Yesterday, with the understanding that a gale was going to be hitting the coast around the Cape Of Good Hope late today, we made the decision that speed was of the essence. Normally, speed has become a secondary issue when it comes to passages. Comfort is the primary issue to us. With an increase in speed, the forces beat up on Leu Cat: from the pounding of the swells to the increased strain that the wind puts on the sails and the rigging.

However, when it comes to trying to make landfall before a gale hits, speed then takes on a different urgency. Thus, we decided that we would try to make enough speed to reach the safety of the False Bay Yacht Club in Simon's Town which is just past the Cape of Good Hope. It looked like the gale would hit the Cape of Good Hope area in the late afternoon or early evening. We would have to average 7.5 knots for the rest of the trip to reach Simon's Town by 1600.

As a result, when we had winds, we sailed fast. When the winds died a bit, we motor sailed fast. When the winds failed completely, we ran on the engine RPMS and motored fast. We were well into False Bay and had Simon's Town in sight when the winds started piping up and as we approached the dock, we were getting 35 knots of wind. There are different ways of defining a gale but one definitions starts at 33 knots. Darn! We just missed beating the gale to Simon's Town and, as a result, docking was tough. Fortunately, a fellow came over and acted as a dockhand and was a God sent. Tonight and through tomorrow the winds are supposed to be hitting 40 plus knots. However, we will be snug as bugs in a rug! Whew!

Rounding the Cape and passing by the Cape of Good Hope was something else. We kept passing by areas that were named on the charts for the ship that had sunk by hitting submerged and uncharted reefs. This included St Mungo Point, Northumberland Point and my favorite, Danger Point! The South African Nautical Almanac gave warnings to bear off of these and other areas from between 1 and 3 miles.

We rounded the Cape around 0400 this morning, during Mary Margaret's watch. As we did so, we dodged a number of squalls and were hit by a few. However, we finally had transverse the Indian Ocean and are now in the Atlantic Ocean. Yea!!! We both are so glad to be rid of the Indian Ocean. Crossing it was not fun and we are bushed, especially after our crossing of the Madagascar Channel and sailing down the Mozambique and South African coasts. Now we get to rest a bit, start setting up some retrofit projects and cleaning, cleaning and cleaning some more as we mothball good ol' Leu Cat.

We now have our plane reservations for returning to the States in time for Christmas. We will be leaving here on December 10th. Our return flight is scheduled to arrive in Cape Town on July 11, 2015. Thus, we will be gone for 7 months. Wow, that is the longest we have been off Leu Cat.