Today started with quite a lot of work lying ahead of us. I contacted my colleague Roger Griffiths to assist us with a lift early in the morning. Roger arrived at the yacht basin in the wee hours of the morning and ran John to the yacht club to get the boat cleared out. We all went to the Dept of Home Affairs to get cleared out of the country. We were greeted by what I can only describe as gaggle of desperate people wanting to get into the Home Affairs offices for a myriad of reasons from seeking asylum to ID documents. From the languages be spoken and accents it was clear me that most of these people were foreigners. In this mayhem we squeezed our way in the doorway to get access to Immigration. John was leading the pack when I suddenly heard him call out "Who just grabbed my cellphone." WIthin seconds the he summonsed the assistance of the security gaurds who quickly stopped anyone from moving away from the scene and they started searching those in the immediate vacinity. A call to John's phone from the security guard's phone prompted a ring that was immediately shut down and that was the last we heard of the phone. Angry and frustrated we headed up to the 5th floor to clear out. We were greeted by a very helpful and efficient lady who assisted us with all the documentation. We were out there in no time and headed down to Customs and completed all the required documentation there.

Needed a few perishables that we left for the last minute and headed off to the stores to get them plus a replacement hacksaw. The original hacksaw met it's untimely demise when John tossed it into the harbour with some vigour after the pin holding the blade broke whilst he was sawing. In the meanwhile we were waiting for some outstanding spares from the boat factory but it was all sorted out in the end. My brother Tenny (nickname, his real name is far more difficult), his wife Candy and son Tazwill came down to the boat to greet and bring me some cash, there is always room for that no matter how full we loaded. A bit of chit chat and Tenny was roped in to run to the shop to get a new bucket as ours had a problem. We headed down to the diesel bowzer to fill up with fuel and agreed to meet Tenny at the pier. Once filled up with fuel and new bucket on board we headed out into the open ocean and headed North.

The seas were very lumpy but things started to smooth out once we set up the sails and the boat was more balanced. John made a call to the delivery office who asked us to return as they had erronously loaded some cargo destined for St Vincent onto our boat. We headed back but by the time we arrived everyone had gone home so we had to overnight once again in Cape Town harbour. When they get to the boat in the morning we will ask them to sort out a few snags we noticed whilst out at sea today. We are hoping that this and the swopping of the cargo won't take to long and hopefully we can finally get out of here by tomorrow morning.

I see there were a few clicks on the empty albums. If there is no thumbnail then the gallery is still empty. These will be filled as we progress on our journey.

Regards from all on board

New pics added