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| At Houtbay Market |
Wow,
three weeks really is a long time.
Dropped Kevin at the airport on Saturday morning, off to Japan, then
bided my time for a couple of hours and collected Gaynor who flew down,
compliments of Kevin and Johnny, for Mothers Day on the Sunday. What a lovely present.
We did the tourist thing for three days,
absolutely wore Gaynor out lol. We
visited the Hout Bay Market, had lunch with Blythe and Henk in Kenilworth,
great to catch up, dinner at Eileen,
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| Great weather for a bus ride |
the Blue and Red Route of the Hop on Hop
off Tour bus with a couple of hours in between at V&A Waterfront for lunch,
what a wonderful experience, funny and informative. A visit to the hairdresser,
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| Penguins to the right, Penguins to the left |
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| See - "The Mountain" |
Penguins and the submarine
tour. Then all of a sudden it was all
over and Gaynor was winging her way back home, grateful for some peace and
quiet I think.
 |
| In charge on the Sub |
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| A Cassowary, damn ugly but so photogenic!! |
Spent time at World of Birds, what an awesome
place to see all kinds of birds, mainly damaged or permanently
 |
| Albino squirrel |
disabled and some
abandoned ex-pets, most are not shut away in cages  |
| Pink Ibis & my shoe! |
but are in aviaries that you
walk through and which enables you to get quite close in some areas (took a
while to get the poop out from the bottom of my shoes though). 
Monkey Land, the big aviary full of
squirrel
monkeys was my all time favourite. They
climb all over you, looking for anything that might be hidden in your pockets
then just have fun, adorable. They are
so damn fast it is impossible to take photos of them, even more so when they
are staring right into your camera lens.
I
got to a bit of sewing too, made new blue covers for the stuff in the saloon
and some new “curtains” for the cabins, turned out I don’t like the material so
the bathrooms have new curtains and I am still on the hunt for the ever elusive
curtain material I will be happy with. I
even managed trips to Century City and Retreat without getting lost, an amazing
feat. Skype is a great means of
communication and Kevin and I spent quite a bit of time using it, but its much
nicer having him home again, especially as the weather turned a bit nasty,
nicer having someone to share the nervous moments with.
Kevin’s Japanese adventure (by Kevin :-)) :
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| Spotted while walking surely a brain frying hazard? |
I arrived in Tokyo on the Sunday afternoon and was soon on my
way to my favorite hotel in HonAtsugi – the Rembrandt J
these days on arrival I get greeted like a long lost friend – I think I have
been here too many times already.
This trip really was a new high in the coming close to Nature’s
fury stakes, first on 12 May a super typhoon whizzed past just off Yokohama
dumping quite a lot of rain and heavy wind – Noul was its name ……first good
reason to leave the office before 6 PM on a weekday – in the office there were
English warnings of the storm and advising an early departure from the office –
YAY. http://www.weather.com/storms/typhoon/news/typhoon-noul-japan-okinawa-tokyo-2015
Next morning was a 6.8M quake just after 6am – quite a distance
off shore – had the hotel rocking - and I am on the 11th floor. Great
start to the trip.
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| Doing Rice Fields with Mohan |
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| Any space is put to use |
I learned a little more about rice farming the day I met up with
Mohan for a lunch at Little India. I walked to the restaurant from the hotel
and the walk went past a number of rice fields and I was amazed at how this
process works. The rice farmers have some pretty cool machines to automate the
process – but it is still a long hard process. The fields are all laid out
along the rivers and built in layers that form terraces.
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| Yanmar Rice Planter |
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| Preparing fields (mud) |
These can be selectively flooded by channeling water from ducts crisscrossing
the fields. Once full of water – a tractor has a leveling tool on the back that
loosens the sand into a muddy solution and leaves it in a flat path. This water
stays in and the mud settles. Sometime later there is a rice planting machine
brought in to plant the rice shoots – then these are left to grow over summer,
water management is key to the success of the crops, and success means good
money for these farmers. Some rather interesting info can be found in these
links: http://ricepedia.org/japan
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| Explanation of Erevator made me laugh |
Funny this, my stay at the Rembrandt had to be disrupted for one
night as the hotel was fully booked before I made my booking – on Sunday 24 I
had to pack up all my goodies – check out Monday morning. Then into another
hotel for one night – then back to the Rembrandt for the last two nights. Hotel
for the 25th was nice but small – for a few nights it could work – for a few
weeks Nope. Had to leave the room to change my mind it was so small J
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| The disabled parking bays |
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| These poor people |
Then I also learned the meaning of handicapped parking – took
these two pictures to illustrate – I guess owning a Lamborghini Diablo
qualifies as a handicap ??
