We spent the morning puttering about with small tasks getting ready (again) to go offshore. The weather was grey and intermittently misty so Kyle wasn’t able to come and caulk our big windows in the salon. Yesterday, he and Robin had spent the afternoon fashioning a bit of hardwood into a perfect collar to fit around the mast inside the underneath of the maststep, and installing it with a hefty application of sikiflex. The goal is to eliminate as much flexing and moving of the mast against the deck fitting as possible. We’d had the exterior fitted with an aluminium plate in Richard’s Bay, now the interior was complete as well. I think this passage to Capetown will be a great test of the waterproofing we hope it affords. For lunch we went to the Point Yacht club with Dave from Chao Lay. We each had the famous PYC beef pie and chips with gravy. I’ve eaten pie in every British Colonial country I’ve visited. This really was one of the Best! After our delicious lunch, Lars filled the water tanks, I set up the Lee berths for off shore sleeping, and we slipped the lines and took off. The wind was predicted to start swinging from the south westerly blow we’d been enduring all day yesterday and this morning around to the east and up to the north. We motored offshore until 1600, then with a 15 knot wind 40 degrees off the port nose, coming from just west of south, we put out a double reefed main and motorsailed. We tried the Genoa, but it luffed and backwinded and acted like a brake, so away it went, and we put out the Hoyt stay sail sheeted in tight. By 19:30 we’d hit a big squall; 24 knots of wind on the nose at first, then it clocked round to the west! WEST? The wind is supposed to have backed to the east! Crazy South African weather! Away went the backwinded main, on we sailed with the Hoyt and the motor. About 21:00 we finally picked up the positive Agulhas current and began to zoom along despite the strong 30 degree to starbrd wind. Now it’s 23:30 and we are gallumphing along at over eight knots of boat speed with the wind just south of west on the starbrd nose. But it is not as uncomfortable as three nights ago when we set out from Richard’s Bay.
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