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
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