Perhaps you've heard of the genre of "Extreme whatever's" - Extreme skiing; Extreme diving; Extreme ironing and the like. Well, we arrived in Richard's Bay and took part in South Africa's extreme sport; Extreme Admin.

Never in the field of human bureaucracy has so much paperwork been generated by so many for so few. Jeez. You wouldn't believe it. All pointless other than covering the government and yacht clubs against any conceivable real and imagined event that may befall a cruiser. I guess it also keeps quite a number of government officials employed. Gotta spend that tax money somehow.

I swear, we dealt with and signed one tenth of the amount of paper to sell our house a couple of months ago.

Just as well my delightful wife / cum PA has the demeanour to manage these things.

We sailed into Richard's Bay at dawn and by 06:00 were tied to the barnacle encrusted "Q" dock and greeted by Natasha, the Ocean Cruising Club port officer who held our hand as we ploughed through the Covid, customs, immigration and port control minefield. Seychelles; I hate to report, you've now dropped to 2nd place in the league of World's End Admin.

Fully checked in, we moved around to the pontoons at Zululand Yacht Club to join the growing throng of cruisers passing through on their way around the Cape. Some sixty or so yachts have been through ahead of us already this year, most still digesting the T-bone steaks the club serves at the Braai many weeks later. There's another thirty boats coming up behind. Many trees will be sacrificed to complete the paperwork for that lot.

It was all a bit of a blast getting here and, for once, the weather gods just kept opening the doors.

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