can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Free & BrEasy - Dancing with High's and Low's



To safely sail the 850 nm from Richards Bay to Cape down requires a new skill: learning to dance with the weather systems! The good guy is the Indian Ocean High pressure system which sends winds from the North East, down the South African east coast and literally blows you down to Cape Town. The passage is further helped by the Agulhas current which flows a few miles offshore in the same North East to South West direction and can add up to 6 knots to your boat speed! The bad guys are the low pressure systems that come up from Southern Ocean or off the South African mainland and cause strong winds from the South West to blow up the coast. Not only are these head winds, if you are travelling to Cape Town, but the combination of these winds with the Agulhas current can produce "Abnormal Waves". Having read about these waves all we know is that we don't want to be near them! The bad guys are a bit unpredictable but on average come knocking every 3-5 days. The skill is to set sail at the end of a Low and use the favourable winds from the establishing High, plus the Agulhas current, to get down the coast to a safe port before the next Low comes through!

Not surprisingly, predicting the timings of Lows and Highs has become the number one hobby of the World ARC fleet. Every cheery "Good Morning" is rapidly followed up by "When are you leaving" and "When do you think the next Low is coming through"? Huddles of circumnavigators stare myopically at their computer screens discussing millibars and dates. Gradually the boats have been leaving as a weather window opens sufficiently to allow the first 85nm passage to Durban. It's the nautical equivalent of snakes and ladders. Waiting to throw a six and hoping you land on an Agulhas ladder that will speed you on your way, and avoiding the Low pressure snakes!

Free & Breasy, not only could not throw a six, we thought we had lost the dice! The boom stupid! Orge, the chandlery manager (his name is George but the South Africans have a quaint way of using the last part of the first name, like Tian for Christian), did his very best to speed up the boom repair but it eventually took 11 days. We had spent the time predicting wind directions from the surface pressure prediction charts (comically called GRIBs) and concluded that we needed to leave on Friday 21st November to use the weather window that would at least give us a chance of getting to Cape Town in time for Alejandro's and Michael's flights home for Christmas on the 9th December. The boom arrived on Friday morning but there were a few inevitable hitches so the boom was not on the boat and ready to go till 5pm. At 6pm we at last threw a six, cast off and we were on our way to Cape Town!

Our stay at Richards Bay had been memorable. The safari park, World ARC parties, numerous runs and walks to see the Indian Ocean rollers crash on the beach. Meals in the restaurant and magnificent dinners on other boats, Jonathan's impromptu birthday party on Merlin of Poole, and even buying Christmas presents in the Chandlery for the women who have everything! Daily contact with family at home using Skype. The Rand has also dropped in value over the last few years so food and drink were relatively cheap for us.

We also had a glimpse of South African life. Afrikaans is still widely spoken by the white population who are affluent, while the black population still appears to be very poor (we were the only whites walking on the road into the town centre, all the whites were in cars). There are many problems that remain to be solved before Nelson Mandela's dream of an equal and fair society is realised but the country is beautiful, everyone cheerful and we felt safe. Importantly for us, we left with a repaired boom which looks much stronger and a repaired hydraulic ram for the autopilot.

Geboinga (Thankyou) Zulu Land!

We are now 260 nm from Richards Bay and only 80nm from East London. We eventually found the Agulhas current about 50 nm south of Durban and overnight were travelling at 7-9 knots with a water speed of 4-5 knots. We are motor sailing with the jib as we can't use the boom for another day until the glue sets! The very good news is that the autopilot works perfectly freeing us from the tyranny of hand steering. We are planning to get into East London before the next Low and will leave as soon as this has passed (possibly less than 12 hours), and head for Port Elizabeth and then wait for a weather window to take us to Mossel Bay and finally Cape Town. Yes, we are learning to dance with the High's and Low's to avoid meeting the bad guys and their abnormal waves!



Previous | Next