Monday, 22nd November 2010
It was a dull morning as we got out and looked at the conditions.
We are expecting to leave today for Cape Town, so we called Tony in Durban for a weather forecast. Will we have a window? The answer is yes. The wind will be light southerly for today and tomorrow, brilliant, that means a fetch for us along the south coast. The distance to Cape Town is 420 miles, just a hop for us, we should get there in 2.5 days......
Well, that's the theory, reality is often different.
The trawlers that we were rafted up to are also on the move. All busy since early morning getting their boats ready. These trawlers have huge lamps on both sides of their vessels, and we have often come across them on night passages.
The light from them is almost blinding and we usually see the glow from them over the horizon ever before we see the boat itself. Put a few together, and they look like a city.
11.00hrs The Trawlers want to leave, but are not allowed out of port until midday, but they have to get diesel, etc before leaving port. They will spend the next 3 weeks at sea catching squid, and all done with lights and hand lines, sooo we had to go as well. We cleared ourselves out of port. That's us and Grand Filou and by 12.00hrs were outside the harbour.
The wind was SW, right on the nose, and blowing 28/30knots! This is not what we were supposed to have, but we are big boys and kept going. We passed many whales as we struggled west. The seas were big enough, but very lumpy and progress was slow, even with the engine running, we also had 2 reefs in the main and 2 reefs in the staysail.
15.00hrs We decided we would stop at Knysna Bay about 130 miles west and spend a day and night there until this misery went somewhere else... BUT, BUT but again, by 16.00hrs, we had enough, and the port window was leaking like a basket again ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! The poor old boat, not to mind the old sailors on board, were getting an awful hammering as she slammed into the severe choppy conditions. The packet of "stugeron" (anti sea sick tabs) was gobbled up by all. We are going back to PE. We radioed Grand Filou and they agreed to return to PE as well, and will remain there until this weather changes direction.
We arrived back in the harbour around 7.30pm and Grand Filou tied up to a trawler and we tied up to her. We were frozen, even with all the heavy weather gear we had on. Ohhhhh we could be sailing at home. We must have looked like a bunch of Eskimos.
We get news from home that the government have collapsed and there will be a general election in January. OH poor old Ireland...
It was a dark, damp and miserable night as we climbed over the trawlers and then hauled Aileen up the quay wall and onto the Quay itself. There we were collected by our pre arranged taxi and off we went to the "Blue Waters Restaurant" for dinner. The Yacht Club was closed, so we had to travel. We had absolutely great steaks, melt in the mouth stuff, followed by sinful desserts, mainly chocolate muffins, soaked in beautiful dark chocolate and then smothered in whipped cream.........ohhhhhh to die for.
Later, we returned by taxi to the boats, Neil went into Grand Filou for a few night caps, while Skipper and Aileen crashed out on A Lady.
That's all for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)