Simon's Town Marina - what's not to like.
We finally arrived in False Bay and, as we had been told, the wind picked up. This made for an extraordinary effort to pick up the mooring buoy. After finally managing to lasso the buoy, we could not pick it up. Of course the wind was up to 40 knots most of the time and the wind was just too challenging for us. We finally had to cut away the line around the mooring and go and anchor. It was a comfortable bay on anchor, even with the wind and we slept well. In the morning we managed to rig a mooring line from the dinghy and realized that we were never going to pick up this mooring line from the boat, no matter what we did. After we were safe and sound on the mooring, it was time to head shore. We managed lunch at the yacht club, walked around this very colonial town, and arranged for a trip to Cape Town the next day. We did not go into the marina, as it was fully booked. Note to any others, book at Simons Town about 9-12 months ahead of time as they have very few spare berths. We had been trying to get into the Royal Cape Town Yacht Club in actual Cape Town but had been stymied along the way with a lack of response from them on the phone and email so by the time we decided to give up on them, it was too late to book into anywhere else. Still, the mooring has been fine and we are close to shore so we have a short dinghy ride with insignificant amount of fetch. We also did not need to worry about navigation in a tight marina with the winds and could leave when we wanted to. 2 boats we travelled with docked in the strong winds and it was rather arduous for them. One of them nearly holed the side of his boat as he was blown against an exposed I beam on the dock. The wind makes getting into and out of this marina one of the best challenges we have seen to date. We are happy on our mooring as we can leave when we want, not when the wind dies down (which is hardly never around here).