Knysna to Cape Town

Well we have reached our last port in the Republic of South Africa and evidently we saved the best till the last.

We left Knysna heads with an easy exit through very dangerous waters and headed for Cape Agulhas, the most southern part of the continent of Africa with expectations of at least one good storm either there or Cape of Good Hope which is further north. Cape Agulhas is the cross-over for the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and has an inordinate amount of ship wrecks and is actually called the Cape of Storms. We rounded in a 15 knot SE'ly wind and relatively flat seas. So flat that there was a fishing boat at anchor 6 miles off the coast. These South Africans are crazy but very good sailors.
There is NO safe anchorage if the winds come up but we had a dream run as usual until we rounded Cape of Good Hope and the fog settled in. Visibility reduced to around 50m at best and ships everywhere on the AIS and radar so being discreet we modified our arrival port to Hout Bay just south (10minutes) of Cape Town and this is a grand little port. We picked up the last berth in the marina and now boats will be turned away as there is no safe anchorage here with winds every few days exceeding 30 knots and last week, 60 knots. Last year the top gale went to 93 knots. Fingers crossed......

We took a guided bus trip to Cape Town to report into the authorities and had a fantastic tour of Cape Town and Table Mountain and we will hire a car and do the wineries this week as well as the National Park of Cape Point. Beautiful is the only description.

Some maintenance to CH and we will be ready to sail early February to St Helena, South America and the Caribbean.

Gill's birthday on the 27th so we have a party to look forward to and a teenager aboard. Gill is off mountain climbing with Marnix of "INO" in a few days so is becoming very adept at all sorts of daring do.

Be good........