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American Spirit II - Day 371; Last Full Day in Cape Town, South Africa; & British AirwaysStiffs Us; Friday, January 9, 2015



Up at 6:00 AM. Jeanine and I departed for the airport at 7:45 AM to pick up the 'delayed' bag. Once we got there, no bag. And the bag wasn't on the next two flights either, at 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM. Gross incompetence by BA.

Joel went to the Skipper's meeting at 9:00 AM; and I got there around 9:30 AM. Went over details for the leg to St. Helena, 1,700 miles and then on to Salvador, Brazil; another 1,900 miles. Lot of crime in Brazil, so be careful. Don't walk around with an SLR Camera, or wear expensive jewelry and watches. Two crew were mugged last rally due to walking in an area they were told to avoid. Apparently, you can be walking down a 'main drag,' and everything is great; but go one block the main drag and your in a neighborhood you shouldn't be in. St. Helena is the only stop on our circumnavigation that a member of the World Cruising Club has not been to. There is no commercial airport, so no rally personnel can go ahead and prepare for us since they can't get there. I'm going to mail a lot of post cards from there. They can only be 'delivered' by boat. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes.

At 10:45 AM I had a scare as I didn't know if the satellite phone was stolen in the burglary. I went right to the boat and checked...it was there. Thank God!

Joel and I ate breakfast at the restaurant next to the boat at 11:15 AM. I had bacon, eggs and French toast; and Joel had French toast and something called 'healthy breakfast,' that didn't look healthy to me.

After breakfast I went to a couple of currency exchanges to exchange dollars and Euros for British Sterling, the currency used in St. Helena. I had to pay a commission to go from those currencies to the South African Rand first, before going to the pound. A rip off, and an expensive one at that. I got 100 pounds for Joel and the same amount for myself. I then went to an internet cafe and printed the form for the boat burglary; then scanned and sent it to my insurance company in the US. I also printed out some medical literature on my travel policy as I need to show the authorities in St. Helena that I have 'evacuation' insurance. They don't want you visiting the island without it. Back at the boat I spent time putting stuff away.

Joel installed a winch and VHF holder; and glued some other items that were broken, including a cup holder and fin on our electric outboard. Then he worked on setting the satellite phone up for sending and receiving the boat's logs and emails. Doing so costs money, so we won't use the satellite phone to do so unless we can't communicate via the SSB; of if we need to send out a message in the daytime. We only do SSB at night because reception during daytime hours is lousy.

Later, Jeanine, Joel and I went to the local police department. Jeanine needed to be fingerprinted for a license back home; and I tried to have someone notarize a document for me. However, they don't have notaries in South Africa; they have 'Commissions of Oath.' Since my form said 'notary,' I couldn't get the form handled.

At 6:15 PM Jeanine went to the train station to pick up a bag for someone on another boat. Joel and I did some last minute provisioning.

From 8:30 PM to 10:45 PM we ate dinner with Jeanine; and Jack and Audrey from Civetta II.

Back at the boat, Jeanine took a shower and did the laundry at 11:15 PM; I updated the 'delayed' luggage bag information in the British Airways website, instructing them to send the bag to my house in Florida. Janet will deal with them as we're not going to be able to while we're crossing the Atlantic.

Joel went to bed at 11:30 PM and I followed at 2:00 AM. Jeanine came back with the laundry at 4:00 AM, got 2 hours of sleep,then departed to the airport to see if the bag was there. It was not.

Brian Fox

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