It seems funny to me to have today’s blog labeled Year 8 Day 1. However, this is our official start date for our 8th cruising year. Hooray!

Very early this morning we completed our connecting flight to Cape Town from Dubai. The flight left Dubai at 0350 and arrived in Cape Town at 1045. Flight time was close to 9 hours since we flew through a few time zones but it went fast since the airline provided tons of free movies with many of them being newer releases.

Once we de-boarded the plane we cleared Immigration fine but were disappointed that the officer gave us a 90 visa even though we had requested just a 30 day visa. We have scheduled a safari in Botswana for the last 9 days of July with intent of requesting a 90 visa when we returned to South Africa from that trip. The problem with having a 90 visa now is that when we leave for Botswana, the 90 day clock for our visa keeps on running. When we return to South Africa, they will not give us a new visa but, instead, will just use the existing one since we will still have on time left on it. The end result is that we will now have to clear out of South Africa at the end of the 90 day visa, which will be September 23. This is about a week sooner than what we had hoped for. We will just have to keep our fingers crossed that the weather then will be conducive for departing South Africa at that time.

After clearing immigration we next picked up our 6 large luggage bags that were stuffed with boat stuff. It is difficult to find things we need for Leu Cat in the various countries that we sail to so each time we return to the States, we load up with stuff we need for the next cruising season. Armed with two roller carts stuffed with our luggage and carry-ons, we wheeled our two mountains of boat parts toward Customs.

We had hoped that we would just waltz our way out and not get stopped by the inspectors but it was not to be. A friendly inspector called us over to his station and asked for our passports. I started moving some of our bags onto his counter in anticipation of a thorough search and huge demands for duty payment on a number of our items. Thoughts of hours spent going through everything and haggling over costs of each item ran across my mind. Ugh, this was going to be ugly…

However, to my amazement, after jotting down our passport numbers on a sheet of paper, the inspector told us that was it, I did not need to open up anything and he just waved us through. A big smile covered my face and we were so relieved that we had avoided a major headache and additional expense.

About an hour later we arrived in Simon’s Town and the False Bay Yacht Club where Leu Cat has been all of these months. Since it is the start of winter here, it was drizzling a bit and the temperatures were in the lowing 50s. However, that did not dampen our spirits because, after 7 months of being gone, we were finally home. Yippee!

We spent a couple of hours unpacking a few bags and opening up our boat. This included getting each of the head pumps greased, primed and working, plugging into shore power and turning on the heat pumps. By 1700 hours we were bushed and called it a day: a very long day. Nevertheless, it was a good one since we are now home, back onboard Leu Cat, safe and sound.