27/Nov/2007, St Helena
Hi All,
We arrived yesterday, Sunday the 25th November. Our approach to the Island was really exciting when Shaheda first spotted the Island when we were some 50 nautical miles out. At first it was just a dark spot on the hazy horizon but as the hours past by we could see this magnificent Island in it's full splendor. We dropped the sails some 10 nautical miles out and motored into the anchorage of James Bay.
Anchoring here is not an easy affair as this is a volcanic Island with the drop off into the sea being as steep as the cliffs that encompasses this Island. The sea bed is volcanic rock and makes it difficult for the anchor to bite. We eventually got the anchor to grip after getting some advice from the ferryman. We were unable to clear in with immigration as the offices were closed so decided to spend the evening on board. There is a yacht anchored next to us named Neptune, on board is the owner Thor a Finnish guy and his wife Mary who comes from Thailand. We invited them on board and shared some beer and our supper with them. We made some small talk and learnt that Thor was a farmer who retired in 1986, knew nothing about sailing but bought a yacht and decided to sail around the world. Well some 20 years later he is a regular Viking having made a number of circumnavigations already. His wife Mary does not like sailing but is keen to see the world so she grins and bears it. They are heading for Brazil, Uruguay and I don't think Thor has played open cards with Mary but he seems hell bent on going round Cape Horn.
It was also "Shower Day" last night. We took full advantage of being near fresh water and made the most of our shower opportunity. Shaheda even washed her hair therfore saving herself 10-Pounds Sterling at a local salon and still had a good hair day.
We went to check in at Immigration first thing in the morning. To get from our boat to the shore we call the ferry on the radio who does a round trip for 1-Pound 20 pence per person. The most amazing thing happened when I set foot on the jetty. The whole world moved as if I was on a ship. I could not control the feeling and felt landsick for at least half the day as my system adjusted to the sensation. Terry had the same sensation. He and I felt queasy for most of the morning. Shaheda on the other hand who had really been struggling with the seasickness showed no signs of landsickness and proceeded to walk around the Island without difficulty whilst I had to hold on to avoid toppling over or worse still depositing the previous nights supper on the pavement.
We went to Anne's place for breakfast after checking in with Immigration, a really easy affair. Anne is a feisty lady, had she been in Cape Town she would probably have been retired but she seems to run her "Place" with remarkable efficiency and is the darling of many a yachtie. This is evident from the many well wishes in her visitors book and the innumerable mementos left in the establishment by passing yachties. After breakfast John show us around the main areas of Jamestown, the Capital (the only town)of St. Helena. We spotted the Archives and went in to check on some possible relatives of Shaheda's. Terry did a search of the Ship's records to see if he could find any info on the ship that took his Forefathers out to Australia.
Shaheda and I decided to browse around the Town on our own and do some prying around. We walked to the the top of Town where the Hospital is located. This place is something to behold. I am sure that someone forgot to wind the clock as it has clearly stood still in time. It is behind the times but in a good and enviable kind of way. The police investigate people for "making persistent phone calls", someone was arrested and put on 15 months probation for stealing 2 bottles of rum from the local, drivers are given verbal warnings for driving without due care, there are pictures of people, in all of the establishments who serve alcohol, who have been banned from drinking for a while. The innocence and friendliness is something to behold. I cannot think that there is a more friendly place on Earth. Everyone and I mean everyone greets you as you walk down the street. It actually takes some getting used to when you are used to minding your own business walking around at home doing your own thing. Not making eye contact would be considered very impolite, be careful or Mr. Plod could come and give you a verbal warning for that :-)
The architecture is typical British Colonial and there has been no attempt to chuck out the old to make place for the new just for the sake of it. This is really Olde Worlde with all the right feel and touch still firmly intact. Life here is not easy though. Things are pretty expensive and most goods must be imported. British Tesco products, eggs and meat from Namibia can be found on the shelves at the Spar. A packet of 30g Lays chips cost 70p, a chocolate bar cost 2 pounds 45p, petrol is approx R18 per litre (1 pound is approx ZAR14). Due to the small population approx 3500 people, manufacturing in an economically viable manner is difficult. It is also hard to find certain things and some things are ney impossible to find. We searched high and low for a fresh home baked meat pie, none found. Eventually we found a curry pie which was made in a short pastry style not quite what we wanted for lunch but we settled on it along with a slice of pizza.
