. We are still not sure what's up with it. Zeke's blog for this trip in 2014 is a catalogue of diesel engine woes; rebuilds, replacements, supposedly matched engines that patently were not. It must be galling in the extreme. We hired a diver to remove the accumulated crud from the props; a local lad who didn't need no steeeenking scuba tanks, nor snorkel for that matter. I'm surprised the harbour water doesn't dissolve him.

Sunday,

The wind is still a resolute southerly, often up to 30 odd knots (35mph). The halyard orchestra is fine voice between the mast slapping tattoo and the wailing in the shrouds. It could be contest between the salvation army's tambourines and a flight of keening banshees.  The wind generator has gone nuclear and we aren't going anywhere near it.

Monday

Diesel dude came and did his thing. Weather Wallah said tonight would be propitious, so we're outta here at 5:00 which leaves us an hour of daylight to clear the harbour and get settled. The winds won't be perfect, but they will be light. We are headed for East London about two days down, but may continue to Port Elizabeth depending on the conditions. One other boat left this morning, not one of ours, and came right back in when they saw the state of the seas. They will leaving with us.

Durban has been fun, but it will be good to get going. We've become friends with many of the people in the yacht club. The always entertaining and helpful Petro van der Spuy who just chucked in a comfortable corporate gig to start her own corporate convention and entertaining business, Indaba Global. If you were ever to meet her you would immediately know that she is going to knock it out of the park,  (knock it for six in cricketing terms). Michelle & Monica who work at the club and who have been unfailingly helpful and knew exactly where to find whatever we have needed. Busi, Lulu  Nichole and Zee, four charmers in the restaurant who have kept me supplied with pots of tea, lashings of toast and don't let me get away with a thing. And Ed, who welcomed us with a bucket of beer, coached us through the arrival formalities and as I write, is making sure that we leave!