One of the nice things we have noticed recently as we have sailed south and the sun is moving south is that our solar panels are getting more and more efficient in capturing energy. We have three 200 watt panels up on our arch that is over the stern and we just love them. Whenever we have a sunny day, they now provide 100 percent of our energy needs. We are running our refrigerator and the portable freezer along with our radios (VHF and stereo) and many times have the invertor on to recharge our toothbrushes, Nook readers, and IPad. We use about 170 amps a day and the solar panels are keeping our batteries full each sunny day. It is great.

To save on energy, we have moved our frozen foods out of our freezer that is in the salon and into our portable freezer. The portable freezer has about 2/3 of the space as our salon freezer and is much more efficient, energy-wise. We could transfer the frozen food since we are now getting down in the amount that we are carrying. With luck, in less than two months we will have mothballed Leu Cat in False Bay and will be winging our way back to the States for the holidays and then a couple of weddings to attend. Thus, we are trying to eat everything up, including the stuff in the freezer.

While our friends, Portia and Steve, did bring with them to our boat the replacement blades for our wind generator, it is still not working properly. I think one of the bearings is bad or got knocked out when the bird hit and broke the blade. The rotor does not turn freely and when it does turn, it goes "thump", "thump", thump". Thus, we have it turned off until I can figure out how to fix it. We miss it dearly, especially on the cloudy and overcast days.

Today we continued to sit tight in our anchorage with the four other boats. While the skies were sunny and clear all day, the winds continued to howl, reaching 30 knots a number of times. The daily GRIB file still is predicting that the low will linger off the southern end of Madagascar through the 20th and will continue to bring winds up from the south. We just have to sit tight until the winds move to the east. Hopefully, that will start on the 21st but even that is iffy. We are anxious to get going and sail to at least Richards Bay, if not directly to Durban.

To relieve my "ants in the pants" syndrome, I lowered the dinghy and went over and visited with Dave and Peggy on S/V Rhythm. I wanted to share with them a few of the electronic files I have on South Africa. A few of them write about it taking 6 to 8 weeks to go from Richards Bay, round the Cape, and then arriving in Cape Town. While the distance is not that great (less than a 1000 nm), you have to ride out the lows in one of the ports that are on the way as each storm passes by. Thus, you can get trapped for a number of days in each port waiting for a safe weather window. Some years, people end up waiting weeks in a port. For this reason, the various pilot guides mention that it can take up to two months to reach Cape Town. While we are not heading for Cape Town right now, we are heading for Simons Town in False Bay, which is just a few miles short of Cape Town.

I think you can now understand my anxiousness to get going�...