Sunday 9 December 2018

Nothing happens here on weekends and guessing that, like in Oz and NZ, productive activity ceases for at least three solid weeks around Christmas and the New Year (suggested to be 13 Dec to 8 Jan) for everyone to celebrate receiving presents, watching sports, eating too much and drinking themselves into a stupor, ummm.. that is to say the birth of the son of God. Think we'll be lucky to make Cape Town much before February.

In anticipation of this eventuality, full complement is planning flight to Amsterdam perhaps Tuesday to visit friends and enjoy a great city for a few days. Distaff members then continue to Ontario to see relatives over the holiday while maintenance section may return to Richard's Bay for supervision of what may or may not occur in the way of repairs. This discouraging assessment of likely events applies as well to onboard help who, although irresistibly lovable, are shiftless, lazy and prefer to put off any work until absolutely necessary. Yesterday was dreary and rainy, creating a perfect procrastination scenario to allow writing most, perhaps all, of this malarkey the day before.

Sunday in fact

Completed application and assembled various documentation to apply for South Africa visa extension, which must be done within 30 days of arrival. Tomorrow we nail down as possible what may happen to Anthem over next week for determining how long she can be left alone and then toodle over to immigration, besides hoping to advance our ejection date, to see if we can temporarily fly out any time soon or at all and be allowed back in. Rules are a smidge ambiguous and apparently open to local interpretation.

Monday

Elucidation by immigration official is that upon return even if current visitor permit still active we get another 90 days if coming from any other continent than Africa. This is best possible reading and, on off chance it's correct, we should be fine. Will continue to check and if true, entire complement will be thrilled and amazed. Stranger things have happened.

Above is important because boat will likely not be usable until at least middle January so entire crew may decamp for up to five weeks. This makes onboard maintenance division decidedly uneasy, but have been assured this will not impact timeliness or quality of work. Some of foregoing rabble are almost convinced and nascent nervous twitch probably due either fear of travel or aardvarks. Hope to make Cape Town before end of February.

Both Amsterdam and Ontario are enjoying temperatures hovering around zero Celsius. At the risk of being either pedantically redundant or redundantly pedantic, that is the freezing point of water (comprising about 60% of the human body, which adapts poorly to the slightest bit of solidification) and is to be avoided unless involved in downhill skiing, which according to Dave Barry is the sport that combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face. We endorse a more benign point of view.

Jack