Day 322: Port Elizabeth to Knysna, SA – 24/11/10

What a difference a day makes.  We wake up to a beautiful blue sky, light wind and strong sun.  At 8 am it feels strong enough to burn.

Mike goes over to Lady Ev once more to look at Jorg’s PC and having fixed it again instructs all the crew not to fiddle with it.  When he comes back to the boat we begin the process of disengaging ourselves from the dock and A Lady, managing to pull away from her without scratching her lovely blue hull.

The harbour looks prettier than it did yesterday – it’s amazing what a little bit of sunshine can do for a view and a mood!

Photo:  Looking back at the Yacht Club

Photo:  Fishing boats at Port Elizabeth

We motor out of the harbour and as leave we get a good view of the town.  When we entered yesterday everything was grey and miserable so it is quite a surprise to see a nice looking built up area even though I had heard good things about Port Elizabeth.  It’s a pity we haven’t got time to explore it but we need to get to Knysna as soon as possible to give us time to get to Cape Town and meet Victoria on Saturday.

Photos:  Leaving Port Elizabeth

As we leave the harbour entrance a load of dolphins are playing around the boats.  We are still motoring at this point and don’t have much wake so they don’t swim by the boat but are still lovely to watch.

 

Photo:  Dolphins come to play

Once we get out of the relative shelter of the harbour, the wind starts to pick up but Mike waits until we are around the headland to see how the wind changes before deciding what sails to put up.  Initially we just sail with the genoa and one engine, then switch the engine off and sail at around 6 knots. 

I cook a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and bread fried in butter for the Master and Commander which puts me in his good books for the day.  Later in the morning we put the main up then Mike, with the aid of a full stomach, has a nap.

We continue to sail at a good rate, a pace which should get us to Knysna just at high tide first thing in the morning.  Ann and Terry had wanted to be at the cafe at the opening of the lagoon to film us coming in but I’m not sure they will want to be there at 6 am!  Mike rings them to warn them.

It is a lovely sail.  Most of the time we are getting between 6 and 8 knots and the waves are gentle and just nudge us along.  A far cry from yesterday’s misery.  Suddenly there’s a yacht screaming up behind us.  No surprise that it’s Grand Filou, last out of the harbour and now zapping past us at nearly 12 knots.

Photo:  Grand Filou catches us and races past

I watch the sun set over our last night at sea for some time.  It’s not the best one but I’m glad we will see some from land for a while.

Photo:  Our last sunset at sea for a while

We decide just to do four hour watches tonight as we will be in so early and I head off down to bed at around 8.30 pm.  I’m excited about seeing my sister and brother in law tomorrow as it’s been a year and one week since I last saw them.  The icing on the cake will be when we see Victoria in a few days.

 

Our position is:  34 deg 20 min S, 23 deg 46 min E

Distance so far:  18389 nautical miles

Day 321: Richards Bay to Port Elizabeth, SA – 23/11/10

I get up at 2 am for my watch.  The sea is heaving and the noise is as deafening as ever.  The thought of this all the way to Knysna is not appealing.  More worryingly, the grib files have got it completely wrong for literally the first time.  I wonder whether there is worse in store for us further on.  When Mike gets up we listen to the weather reports on the radio, which sound like they are using a man with a speech impediment to announce, not a good idea when you are hanging on his every word trying to understand them.

After my watch I go back to bed for a while and even manage to fall into a fitful sleep, but one where the noise and unbelievable crashing of the boat permeates my dream.  I get up to go to the loo then go back to bed.  The noise and motion seems even worse and suddenly for no reason I start to sob – I just can’t stand it any more.  I get up and stagger upstairs to Mike, collapsing into him for a cuddle.  With headwinds of 30 knots and the short, sharp waves, thank God he has already decided that to continue in these conditions is untenable and has already set a new course for Port Elizabeth, just a few hours away.  I curl up on the sofa in a foetal position, still crying, and just wait for it to be over. 

Just after midday he calls me to put some more clothes on and go out to put the lines and fenders on as we are entering the port.  Even in what should be the shelter of the port, we have winds gusting to 35 knots.  It shouldn’t be like this!

We have been told that we are to raft up against a fishing boat but when we get to the end of the harbour we can see Grand Filou and A Lady rafted together and there’s room for us against them.  With lines and fenders in place I shout to A Lady and suddenly Neil and Stephen appear then Charlie and Richie from Grand Filou.  They take our lines and secure us to A Lady then take one of the hurricane lines and attach it to the dock. 

