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