After lunch, Shaheda and I decided to tackle the Jacob's Ladder. This is a huge staircase, which is the most obvious architectural feature in Jamestown. The Jacob's Ladder was built in 1829, has more than 700 stairs, has a length exceeding 900 ft and rises more than 600 ft above sea level. It is a hell of a walk but really worth it. The views from the stairs and atop are absolutely stunning. My skills as a photographer cannot do this view justice. Once on top you enter the country side of the Island, but more on that after we do the guided tour of the countryside tomorrow. We walked around the top a bit admiring the view and the old buildings. I was not particularly interested in walking down the stairs as the real challenge for me was to get up. So we needed to find someway of getting back into town. After enquiring from the locals about the bus service or taxi it became clear that none would be available at that time. We started a slow walk down into town. We had just started walking when a car approached. I stuck my thumb out to hitch a lift and the person stopped. As it turned out is was the priest of the Anglican Church. He was delivering some goods to Town so we were on his way. He was very friendly and generous and dropped us right at the pier to catch the ferry back to our yacht.
This is really a remarkable place and really serves to show that one can still live the simple life.
Regards from all on board with love.
|
Comments [0]
26/Nov/2007, St. Helena Island
Hi All,
We left St. Helena yesterday at 11:00 am. What an experience that was. This Island along with it's charmingly innocent if somewhat naive people has got to be the envy of the world. I am all for progress but I cannot help thinking what a disaster the new international airport is going to be for these people. Many of the locals are concerned about the impact on the Island. Whilst there is no doubt that a few will benefit I am sure this is going to catapult the large majority of the Islanders into drugs, crime and poverty. Currently, barring those who have visited other countries, most Saints do not know what the concept of homelessness is nor do they know how to beg and it is the only place I've been that have no street children. I am afraid that they stand on the dawn of a nasty change, like always with these matter I love to be proven wrong lets all pray that I am wrong this time.
That's my little look into the crystal ball but let me tell you what it is like now. You have never (well I have never) met people with such plain, honest, downright nice demeanor. This is not the exception it is the rule here. Where I come from people pass each other in the street or in the shop without even being aware of the others presence. Here you do not pass another without greeting and maybe even stop for a 10 minute chat whilst going about your business. The first day I arrived here I was "greet fatigued". I had never been greeted or greeted so many people in a day! But the naivety goes much deeper than this, there is a genuine concern for each other and people go out of their way to accommodate you. Shaheda and I walked into a store and asked for fresh chillies. Now you must bear in mind this is a tall order here, fresh fruit and vegetables are in very short supply, beef is available only on Thursdays when a cow/ox is slaughtered, so I was taking a huge flyer. The shopowner/keeper told us that they do not have any in the store but if we'd follow her she will get us some. She came out from behind the counter, left the store, crossed the main road and walked us to a chilli bush that she had spotted growing on the pavement. She proceeded to select the best chillies, querying if we prefer red or green and picked us two handfuls whilst making small talk. I felt so humbled that someone who is running a business and have paying customers to attend to would do this for me, but it is just not me, it is the way things are done here.