Photo:  Mike watches as Stephen, Neil, Charlie and Richie secure Jeannius

Aileen appears and offers tea, toast and biscuits.  How lovely.  I must have looked like we’d had a rough time!  We go aboard - it turns out that both they and Grand Filou tried to get out of Port Elizabeth yesterday but 30 or 40 miles out turned around and came back because the conditions were so horrible.  These were the conditions that we had been in and it’s comforting for me to know that the crews of these faster, bigger and heavier boats didn’t like the look or feel of the sea.

The port at Port Elizabeth is a real fishing one and we are surrounded by large vessels.  Their crews all seem very friendly and wave and say hello.  As we intend to leave tomorrow, there’s another flight plan to be filed, and Neil tells us where to go.  We follow him, Charlie and Richie to the yacht club, file the plan and stop for a drink before deciding to have lunch there as the menu looks so tempting.

One drink turns into three and lunch is delicious – melt in the mouth fillet steak (again) with potato wedges and pumpkin with chilli.  By the end of the meal I am totally relaxed and cannot believe that I am the same person who was lying sobbing on the sofa just a few hours ago.

Photo:  Jeannius rafted against A Lady and Grand Filou in Port Elizabeth

  Photo:  Port Elizabeth harbour from the Yacht Club

I watch from the veranda of the yacht club as first Ariane then Lady Ev VI arrive into the harbour and raft against one of the fishing boats.  I hope these guys don’t want to leave at 3 am!  The Lady Ev crew all come up to the yacht club restaurant and I wax so lyrical about the fillet steak, they all have it.

By the time we get back to Jeannius there are not many hours of sunlight left.  After a lovely hot shower (very, very hot as the engines have been on for hours) we watch some TV and have a early night.  Mike especially didn’t get much sleep last night.  The bed feels cold when we get in but at least not damp.

 

Our position is:  33 deg 57 min S, 25 deg 38 min E

Distance so far:  18291 nautical miles

Day 320: East London to Port Elizabeth, SA – 22/11/10

We’re in no mad hurry to leave so Mike doesn’t bother setting the alarm.  Just after 8 am he calls the Port Authority for permission (permission?) to leave and they ask if we have registered our ‘flight plan’.  A flight plan is a document which tells the authorities exactly where you intend your next port of call to be which, with the weather conditions here, is frankly anybody’s guess and therefore, as far as I am concerned, literally not worth the paper it is written on.  However, we obediently filed one in Richards Bay and since nothing had changed, we thought it was OK to stick with that one and leave.  Apparently not.  Every time you stop you have to file a new one.

We are given the name of the guy to contact but when we call he says he won’t be down to his office until 10 am so we have to wait.  Lady Ev are ready to go so we untie ourselves from them and the dock and wave them goodbye then wait until another two small yachts have pulled out before going back to the harbour wall and tying up again.

A nice lady comes down to chat and it turns out that it is the wife of the man we are waiting for.  They had felt sorry for us as they know that when the weather says go, you GO!  She takes Mike to file the flight plan then we are off.

As we leave the port, I call my sister and tell them we are on our way to Knysna.  They have just come back from a whale watching trip and haven’t seen any whales.  Even as we speak, Mike shouts that there is a whale in the distance!

Photo:  A whale in the distance greets us as we leave East London

There is only about 10 knots of wind and it is behind us.  We motor on a flat sea.  Unfortunately, it all starts to change after lunch.  Despite what the grib files say, the wind moves around and starts to blow from the west then south west and we go straight into it.  Our progress becomes agonizingly slow and the notorious Agulhus Current disappears altogether.  At times we are making just 2 knots.  It starts to drizzle, then rain and is truly, truly miserable.  So is our joint mood.  It just shows how it can all change so unpredictably.  Although the conditions are not unsafe for sailing, they are uncomfortable in the extreme and I would do anything to get off the boat!  Unfortunately, there is no way off, and we crash our way through the afternoon and evening. 

The only pleasant thing for the remainder of the day is that the nice looking piece of pork fillet that I defrosted for dinner earlier, turns out to be a wonderful piece of beef fillet which just melts in the mouth.  Along with garlic mashed potato, the meal cheers us up for a while before the weather and sea conditions eat away at us again.  The sheets feel cold and damp so I just make up a bed in our stern cabin with one of the fluffy blankets to wrap around us.  The artificial material at least feels warm against the skin.

Amazingly, I sleep.

 

Our position is:  33 deg 52 min S, 26 deg 44 min E

Distance so far:  18231 nautical miles

Day 319: East London, SA – 21/11/10

We wake up refreshed and glad to be having a day off.  There is little wind in the shelter of the river and not a mosquito in sight although the cruising notes say they are a problem in the summer.

