15 Dec - 30 Dec 2018 (RCYC to St Helena Island)

And so begins the next leg of our adventure, it began when we departed Richards Bay in June 2014 and continues after many adventures, following our departure from Cape Town on 15 December 2018, next stop St Helena Island in the Atlantic Ocean.

We are on our way

We had loaded the poor old girl to the top of her knee-high stockings with extra food, drink, diesel and petrol to suffice 4 people for 50 days. Whilst she is no longer aero dynamic, she continues to perform like a true star, giving speed and comfort to the best of her ability.

Attaching Personal Locator Beacons's
to PFD's (life jackets) 

The conditions leaving Cape Town were choppy, lumpy and plain uncomfortable. The first 2 – 3 days had been earmarked for developing the sea legs, a large pot of nutritious vegetable soup and cooked chicken, dry biscuits and snacks helped that along. 

Full moon on night watch,
beautiful

A shift roster was also set up, we decided on a schedule of 3 hour watches per person at night and 4 hour watches per day, this allowed for good rest periods for all, the benefit of having four helmsmen. 

So, first morning I pop out for my shift at 5am glassy eyed and with a rather flat tail, sitting patiently waiting to take over duty, only to realise I am 3 hours early, sadly this happened a couple more times!

Just before departing Cape Town Graeme and Kevin installed bilge pumps with alarms in the engine bays, under the beds in the aft cabins. Day 2 and the port bilge alarm sounds its shrill screech, there is water where there shouldn’t be. A quick scramble and we discover (using a mirror and headlight in a small cavity – real boat stuff) that water is coming in through the air intake grill on the back sugar scoop as the waves are surging up over the scoops and into the cockpit – a cold wet rude awakening if one is not quick at lifting ones feet. 

A small hole fault in the fibreglass where the air intake box  was originally mounted was also found to be making a pretty little fountain and together with water leaking in through the outside shower mount, was initially thought to be the issue. This hole was sealed with a sika made specifically for using and curing in wet conditions. Poor Graeme got himself drenched while trying to create a scupper effect on the back step to stop the ingress of water, apparently, we were not in tropical waters yet.  Two days later at 3am, when the sea state was building again, another rude awakening as both engine bilge pumps sounded their distress. 

I have silicon grease and know how
to use it...

This was when we realised the design flaw of these air intake boxes was never going to make this work, the solution – to seal the air intakes from the outside which was promptly done, problem solved. We have hatches at the front of the engine bays that can be opened, if necessary, for air.  The shower had to be revisited again as the plastic cover was coming off, it was taped up inside so would not move, so Kevin closed it up with silicone grease on the outside to stop the water ingress.

Sunrise at sea, beautiful

We had dolphins escort us as we left Dassen Island behind in a much gentler, long swell. Ship traffic, as expected, is quite busy. Michelle very calmly handled being the polony in a very big ship sandwich with container ships on both sides in both directions. Then we hit the drop in wind that we knew would be along our route, didn’t make it any less frustrating but we were prepared nonetheless. We spent 2 days motor sailing, but all aboard were feeling better and were settled into a routine of sorts.

We flew the Maxine spinnaker, a big white A-symmetrical spinnaker with a large black silhouette of a Siamese cat on it, representing our much loved cat after whom the boat is named. Fittingly, as it was raised, Toto’s song Africa was playing, a special moment, and that’s where the pleasantries ended. As the sock was raised there was a clunk and a small black object bounced off the deck, after checking all the shackles and connections it was concluded that the really good rechargeable torch must have been left in the bag while the fore hatches were being checked before leaving and that was it, left in the dark, thank goodness for good head lights. 

Then the spinnaker struck once more, time to bring it down, the plan, Donna and Graeme to release the tack and clew lines, Kevin to douse the sock. The execution, Donna doesn’t release her line fast enough, gets a small rope burn, Graeme ends up with smoke wafting off his fingers as his line thunders through them, slapping him a couple of times on the way past, then the spinnaker comes back and tries to knock him flying off the deck. We might need to rethink our spinnaker tactics.

We are heading west. This means that every 15° we need to alter our watches/clocks by 1 hour, the first one created a bit of chaos with the shift roster.  Michelle sits diligently every morning cutting up plastic and paper and stuffing them into empty bottles or jars, together with the squashed tins we are amazed at how little rubbish we have, still nothing other than biodegradable foodstuffs overboard.  Also as we head toward the tropics the weather is definitely warming, even the nights, although chilly are no longer really cold, we have hope that we will reach warmer pastures soon.

Iridium Go is our means of communication, via satellites, it gives us access to weather and passage planning and transmits our position. Fascinatingly it also allows forms of basic, very slow, communication, we are able to send and receive tiny text only, no photo’s included, emails and sms’es. We have also been able to keep in contact with other yachts, namely a friend Rob Wellman, who is part of a delivery crew on Electrified, a concept hybrid powered Voyage catamaran, heading for the Miami Boat Show, they left Cape Town a couple of hours before us but they are very light and making great time, currently 2 days ahead. We are also chatting to friends Roux and Christine Gerber on their catamaran Era, we met Roux and Christine when they were delivery crew on our yacht MaXScene, from Cape Town to Richards Bay in 2010, they are en route to Cabedelo, Brazil having just departed from St Helena, the same route we plan to follow so we eagerly await their feedback.  We are fortunate to have a great support base back home, between Des and Alan who give support and suggestions and keep an eagle eye on our progress, to family and friends who diligently update social media platforms for us, keeping any interested parties up to date and even a communication from fellow sailor Barry on Spailpin, he departed Saldanha approximately 12 months ago and is currently heading out of the Antarctic.