John organised a guided tour of the Island for us on our last day. John who seems to know half the people on the Island went to the pub and enjoyed a hydraulic lunch with Mike, the owner of the Island's only independent radio station and newspaper. We were joined by two other yachties, Tor (Finnish) and his wife Mary (Thai) who were anchored next to us and with whom we struck up a friendship. The tour guide Robert (If you are not used to the accent you'd think his name is Rabbit) met us on the wharf with his pickup (bakkie to the South Africans) which had two benches running along the length of the loadbox. Robert took us on a guided tour around the Island on what I call an appetiser tour. I call it this because I have seen many things that I would like to return to sometime in the future. I guess Robert is in his late 60s or even early 70s and has lived many of the experiences he talks about. In fact one of the sites is the now derelict flax mill, the suriving house is the same one that Robert grew up in as a child. Being interested in the bird life I took a few unscheduled walks into the bushes and found a few birds. I must confess I did not do my homework before arriving on the Island assuming there would be loads of local knowledge on the subject. I was very disappointed to learn that there was only two indigenous land birds left on the Island being the moorhen and the highly threatened wire bird, there being less than 400 individuals left. More concerning is the fact that this is the only place where this bird is found. As far as birdlife goes the Island is somewhat disappointing with only a handful of species of which most are introduced. I saw them all barring the pheasants and the elusive wire bird so I am mutedly (is there such a word) pleased with the birding experience.
Other than the country side we saw the major forts on the Island which all appeared to go up around the latter part of the 1800s and the various "homes" in which Napolean was detained. The use of the word detained assumes poetic licence for Whislt he was a "prisoner" to the Island he was a free man in most other respects, living way above the means of the normal Saints of the time, taking horse rides into the country, having a host of servants and close friends by his side. The Island has another famous resident, and this one is still alive and celebrates his 175th birthday this year. He shares the Governor's residence but seems to prefer the lawns around the tennis courts to the oriental rugged floor of the Governor's saloon. His name is Jonathan. Jonathan is the biggest tortoise I had ever seen was brought to the Island 125 years ago at the ripe old age of 50 years. Jonathan seems in good health, tolerates the occasional tourist and stands up when you touch his hind legs. The whole tour took a good part of the day and I can recommend you looking Robert up if ever you are in this neck of the woods.
Our last evening was spent having supper at the Orange Tree Chinese restaurant, the food was superb and the service could not be improved. We were served by the owner who went out of her way to give us personal attention, not too difficult if you are the only customers for the whole evening. It was with mixed feelings that I left the restaurant that night as I knew that was the last time I would have my feet on that rock in the Atlantic called St. Helena.
The next morning we started to prepare the boat for our departure. We had to take fresh water on board and had to fix the spinnaker halyard. I was hauled up the mast to thread the repaired halyard through the pulley. Unfortunately the halyard climbed off the pulley and came to rest on the pulley side plates. Our plan was to fit a different type of pulley at the top to try and avoid this problem. Unfortunately the swells were getting bigger and the wind was not playing along. We decided to get water on board in the meanwhile and hopefully things would settle again. Getting the boat alongside the pier is a tricky business as the anchor does not hold well in the bay and the swells carry the boat dangerously close in. Once all the water tanks were filled we motored into the adjacent Rupert's Bay. Here the wind was blowing but at least there was no swell. John went up the mast this time and decided against fitting the other pulley and put the halyard back onto the pulley, we hope it is going to work!
As I said in the beginning many things are hard to come by on St. Helena but most elusive was THE meat pie. Terry had got us all salivating for a meat pie when we were 3 days out of St. Helena. We were all looking forward to the lovely flaky pastry and rich beef flavours from this imaginary home baked pie. John being the realist said that we would most likely not find a pie on the Island. Well, John was right nowhere on the Island was there a flaky pastry beef pie available. The closest we found was one shop that made a curry pie, but with short pastry, I can't stand that dry stuff. No worries as Terry would say. I bet you 10:1 that St. Martins has a really mean meat pie available. Watch out brown cow there are a couple of pie craving yachties on the way.