Having had a recommendation for breakfast at the Ballyhoo Restaurant, we decide to go over although we have quite a circuitous route to get there.  First we have to cross Lady Ev VI, then another boat that she is rafted to (we are three deep).  Then it’s up a ladder to the wooden quay.  Ah yes, the quay.  If I say it has seen better days, it’s an understatement.  If I say it’s made of wood, it’s an exaggeration.  It’s a wide area of rotten planks, with holes big enough for an elephant to sink it’s leg through.  It is all cordoned off with flimsy red and white plastic to stop the unwary public killing themselves on it but if you are coming off a boat there is no other way but to cross some of it.  Then we have to clamber up a small wall, round the plastic fence (careful that you don’t fall into the strangely placed bath tub) and, hurray, along the concrete road to the restaurant.

Breakfast is worth it though.  We have a sneak preview at the meals put in front of the guys from Lady Ev and order a feast for ourselves.  Mike goes with the Skippers’ breakfast (what else?) which consists of bacon, scrambled eggs, tomato, sausage and minced beef and I have the pancake breakfast.  This is made up of three very filling pancakes layered with cheese, bacon, onions and mushrooms.  Both come with a large pile of toast.  Just what we need.  The crew from Lady Ev are going on a tour up the Buffalo River and invite us along but to be honest, I’ve had quite enough of water for a while and the view up river doesn’t look very inviting from where we are sitting so we decline.

Having taken my computer with me we find that there is no internet service to be had anywhere, not even a paid for service which is very disappointing.

Heaving our fat little bellies back with us, we run the gauntlet of the rotten quay, do our ladder and boat clambering activities, strip off and go back to bed for a little snooze.

Mike does some routine boat jobs (engine oil check and top up and fan belt tightening type stuff) while I just hang around and read. 

Photo:  Mike doing what he does in the black hole aka the engine room

Photo:  After engine room stuff comes foot soaking and scrubbing

Later in the afternoon he goes over to Lady Ev to fix Jorg’s PC again (I don’t know what he does with it but it seems to have continual problems) and one PC fix turns into three as some of the other guys produce theirs to ‘saviour’ Mike.

At 6.45 pm I start to make our curry and at 8 pm I eat mine alone as Mike is still not back.  I am tempted to shout over that his dinner is in the dog but we haven’t got one so just inform him that it’s going cold and go to bed to read.

Not a very exciting day but at least the grib files indicate that we should be able to leave in the morning although it looks like we’ll be doing a lot of motoring.

Day 318: Richards Bay to East London, SA – 20/11/10

I sleep well as the passage is smooth and wake refreshed to do my five hour stint.  At one time a large container ship comes close and Mike chooses this point to wake up so I have some advice on what to do.  Although he goes back to sleep, he gets up early and I take the opportunity of scuttling back down to bed while it is still relatively calm.  Again I sleep well although I wake up a couple of times when I can feel us going really fast and doing the slalom thing through the waves.  When I get up I find out that we are going at 10.5 knots.  It feels really smooth but that’s because we have 3 knots of current going in the same direction.

It is a lovely bright blue sunny day with large but well spaced waves and for some hours it is a very pleasant sail.

At one point we actually get to 18.7 knots with the wind gusting to 47 knots but generally we have a steady 11 to 12 knots with 4 knots of current and 35 knots of wind coming out of the north east.  By noon we have managed 211 nautical miles for the first time ever over a 24-hour period.

However, all good things come to an end and gradually during the day the wind starts to move round earlier than predicted, first coming from the north west then the west, then it starts to die and Mike takes the genoa in and puts one engine on.

It starts to get hazy then downright grey and miserable.  By 4.30 pm both engines are on as we have only 12 knots right on the nose coming from WSW and only 1 knot of current to help us.  It is so hazy that a huge container that we can see on the radar and with AIS is only visible to us when it is one and a half miles away.  Thank God for technology.

It is now obvious we can only make East London which is disappointing and won’t get even there until around midnight. 

By 7 pm there is sheet lightning in the distance ahead of us and although the wind is now back up to about 20 knots, we are only going at around 5 knots because it’s coming from the wrong direction.

We take it in turns to snooze in the salon (actually I sleep properly but only for an hour) and approach the breakwater at the mouth of the Buffalo River at East London at around half past midnight.  It’s cold and Mike and I both put on long trousers, fleeces, waterproofs and hats.

