Departure
11 May 2009
John
Port Elizabeth is a very friendly city and we have been joining the locals in not doing too much in the form of hard work. The engines are serviced, the Raymarine VHF radio is fixed (the installers never soldered the centre core of the co-ax cable), the fuel tanks have been topped up and the boat has been cleaned. We now have one new problem in that, when filling up the fuel tanks, we found that the starboard tank leaked and the overflow has ended up in the starboard bilge. We had to get some detergent to break down the small amount of fuel and then flush it out.
Miles Webb, the skipper of the 40', arrived just after noon on Friday and we assisted him onto his dock - the last one the ABYC has that a catamaran can fit onto! He then checked in with the yacht club after which we sat down and downloaded the latest seven day weather files.
The title of this blog is "Departure", something we have now decided that will only take place around Tuesday afternoon. For the winds to be favourable we need westerly winds to be able to get about 400 nautical miles offshore. This means that we need to leave on the back of a cold front and one is due to come around the Cape on Tuesday.
So, over this past weekend the crew has been off to see a movie, visited some nightclub and generally taken things easy. We have also used the braai facilities of the club and had a couple of braais and a few beers to wash down the food. As mentioned above, this is a really friendly club with all facilities available to the visiting yachtie.
The photo above is taken from the balcony of the ABYC of the small craft basin.
Well, until we depart, regards to all the readers from Reinier, Yoni, Luke and myself, John.