Regards from all on board with love.
|
23/Nov/2007, 20,25 Deg S ; 0,8 Deg W
Hi All,
We have finally crossed the Meridian. I still refer to it as the Greenwich Meridian, but I am told that, that is now outdated. It took us more than a week to sail across the line which got me thinking about why we regard ourselves as Westerners when it takes a damn long time to cross over to the West. Although we only crossed the line last night we have set our ships clock to GMT 2 days ago. We have very calm conditions with little to no wind blowing as little as 8 knots at times and the swells have settled to a comfortable 1.5 metres. Whilst this makes life very comfortable on board it is threatening our ETA at St.Helena Island which we set at Sunday noon. In the meanwhile we made the decision last night to motor sail and we are now running the engines one at a time alternating them every 3 hours. Since doing this we have picked up our speed to around 7 knots which is exactly what we require. If we can maintain this speed and the rain that has just started to pour down outside continues (it is good for our lawn :-) with the associated increase in wind then we are likely to get to St. Helena as predicted.
Everyone is well on board but Shaheda seems to have been hit with round 2 of the seasick bug. I am actually not sure what is the matter with Shaheda as she has been having upper respiratory problems since we left and it has still not settled. She is constantly craving jelly and ice cream and the joke on board is that the sea sickness is in fact morning sickness. I am going into hiding!
>>>>>>>>>>
Shaheda: We are now 2 hours behind you and it is 00h32. Had my first Shower since leaving Cape Town (being using wet wipes otherwise). Shaun seems to be coping well and having a ball, but I am still struggling with sea sickness. John has given me Sturgeron out of the first aid kit and it helps a bit, but I constantly have a queasy feeling. I eat 2 slices of toast in the morning, skip lunch and have very little of what is on offer for supper. So far these have been macaroni and cheese, penne and sauce, fried tuna steaks, tuna paella and last night beef steaks. I crave jelly and ice cream but there is none on board. The flu like symptoms I had when we left is only starting to abate. So all in all I am having it rough.
This first leg of the journey is tough mentally, physically and emotionally but surprisingly I have no fear. I have absolute confidence in John, Shaun and Terry. They are highly competent and take everything in their stride. So when the boat is pitching in 35 knot winds and 7 metre waves I remain calm. We have been in contact with radio hams from Cape Town and are aware of the extreme weather conditions back home. I hope everyone is okay and thanks for all the emails it keeps me grounded here!
We reach St. Helena Island on Sunday and I hope to make a few phone calls home. Che when are you going to write to us! I understand that you are too busy cleaning up after yourself. This I have to see. I guess my visions of walking into your room and trying to find your bed under all the dirty towels, dirty plates, glasses, coke bottles, etc are unfounded.
Regards from all on board with love.
P.S. Update:
We just had a catastrophic situation on board. We were flying the spinnaker for most of the day and made a last minute decision to take it down before night fall. The goodness for that decision, because the spinnaker halyard failed and we had a spinnaker jammed on top of the mast. If you have no idea how powerful a spinnaker is, how dangerous it is and how much havoc it can cause picture yourself if you can on ice with ice skates trying to hold onto a Boeing 747 about to take off, this is no exaggeration.
The real difficult part was to get someone up the mast in the pitching boat before dark. John volunteered and we set up the bosun chair to haul him up the mast. After a short briefing from John about how life threating this maneuver was at this point I proceeded to haul him up the mast. I struggled and Terry took over haulng John up in double quick time, I did mention this lad has strong arms did I not? John cut the halyard down and we got him down the mast safely and stowed the spinnaker. Thank God this happened during daylight hours and again, I know I am ranting on, that we had someone of John's experience and calibre aboard.
"Thanks John" is all I could say with a massive sense of relief.
|
21/Nov/2007, 23.19 Deg S 2.47 Deg E
Hello all, before I give you news from the Atlantic let me apologies to those whose emails are bouncing back. This is due to the spam filtering. No worry though, I get the notice of the mail you sent, add you to the whitelist and the problem should not reoccur.
With the rise of the new day yesterday we truly put the calm seas and lack of winds behind us. There is still a sense of excitement about the two really large fish we caught. Whilst Terry may not have the strongest stomach he has certainly proven to have the strongest arms as he battled both fish to get them on board. These weighed approximately 35kg each! Our freezer is filled with fish and we may only need to fish en route to the Caribbean next. I never thought I'd pass on shashimi but this afternoon I decided to give the shashimi a miss, aren't we spoilt.