We get permission to enter the port and motor slowly up river until we can see the railway bridge crossing it – the end for us.  As Mike looks for somewhere to anchor we see two people waving at us from another boat then calling out hello.  It’s some of the guys from Lady Ev.  They had heard me on the VHF earlier talking to another ship (Jorg actually says he heard me say I insisted that the other ship change course but I didn’t – I requested it!) and have been waiting for us to arrive.  We raft up against them and they tie extra lines from our bow and stern to the harbour wall, then we go over to their boat for a beer (well Mike does, I just go over to say hello).  It seems that they had tried to leave for Port Elizabeth earlier today but the sea conditions were so bad that when they were nearly 40 miles out they had to turn around and come back in.  You really don’t want to mess with the weather here.

Cold and tiredness soon overcome us and we climb back aboard Jeannius and head for bed.  I’m glad we’re in and safe!

 

Our position is:  33 deg 01 min S, 27 deg 53 min E

Distance so far:  18164 nautical miles

Day 317: Richards Bay to East London, SA – 19/11/10

Ugh, we wake up when the phone alarm wakes us and get ready to leave.

We are heading for Durban but depending on our progress may well head straight past.  Chessie are leaving with us but definitely stopping at Durban as they are having some rigging work done there.  It would be great to get as far as Port Elizabeth before having to stop but we’ll probably only make it as far as East London.  This weather window is supposed to last about three days but that could all change and we could end up having to hole up somewhere and waiting for the next one.

We leave the Zululand Yacht Club and head out of Richards Bay towards the sea.  There are loads of tankers and container ships at anchor outside and we zigzag our way through them before putting our genoa out.  Getting into our rhythm of watches immediately, I go back to bed and sleep for a few hours.

By the time I get up we are going faster and faster even though we have a reefed in genoa.  The sea state is good and not lumpy and it is a comfortable sail.  We make such good progress that late in the afternoon, after Mike gets the latest grib files (weather files which show the wind speed and direction), we decide not to stop at Durban as it’s obvious that we can make it to East London, if not to Port Elizabeth before the weather turns.  We call Chessie on the mobile and let them know our intentions.  We’ll see them in Knysna after their rigging work has been completed.

There’s a lot of commercial traffic but none comes too close for comfort.

I fall asleep quickly when I go off around 9 pm.

 

 

Our position is:  30 deg 43 min S, 30 deg 43 min E

Distance so far:  18005 nautical miles

Day 316: Richards Bay, South Africa – 18/11/10

We both wake up early wondering when we’ll hear news of our generator parts.  At 7.30 am Mike gets an e-mail saying that the parts have left Durban and will be with the engineers during the morning.  When Mike phones the engineers they promise to be with us around noon.

Presuming that we will be on our way tomorrow, we galvanise ourselves into action and prepare the boat for leaving.  I do another load of laundry and Mike does the paperwork and organises the re-fuelling.

Of course, sod’s law dictates that immediately we start to re-fuel, the engineers will arrive and that almost happens, but the other way around.  As I go to empty the rubbish I spot a truck pull up with a bright red unit in the back.  Yippee!!  Let’s hope it’s the right part!!

Two guys carry it carefully to Jeannius and set it down in the cockpit.  To eliminate any problems, Westerbeke have sent the whole generator end of the genset, and the guys start the complex operation of removing the old one down in a very small hole.  Thank God the weather is better than yesterday’s.

The guys then turn up to re-fuel us with jerry cans (the hose from the truck can’t reach to our position at the end of the pontoon) so it’s quite a long process.

Photo:  Emptying 300 litres of diesel from jerry cans into the tank

We carefully move our generator away from this process!  It takes about three hours to remove the old generator. 

Photo:  The new generator end of the genset

Photo:  Comparing old with new – and noting the differences!

Mike and I go up to the marina office, file our ‘flight plan’ and pay our very small bill.  At 5.20 pm it’s the moment of truth.  They start the genset and it just turns over but won’t catch.  I can’t believe it.

I go over to Chessie,  After all the waiting, I can’t bear to watch.  Half an hour later, Mike comes over too.  It’s not working and the guys have no idea why.  It’s pointless staying here.  Mike will contact the SA agent and get someone to look at it in somewhere else en route.  For now we will struggle on without a genset.  At least we have the part.  Tomorrow we will head out early in the morning as planned.

We go to Porkey’s for a meal with Chessie and Brown Eyed Girl to try to cheer ourselves up.

Photo:  The mob at Porkey’s

Photo:  Mike and I

Photo:  Eline and Jutta

Photo:  Judy and me

We can’t eat all our food and end up with a doggie bag.  That’s lunch sorted out for tomorrow!  We go to bed rather dejected.  After all the excitement of the part actually arriving, we can’t believe it’s still not working.

We set the alarm for 4.45 am.  Ugh.  That’s just adding insult to injury.