We received some really sad news at the end of July that shook us to the core, our friend and fellow Sailor, Jaco Kruger, died suddenly of a massive heart attack at 41 years young. Jaco leaves behind an amazing family Janet, Jenny, Julie, Jackie and little Jack the Jack Russel. We learnt so much from them and trips to Mozambique will always remind us of them - RIP Jaco :-(
Its hard to believe we have been living on our yacht for 12 months now. Wow how time flies. August is always a busy month at the Yacht Club and this year was no exception. The 10th of August was the Commodore's Dinner. This is the current Commodore's last official engagement before the AGM takes place and a new committee is elected.
The years prize giving also takes place at this dinner. Trophies are awarded for various sailing and fishing accomplishments throughout the year, although this year the fishing ones were dismally represented - seemingly Karl and Kevin wish to change that by the next prize giving but don't think there are any prizes for catching baby sharks or puffer fish. MaXScene won the Tantrum trophy for the most trips Richards Bay to Durban. Whilst there were actually three of us that made the trip to Durban the deciding factor was that we had made the most journeys out to sea in the direction of Durban in our sailing efforts over the year.
Very proud moment :-)
Sunday was the Closing of the Season Sail - the official farewell to the out-going Commodore, Kirsten Schreuder. Those boats that had flags dressed their boats, Sirocco's crew all dressed up as pirates and water balloons, water pistols and buckets lined the decks. We were all to exit the channel, reverse and sail backwards past the Commodore (in the middle of the channel on his own boat), pay respects and then free for all. We had fun chasing each other, soaking each other and generally acting like kids, what a blast. Feeling a tad tired after the huge party the night before, the festivities for the rest of the day were kept to a minimum, in fact Kevin and I had an afternoon nap!!
The next weekend was the AGM and it was, as predicted, a humdinger. Mutiny would probably be the best way to describe it, the last couple of years had seen many of the same committee members re-elected, fraud at its ultimate best taking place in the finance office, basically a "mafia" type of situation that was strangling the club. A couple of members saw fit to overthrow this and rejuvenate the Yacht Club, so a completely new committee has been elected and that new broom is sweeping triple sharp. All of a sudden there is an air of excitement and enthusiasm in the club - great. To aid the new committee - everyone has to do their bit - I have volunteered to write a monthly news letter and to help revamp the website and do basic marketing for the Club. Keeping me out of mischief!!
Two weeks ago we got a call from our friend Alan that there was a great photo opportunity at the beach, a ship had run aground and the tug boats were busy pulling it off. The swells that day were around 6m, on our walk in the morning we were shocked at the size of swell that was in the harbor as the swells were pushing into shore from the sea. We watched a ship leaving the harbor and battle through the swell as it crossed the bar to sea and wondered if the authorities would close the port. Theory has it that poor old M/V Smart was leaving harbor, fully laden with coal, heading for Singapore. Her draft is 17.4m and the channel is dredged to 22m. The height of the swell is measured from the middle to the top, if you do the calculations this left very little water underneath the ship in a trough and it seems that it might have bottomed out as it left the harbor, damaging the rudder and propellor, rendering it helpless to the swells that pushed it sideways on to the sand bar just off the beach.
We arrived to watch three tug boats battling the sea trying valiantly to pull the ship back out to deeper water but unfortunately nature had other ideas and after about 2 hours her back broke and the captain gave the 7 short 1 long signal to abandon ship, a really heartbreaking sound indeed. The pilot helicopter safely removed the whole crew from the ship and we all stood watching as the sea pushed relentlessly, widening the crack more and more. It has been a very fortunate wreck, if you can call it that, as firstly no one was injured, the ship hit a sand bank just outside the shipping channel so it does not affect the ships in and out of harbor, it narrowly avoided shark nets and is not far from the sewerage pipe. The rear of the ship remained intact with no leakage of fuel oil or diesel and up to now the only pollution has been coal dust. They seem to have removed the majority of the fuel and will be starting to remove the coal in the next week.
Having our own means of sea transport has been a huge bonus, we have made three excursions to sea to take photos of the poor wreck one of which included Trevor from Contraspec and his gyro copter to which he attaches two Go-Pro cameras. He got some amazing aerial shots and footage of the wreck and the dissipating coal dust and also this pretty amazing image of our yacht from the air.
We have been busy down-scaling our lives yet again. We have brought our caravan back from Sodwana, where it has been on holiday for two years, and put it up for sale, looks like we might have a buyer, will know by the weekend. At the same time we have the bakkie on the floor at a garage in town for sale and we are now the proud new owners of a reddish (cannot figure what to call the color) 2011 Nissan Micra. Great for long trips and costs a lot less in petrol and maintenance. Kevin has a contract with Toyota in Durban starting next week and might have to do a bit of traveling up and down.
We have also sold our bicycles and our scooter and are clearing the last of the things out of our garage that we rent at the club so that we can give that up too. Soon we will be left with a Micra, a Venter trailer and a Catamaran, seems really wierd.
We made a hole in our deck where the offending spring was that had loosened in the deck, allowing water into the wood between the two layers of fibreglass (not a good thing at all) and dug out all the wet wood and filled the cavity with fibreglass ready for a new spring to be installed, will soon have the main sail ready for sailing again. The opening of the Sunday Sailing series takes place on 15 September, the day after the opening of the Season Sail and welcoming in of the new Commodore - more water fights and fun!!We have also joined Beachcombers Photography Club, a local club that meets once a month, some really talented people who are so willing to share their knowledge and give us advice. Photos can only improve from here :-)
Our goal since we have been back on the boat has been to leave Richards Bay by October/November to head for Cape Town and to depart from there early next year for Brazil, via St Helena. Well as they say, life is what happens when you are making other plans and we are no exception and due to a couple of circumstances beyond our control we are going to delay our departure by another year, so for those of you that thought you were out of time to come and visit, you have another chance!! Here is a photo taken on one of our sunset cruises in the harbor, guess you can understand why we decided to stay here...