From the picture you will see that the sunrise yesterday was a beautiful crimson affair. As the saying goes red skies at night is a sailors delight and red clouds in the morning is a sailors warning. Well these words certainly came to pass as we battle high winds and huge seas again last night. As I write this we are still bobbing away merrily and there seems to be very little respite in the coming days. There is another saying that goes "Africa is not for sissies, well I can tell you the South Atlantic is not for sissies either.
We have settled into a routine on board and we are able to find things and walk around despite being thrown from port to starboard. Mornings is a lazy start with those who went off the last watch still catching up with sleep and the one on watch preparing to go to sleep. However from about 9am onward there is a bit of a gathering in the saloon, each has whatever he feels like for breakfast. Lunchtime most of us are awake and we tend to share something to eat before we tune the radio to 14.316 MHz at 12:30 UTC to listen to the Maritime Net where we share weather information and listen to the days predictions for our area. We then do whatever we wish and gather around the radio at 16:00 UTC and tune in to 14.2375 MHz and call for other radio hams to join us in conversation. Most of these are from South Africa but we have had calls from Europe and the UK as well. Supper is made by whoever feels like it and is served at about 6pm and the cycle then starts all over again.
There was a sense of excitement today as it officially shower day today. We are allowed to use fresh water for a shower today and I have saved mine for when I come off watch tonight which will be at midnight.
We are however expected to arrive at St. Helena Island on Sunday the 25th or latest Monday if things slow down somewhat. Everybody on board is looking forward to some terra-firma, Shaheda wants to get to a hair salon, Terry desperately wants a meat pie, John wants to meet old acquaintances and I just want to stop bobbing about for a bit. Our plan is to ask one of the kind gents on the Island for a guided tour, I am really looking forward to this. Shaheda will do a bit of genealogy research as she has distant relatives who hail from here.
The whole trip so far has been very interesting and I have learnt a hell of a lot. I am so grateful I got to do this with someone like John who has a wealth of experience in these matters. Anything from interpreting weather information to subduing a large yellow fin tuna.
Another big thanks to all those who are helping with messaging to and from home, all those who read the blog , leave comments and the emails. We really appreciate it.
Regards from all on board.
|
19/Nov/2007, 27.01 Deg S 7.4 Deg E
Before I start telling you the stories let me reply to some queries I had and thank a few people. One of the queries I had was regarding the tracking of our position. John reports this daily once we have taken our noon position, so you can expect it to be available at about 12:00 GMT, if you live in South Africa you are two hours ahead of GMT. If you live in another part of the world and don't know what your GMT offset is then thank Bill Gates now. If you are using a Windoze based computer double click on the clock in the bottom right hand corner then click on time zones and you should see your offset providing of course your computer clock is set correctly. By the way we have our ships' clock set to one hour ahead of GMT at the moment. But I digress, the next important thing to do is to click on the link I have provided on the side bar to track our position. When you are directed to that site you can change the "SHOW" option. Here you must select the last 30 days. You will see some of the remnants of John's previous trip to Tahiti come up. Do not worry about that as it will disappear in the next week or so. Just follow the dots from Cape Town and page to the bottom of the page to see John's comments. That deals with the queries.
Now for the thanks. We have had an incredible amount of help and well wishes from so many people. On land helping with the blog updates and information are fellow radio hams; Deon ZS1ZL and Peter ZS1PMH thanks to you guys. Then we have a whole bunch of hams who give us weather information. We tune in on the the shortwave radio to 14.316 MHz at 11:30 GMT everyday and listen to Alistair ZS5MU who runs the net and many of the weather contributors including Tom ZS1TA who I know well. As far as the commments go we really love hearing from you guys please send more. The Wards note, Terry has received your comments and yes he is pulling his weight. Roger, thanks for all you doing my chommie. Special thanks to 13 year old Ciaran from Australia who is keenly following the blog. Ciaran, a birdie has told me that your Pa may be coming to Cape Town during the Xmas holidays, make sure he packs you in as well as Cape Town is one of the most magnificent cities to visit. Now lets get onto the report.
