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.

September - December 2018 (Yacht Port Saldanha & RCYC Cape Town)

And so, the time has come, we face the final countdown….

Boy have things been crazier than crazy around here. So many lists of things to be done, for the wedding and for getting ready to leave, each with its own sub-list, etc.

We did an inventory of all the dive gear, serviced all and purchased one more cylinder.

We purchased a brand new, purple main halyard, now our main sail goes up and down smooth and fast and looks funky.

We brought the storm jib out of hibernation, never been used since we bought the yacht but we figured it might come in handy, good job too because it needed modification after the rig upgrade, it now proudly sports a bright orange luff strip and hanks on better.

 

We were asked by a lovely couple Braam and Dawn to take his dad on a sail/cruise around Langebaan for his 90^th birthday. Well the weather turned pretty crappy, the wind howled, but Granny and Grandad were game for anything and absolutely loved it.

Langebaan Lagoon

Little tortoise

The time of the fynbos was coming to an end – every year the West Coast National Park grants the public access to its flower rich section for two weeks. We skidded in on the last day and got to see Langebaan Lagoon from a different perspective, it was beautiful, not too many flowers but loads of tortoises and birds.

 We also attended the Hopefield Fynbos Show, there really isn’t much in Hopefield at all but when they put on a show they pull out all the stops, what a very well represented show with a beautiful fynbos display, farm equipment including the most magnificent tractors, the usual nick nacks and a very festive beer garden.

We said happy birthday and farewell to fellow New Zealand cruisers Karen and Graham (birthday boy) on the yacht Red Herring as they sailed for the Caribbean, via Namibia. We will probably meet up with them at St Helena or Trinidad.

We seem to have amassed a great collection of paddles/oars and fishing rods. The nice thing about having a hard top roof in the cockpit is that we have the ability to create storage for things such as this.

Not that we ever really need an excuse to celebrate, but celebrations were in order when Kevin passed his Yachmaster Offshore sailing qualification, he is a real boffin.

Out of the blue the wind speed stopped registering on our instruments. Kevin tried all sorts of fault finding with no joy and being that knowledge of the speed of the wind is a pretty necessary part of sailing, he called the agents who recommended removing the anemometer from the top of the mast and bringing it in for testing. 

This meant someone had to go up the mast in the bosun’s chair and fetch it, so I volunteered – a huge feat considering not long ago I couldn’t get above the third rung of a ladder and, muttering “don’t look down” to myself all the way up, I shakily retrieved the anemometer and we dropped it off with the agents at the 2018 Cape Town Boat Show.

It proved to be suspect and a new one was issued, this time Kevin went up the mast, he is way braver than me and showed off with selfies from the top. This anemometer proved to be faulty as well so Francois, the agent, came up to check it himself, funny because he is even more terrified of heights than I am. It was replaced once more and this time seems to be working just great, third time lucky we hope.

A vacuum sealer is apparently a very necessary accessory for a yacht, most especially for provisioning and we can certainly attest to this. 

We managed to reduce a huge pile of meat, chicken and other to a size that fits comfortably into our 90 litre freezer and allowed us to get rid of heaps of unnecessary packaging, helping to reduce our trash collection as we go. 

We have decided on a policy of reducing our destructive footprint, nothing overboard other than biodegradable food stuffs. Cans will be crushed and stashed, paper and plastic cut up and bagged and glass stored until we hit land – be the change that you want to see happen is still our motto.

We had brackets made to hold the kayaks in place on the sides of the boat when we are sailing then they were spruced up with great covers made by Michelle. 

A rather pleasant way to exit the water

Different view from our perch on the hard

We hauled the boat out to clean the hulls and repaint the anti-foul and to move one through hull fitting and close four up. We got the boat polished and all the stainless cleaned at the same time, all ready and spiffy for our trip.

  

There was an oyster and champagne festival in Paternoster, who could resist? Apparently the fishing quotas have been drastically reduced and the fishermen are really battling so festivals are being organised every couple of months to help them out, the previous one was a beer and mussel festival. The oysters were lovely and the champagne cold, the beautiful view of the bay completed an awesome experience.

