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American Spirit II - Day 311; Great Repair Day, Lousy Laundry Day, a Sober Skippers Meeting & and Prize Giving Dinner; Wednesday, November 12, 2014y



Jeremy is up at 8:00 AM, followed by Joel and me at 9:30 AM. I guess we slept in.

Trevor from Nels Marine shows up mid morning, and after installing a new mother board in the Ray Marine E-80 Chart Plotter, we now have depth and navigation readings once more. This is a HUGE fix! And will make our hazardous journey down the coast of the Republic of South Africa much safer. The cost of the part and labor to fix the unit is $1,500. Expensive. I tell Trevor that I was thinking of upgrading the E-80 to a newer system if he couldn't fix it. He said that if I did so I'd have to get a new radar system, also; because my 'old' (6 years old) systems on the boat are analog, and the news ones are digital. Upgrading everything to digital would probably cost me $10,000.

We pick up our laundry late morning and determine that we're missing about $600 in clothes, including most of our thermal underwear, my only pants that I wear when its cold out, 15 shirts, underwear, shorts, etc. In one of the three bags we get is an assortment of lady's thong panties and a bra. And the panties don't even fit! The Zululand Yacht Club is incensed that this mistake occurred, and I suspect that if we don't get all of our stuff they will bar the contractor from doing business there any more. If we don't get our clothes back, I'm going to tell the laundry contractor to pay me 6,500 Rand so we can buy more clothes. Unfortunately, though, we won't be able to replace much of what we need because they don't sell it in the RSA. And I'm sure he's not going to pay me if he thinks his days of doing laundry in the yacht club are over.

Around lunch time we fueled the boat, adding about 83 gallons of diesel at a cost of $462.

We have lunch in the yacht club restaurant at 2:20 PM. My lunch, a hamburger and fries, costs 35 Rand or $3.12. As I said, food is cheap here. Lyn, a yacht club official, tells me later that the Big Mac cost in South Africa is the cheapest in the world. I believe it.

At 3:00 PM a presentation is held by Roy about Cruising the Wild Coast of South Africa. Its a sobering presentation. Roy says that the weather we're having is like August weather, equivalent to our February. Winter weather. So the 'pleasant' November weather we're supposed to have is 3 months late in coming. Another big problem we have is that we have to clear into and out of every port we visit in South Africa. Since it takes a day to clear in and a day to clear out, this will discourage us from stopping a lot in going down the coast to Cape Town. And the operating principle in sailing in South Africa, is that after a gale force low pressure system goes thru, it is followed immediately by a high wind high pressure system. We're told that once the barometer starts to rise, that we need to get ready to leave. Of course when the high pressure system starts blowing 30+ knots its from the dreaded southwest direction. So we have to wait until it switches to the northeast in 12-24 hours. Even if the northeast wind is blowing at gale force, 34 knots, we have to leave to head south or we'll never get to Cape Town in time for our flight home December 17. Its actually only 6 days sailing to Cape Town; 895 miles. But we will be happy and lucky to get there in two weeks! If we have unlucky weather, we could be stuck in a port for as long as a week and a half. Just one port. The ports we may stop in on the way to Cape Town are: Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, and Mossel Bay. Stay tuned.

The prize giving dinner starts at 6:00 PM with a social hour first; followed by speeches; a dance demonstration; buffet dinner; and then native dancing outside after dinner. Prize giving and skits put on by the boats follows that, but I depart before its over. Joel and Jeremy stay and get back to the boat after 10:00 PM. During the prize giving Folie a Deux gets first place in the multi-hull section; Ghost receives an award for their constant net help (thank you Tim); and NDS Darwin hits 24 knots in boat speed during the leg. Wow! Since we have to get up at 5:30 AM for our safari tour tomorrow, we need to get some sleep.

I'm in bed by 10:30 PM.

Brian Fox



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