Hi everyone, we have been becalmed for 24 hours now. The Atlantic has dished up a high speed washing machine for us the first few days with waves 7 meters at times and winds howling in excess of 45 knots. To do a rough conversion to Km/h multiply these numbers by 1.8 to get an idea of the boat and wind speed. During this time we struggled to keep the boat speed below 8 knots as we did not want the boat surfing down the waves as this increases the risk of broaching (going sideways down the wave) which could present a potentially dangerous situation. We put up the smallest amount of sail, less than 20% of the jib (front sail) at times and occasionally the boat still reached in excess of 10 knots. We were all wishing for calmer days. Well it is here now and as the old Chinese curse goes "Be careful what you wish for" our wishes were answered. We have not had any wind to speak of so we took down all sails and have been motoring with the engines for more than 24 hours now. We alternate the engines running each for three hours at a time.
This has reduced the activity on the boat considerably and we have all caught up with some much needed sleep. It is amazing how much we are sleeping. John says like sea-sickness this will pass as our bodies become acclimatised to the rolling of the sea and we sleep a little deeper. One other thing that disturbs the sleeping patterns are the watches, the boat travels 24/7 so someone has to keep an eye on it to see if we are still on course, if the wind has picked up and most importantly if there is any traffic around that we may collide with. We have watches scheduled from 00:00 - 03:00 then 03:00 - 06:00 and so on changing every three hours. The person who has done the 00:00 shift get off for the rest of the day and only comes back on duty at 21:00 the night, that way we get to change the sequence of the watches.
Yesterday John did his daily training session at the cockpit, it was Shaheda's turn and she learnt about starting the engines, setting engine revs, how to select the various engines gears, how to steer when using the different engines. During this time we noticed an unusual amount of birds about. Shaheda and John had the birds eye view (no pun intended) as the cockpit is about 2m above the deck level. John was very concerned because the birds were all congregating around a large rose coloured item in the sea. He thought it may be a sail of a boat which could of course mean disaster if it is the case. He quickly shouted for the binoculars which I found in double quick time. As he was looking through the binoculars it became clear that it was not a sail but in fact a large chunk of exposed blubber of a dead whale. The birds were having an absolute feast taking in the much needed fat to give them energy for the long passages that these pelagic birds undertake. Many of them remain on the wing for several weeks returning to land for breeding and raising chicks only. Whilst tragic it was beautiful to see nature in it raw state and more so we were pleased that it was not a sail as this would have put a different spin on the way we had to deal with that.
That's all from me at the moment, remember there is more on John our Skipper's Blog. Just click on the link on the side bar or go to www.sailblogs.com/member/deliveries
|
18/Nov/2007, 28.3 Deg S; 9.4 Deg E
After a tumultuous start everybody seems to have settled down finally. Shaheda and Terry seems to have been hit the hardest with the dreaded sea sickness. Me a little less so and John did not even seem to register that he was supposed to be sea-sick.
We had our first breakfast this morning as a group. John's experience is really telling as he seems to have the knack of knowing when to get what going to make it comfortable for all. Last night he introduced us to a card game called Bullshit. It is a silly game that requires some bluffing and cunning but it passes the time.
At the end of my watch today showed me some of the intricacies of operating the instrumentation in the cockpit. Thereafter he proceeded to give us a "class" on fishing rig setup. He has his own way of setting this up with a combination of bungy cord, nylon fishing line, light rope and a wooden washing peg. All of this is tied to the back of the boat and when the peg jumps off the line apparently all hell breaks loose.
Until now hell is still in tact and I am getting a little queasy typing this note.
Regards from all aboard.
Until next time.
