The Crew and Departure
05 May 2009
John
We are four persons on board - besides myself I have Luke Tod as my First Mate, Renier Grobbelaar from Pretoria and Yonatan Mendoza from Israel as crew. Both Renier and "Yoni" have recently undertaken sailing courses and thus have a bit of knowledge in sailing.
Yesterday (Monday 4 May) we threw off our lines at 12:30 and motored out of Cape Town harbour. We were immediately surrounded by a dense bank of fog with not a breath of wind as we rounded Moullie Point and headed south to Cape Point. It is an eerie feeling being in fog and only being able to see about 20 metres! However, we were land side of the busy shipping lanes and as we slowly motored towards Cape Point the fog slowly lifted and we were able to see the land.
Just after dark we rounded Cape Point and continued to motor on a set route towards Cape Agulhas, the most southerly point of Africa. The sea has been relatively flat and, as I type this, still no wind.
It is 10:12 South African Standard Time (08:12 UTC/GMT) and the alarm has just gone off on the chart plotter to indicate we have reached the Cape Agulhas waypoint and Renier, who is on watch, has now adjusted our course towards the next waypoint, off Mossel Bay. So, we have just started making some north in our course.
The wind predictions for the next few days looks pretty dismal and what little wind is predicted, fortunately, will be from the west. My intention is to continue to Port Elizabeth where we will stop and wait for another Moorings catamaran to catch up to us. The stop will give us the opportunity to fill up our water tanks and top up our diesel whilst also servicing the two Yanmar 54HP engines. From Port Elizabeth we will head east and then curve up the east side of Madagascar, passing within sight of Mauritius.
Well, there you have some information from aboard Moorings A1095. Regards from Luke, Yoni, Renier and myself, John.