Graeme caught an 11kg blue fin tuna, well actually fish acquisition started with a little what we think was a shrimpfish on the trampoline one morning, sushi for one? Then a little Bonito, we thought he needed to grow a bit more, little realising that he was probably fully grown, so back he went, finally the tuna, caught on the bungee, was worth keeping and got cleaned and filleted and turned into sashimi and tuna steaks for 8 meals. The rods came out of the water then.

Things to do on board? Exercise – Graeme does resistance training at the mast every couple of days, I have tried pilates, managed to do an hour but it was more a combination of pilates, yoga and some form of gymnastics, its impossible to balance when sailing on a rolling ocean, so will stick to stretches, the natural core strengthening that you get from sailing and the odd bits of dancing I resort to when on night shift. 

As ship sightings have become less we have a friendly competition on as to who sees the most on watch, Kevin has chalked up an aeroplane and dolphins and the only whale, on Boxing day he got a huge surprise on his watch when a whale popped up in the water next to him, he gets all the exciting stuff. The rest of us have ships, but Graeme and Michelle seem to attract the curious ones, we have had to radio two ships to ask if they have seen us and to alter course to avoid us, one of which actually altered course the wrong way, putting him on a collision course with us, eish.  Reading and quiz books, cooking, laundry and sleeping seem to take up the rest.

Our fresh vegetables have become a bit of a bother.  Provisioning for such a long period required careful planning, meat, veg, etc allocated for each meal and purchased accordingly, starting with a couple of items that would not last long, extending to those such as squashes and potatoes, etc that will probably make it to the end of the trip. We had a couple of heads of broccoli and cauliflower, some fresh tomatoes and green beans and thought vacuum sealing them would prolong their fridge life, well no, in fact it made them ferment, nasty, the dreadful smell from them permeated everything and took days to go, we tossed the cauli’s and broccoli into the sea, fearful that the fish would throw them back. 

We managed to drag the green beans and tomatoes out a little longer but this was definitely a provisioning failure, so we learn. We hung the cabbages in nets at the back of the cockpit, only to find they are not very partial to sea air, so after getting our shore support to google cabbage storage they were wrapped in paper towel and placed gently on the front bunk where they are now turned daily, hopefully they stay with us a bit longer.

 

The parasailer, a slightly hardier spinnaker that is easier to raise and drop is used every day from 22 Dec, brought down at night for safety sake, and as the winds were now a fairly constant 15 – 20 knots and the sea state more settled, we were eating up the miles as we raced toward Jamestown, St Helena.

The 23^rd was a huge day, summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, full moon, we reached the 07° time line so adjusted the clocks back another hour, we are now on GMT, 2 hours behind South Africa and we passed the halfway to St Helena mark.  We also found 3 flying fish on deck in the morning, these little chaps just launch themselves out of the water and land again in a most uncontrolled manner, we are debating whether something is chasing them, but during the night 3 of them must have launched at the wrong time and ended up hitching a ride, sadly they were dead by the time we found them.

Tuna consumed and rods are back out again. A small dorado is nabbed and to my delight thrown back, dorado mate for life so I have everything crossed that we don’t catch one. Christmas eve and we decide Graeme and Michelle are magnets for these close passing ships, they get 2 and both have to be radioed and asked to give us a wide berth. Usually they are really good at doing this automatically and have no problem once contacted. The radar has proven to be invaluable on this trip, the guard zone is set to 12Nm (approximately 20km) in front of us, anything entering this zone triggers a loud and incessant alarm and it picks up targets up to 24Nm (approximately 40km) away allowing us to track them and see if or when we will intercept.

Christmas lunch feast

Christmas at sea was quite an affair, we had pressies under the tree for opening, a 3 course meal, some bubbly and a couple of really short hello and goodbye calls to family. The weather was warm and the parasail carried us along beautifully.

At 07:41 on 27 December we crossed the UTC line

 from East to West, we are now officially in the Western Hemisphere. Its warmer here, the nights are a little chilly but days warm and lovely, almost daring to hope we are nearing the tropics. The water is also warmer, performing their own little experiment (think they have delusions of appearing on Mythbusters) Kevin and Graeme scooped up a bucket of water, specifically moving water, popped a dive computer in and got a reading of 23°C. Seems we won’t be stopping to take a dip though, its full steam ahead to St Helena. We measure distance covered from noon to noon daily as that is the time we departed Cape Town. At  noon on 29 December we had 148Nm to go to reach St Helena and we have been advised not to arrive after dark, which we are happy with, entering an unknown anchorage in the dark can be troublesome and should be avoided if possible, so we needed to get there before sunset on 30 December or after sun rise on 31 December. At 100 – 120 Nm covered daily we needed really good conditions to make the sunset cut off on 30 December and if not we would need to slow down, reducing sails and holding back on arrival til sunrise on 31^st. 

At 05:30 on the 30^th, up went the parasail and we were making good way when a squall hit at 07:30 prompting a swift socking and the genoa coming out, then at 10:30 up the parasail went again, we even had baked beans for breakfast in an attempt to help things along but alas, the wind was tired. 

Land Ho, first sighting of St Helena

We used the light conditions to dry out both spinnakers and pack them away and motor sailed the rest of the way, figured we had a little diesel to spare to help out.

So here we are at St Helena after 15 days at sea, once the formalities are out of the way, we can’t wait to start exploring…..

A sad little note here, it’s really tough to leave family and friends behind and this is always brought home when something happens “back home” to loved ones. Sadly a very close friend of the Dawson family, Kay Kruger, passed away yesterday. She was an independent lady with a huge and sunny personality who was well loved by all she met. The family have lost a special person and Marge a very special friend. Rest In Peace Kay.