PS. Hell just broke loose, but so did the fish. Well another long fin tuna lives to tell the tale.
|
16/Nov/2007, 32,7 Deg S; 16.3 Deg E
16/11/07
This is not for the faint hearted or faint stomach. After a last minute dash to the emergency unit at Milnerton Medi Clinic to X-Ray Shaun's hand (bashed by a winch handle when raising the main on our aborted first departure on the 12th Nov). We finally leave at midnight on the 14th.
I immediately started feeling queasy but I stand on the deck. At 1:30 John calls us on deck to give us our watch details. I am on the next watch 03:00 - 06:00 (gulp!). I must go try to sleep now and John will try to tell me what to do at 02:55 (gulp!!) I am to quesy and nervous to sleep, I get up at 02:30 and struggle into my salopette, jacket, etc and fall around trying to find torch, watch, etc. It is a storm out side 5-7 metre swell, waves breaking over the deck the boat is being tossed about on the angry ocean, John spends about five minutes with me explaining what to check for and thankfully he says that I do not have to stay in the cockpit but must come out every 10 -15 minutes to check the intrumentation. With a quick "becareful out there, it is very dangerous" he is gone. Just in time I find a bucket under the table, no explaination needed - this is worse than morning sickness. Shaun comes up to join me and I ask "Please remind me why I am here"
Hopefully this will be the worst night I spend on board.
|
13/Nov/2007, Cape Town Harbour
Today started with quite a lot of work lying ahead of us. I contacted my colleague Roger Griffiths to assist us with a lift early in the morning. ROger arrived at the yacht basin in the wee hours of the morning and ran John to the yacht club to get the boat cleared out. We all went to the Dept of Home Affairs to get cleared out of the country. We were greeted by what I can only describe as gaggle of desperate people wanting to get into the Home Affairs offices for a myriad of reasons from seeking asylum to ID documents. From the languages be spoken and accents it was clear me that most of these people were foriegners. In this mayhem we squeezed our way in the doorway to get access to Immigration. John was leading the pack when I suddenly heard him call out "Who just grabbed my cellphone." WIthin seconds the he summonsed the assistance of the security gaurds who quickly stopped anyone from moving away from the scene and they started searching those in the immediate vacinity. A call to John's phone from the security gaurd's phone prompted a ring that was immediately shut down and that was the last we heard of the phone. Angry and frustrated we headed up to the 5th floor to clear out. We were greeted by a very helpful and efficient lady who assisted us with all the documentation. We were out there in no time and headed down to Customs and completed all the required documentation there.
Needed a few perishables that we left for the last minute and headed off to the stores to get them plus a replacement hacksaw. The original hacksaw met it's untimely demise when John tossed it into the harbour with some vigour after the pin holding the blade broke whilst he was sawing. In the meanwhile we were waiting for some outstanding spares from the boat factory but it was all sorted out in the end. My brother Tenny (nickname, his real name is far more difficult), his wife Candy and son Tazwill came down to the boat to greet and bring me some cash, there is always room for that no matter how full we loaded. A bit of chit chat and Tenny was roped in to run to the shop to get a new bucket as ours had a problem. We headed down to the diesel bowzer to fill up with fuel and agreed to meet Tenny at the pier. Once filled up with fuel and new bucket on board we headed out into the open ocean and headed North.
The seas were very lumpy but things started to smooth out once we set up the sails and the boat was more balanced. John made a call to the delivery office who asked us to return as they had erronously loaded some cargo destined for St Vincent onto our boat. We headed back but by the time we arrived everyone had gone home so we had to overnight once again in Cape Town harbour. When they get to the boat in the morning we will ask them to sort out a few snags we noticed whilst out at sea today. We are hoping that this and the swopping of the cargo won't take to long and hopefully we can finally get out of here by tomorrow morning.
I see there were a few clicks on the empty albums. If there is no thumbnail then the gallery is still empty. These will be filled as we progress on our journey.
Regards from all on board
New pics added
|