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| At the SAP office, Tokyo |
Lastly on Monday 25 May a 5.3M earthquake with a depth of 35km
below Tokyo – I was in the SAP japan office in Tokyo, on the 6th
floor in a meeting room when the building started gently swaying – the Japanese
SAP consultants hardly acknowledged it, then a little more serious shaking – then
all the Japanese Cellphone Quake alarms went off. Everyone looked around
nervously and someone says – this is pretty serious – I grab my cell phone and stick
it in my pocket (figured it may come in handy when people start looking for me J)
Luckily it started easing off and the gentle swaying returned, about another 5
minutes and we were back to normal – this place is fascinating. I will admit I
looked under the table for shelter and found each seat has a hard hat and
survival bag hanging below it – comforting… Anyway, the trip was a success and
I flew out on Thursday this time and what a luck – both legs of the trip I had
an empty seat next to me – this is the way to do it from now.
Just
before Kevin left our helm seat was basically, FINALLY, finished. All that was required were the bushes to
enable it to swivel safely, these were eventually delivered after Kevins return
and true to prediction, the invoice turned out to be double the cost of the
quote. A really lovely job but was it
worth the hassle and the cost? Hmmm……….
We
had a surprise visit from Alma and Leandri, they made a road trip to Cape Town
to deliver Leandri and her car and made time to come and visit, we haven’t seen
each other for years, so much to catch up on….
Temperatures
have dropped to 14deg C highs this week, two days of continuous rain, the
weather bureau predicted 100% rain for one day, never heard that before! All
add up to winter, in my book anyway, the helpful chap in Foodlovers Market
happily informed me winter only begins in July in Cape Town. Doing the washing becomes quite a challenge
in these winds, dehumidifier is put to full use and that which goes outside is
pegged severely.
We
went to a “cultural” evening with the other liveaboard yachties from the Club,
takes place at Clovelly Golf Club once a month, they have a limited, reasonably
priced menu for the event and it costs R50.00 per person for the
entertainment. 
This is apparently mainly
musicians or singers or both, this time we had two singers, the first guy was
good, you could imagine sitting at a wine farm or in a lounge around a nice
crackling fire listening to him, the second was a real hippie throw back, long
white hair, gypsy pants and brilliant on the guitar, combined with a sharp
sense of humour he was the favourite.
One thing is for sure, one is never stuck for something to do in Cape
Town!!
The
40 – 50 knot winds we experienced in the first week of June did some damage to
walk-on A, it has the misfortune of quite a steep ramp from the bridge and this
seems to have come unstuck in the howling wind, destroying itself in the
process.
Resulted in a couple of
liveaboards being stuck on the mooring “island” then they moved, now we have
new neighbours J, we are
grateful we are tied up at the end of the main walk on where the structure
seems a bit stronger. We still had loads
of being thrown around and jerking, extreme weather for sure, no wonder it is
called the Cape of Storms.
After
trying very hard to come up with an answer to the eternal question – “What do
you do all day?” no matter how much I spell out my daily tasks, it just sounds
like nothing. So I have decided that I
am no longer going to be doing “nothing”, instead I am going to devote more
time and effort to my favourite hobby –
photography, and try to make it more of a profession. I am going to be spending a lot of time
learning and becoming proficient in Photo Shop and will be spending a lot more
time taking photos and putting into practice all that I have learned from my
course and am learning on line. I have
made a start and already registered a number of photos with iStock and will
continue to build on that. You have been
warned J
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| Seal Island fore Cape Point behind |
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| Lunch on the go |
Finally
the weather improved and we went sailing, what a super fun day, around Seal
Island again, sailed with seals and penguins but didn’t spot any sharks, then
up toward Cape Point and on the way back suddenly a spout appeared less than 15
meters in front of us
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| Enjoying his new seat |
followed by a really speedy dive by a whale, so close we
braced for impact but the clever thing was out of the way, what a fright. Just after we had finished tying up on our
mooring and were sitting on the front with our GnT sundowners low and behold
there was a whale in the channel behind our boat at the marina, guess it must
have liked us.
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| Apparently a picture speaks louder than words |
So
now the stbd rear cabin has also been painted and is looking all new and spiffy
and we are getting to grips with many of the little things that need addressing
and planning a sail this weekend again, weather looking good, although it is
severely cold out there!!
Keep
warm and cozy everyone, if all else fails whiskey coffee’s are the answer J