Thank you gifts

Making the table #'s

Then the run up to the wedding got into full swing. 

So many people had a hand in making the wedding a success, from making the signs, to cleaning and painting horse shoes (a really odd commodity to have on a yacht and drew some funny comments like how much luck do you need on a boat?) 

Removing rust from horse shoes
before painting

to making table numbers and guest gifts, many hands really do make light work.

 

Painted horse shoes

A few of the signs

We so wanted to include this little guy
we even thought Gaynor could carry
him instead of a bouquet

Some of the family and the happy couple arrived and straight off Gaynor had to go test drive the horse on which she was going to arrive at the ceremony. It was quite a task to find a horse for rent in Langebaan and when we did it was on condition of a successful test drive, but all the effort was so worth it in the end, Storm, a majestic Friesian with the gentlest of personalities, was a perfect fit.

Getting Ready

The wedding turned out to be a truly joyous affair, family and friends travesled from all over, notably some from overseas. The wind blew like anything causing  mini sandstorms, sandblasting of legs and goosebumps, which gave the photographers a hard time, but other than that it was a huge success and Gaynor, Kevin and I have gained a wonderful extended family.

We spiffed up the car, put it’s new number plates on and sent the newly weds on their merry way, they travelled to Knysna for their honeymoon, then on to home.

We call him Copperfield

Now to concentrate all our efforts on getting going, it’s great to have Graeme and Michelle here to fix and fit things, go shopping, make lists, check lists, make more lists….

On the beach at Yachtport

Borrowed propellors

When we hauled out we discovered what we considered more than fair wear and tear on our propellors so while we were waiting for the manufacturer to come back to us we had borrowed Des’ spare ones. 

This however meant that we needed to replace them again and after considering the options Kevin decided the beach next to Yachtport was a good place to do this.

It was hard work with all that water
caused a real headache

Whilst changing all the lines and halyards we discovered that the new topping lift and outhaul are almost identical in colour and pattern so Kevin and Graeme tried to splice an old but still good line to use instead, after much head scratching, googling and you tube watching, consensus was reached that its way too difficult, the two lines won’t get confused and we used the new one.

We headed off to Kraal bay to do some testing of both the systems and us, did some sailing, tested the new sea anchor which will help in really bad conditions, tried out the kayaks and one or two provisioning recipes, all with success. 

Oiling Eggs

Eggsperiment

2 years ago at RCYC we met Lee and Neil on Crystal Blues and she told me the best way to preserve eggs for a long trip is to paint them with oil and turn them every day. I eggsperimented with this, had 2 eggs one oiled, one not and turned them fairly often. After 3 months the oiled one was edible whilst the unoiled one had gone bad. Seeing that eggs are a scarce commodity on St Helena we have purchased 244 eggs for our trip and they are all oiled and being religiously turned every day.

Test egg made into an omlette

Also tested the kayaks, resounding
round of approval

It’s been a time for goodbyes too, I bid a fond farewell to the lovely ladies with whom I have done Pilates classes, they have an endless supply of advice for everything. Nicole and her colleague Jacinta joined us for a couple of hours while they were in Cape Town for work and Piet and Vicki and Jason popped up from Cape Town to say bon voyage.

Next onboard was 115 litres petrol for the outboard motor and the generator and 465 litres diesel for the boat, the pump attendant at the garage was really amused. 

 Then back out into the bay to calibrate the compass, well that’s what they said, seemed like we were just doing donuts. Also practiced hoving to and man overboard procedures.

A curve ball came in the shape of the Immigration process for clearing out of South Africa. A yacht leaving South Africa is required to show proof of having paid all dues, submit a flight plan to Port Control and clear Customs and Immigration. 

In Cape Town they want the boat to be present at RCYC and the authorities have become quite strict on this rule. We were hoping to be able to present a letter from the Yacht Club to say that they are full and unable to accommodate us, this used to be acceptable and they would then allow us to depart from Saldanha, but on hearing of another Saldanha yachts’ trouble and strife with the authorities and on their recommendations we grabbed the weather window available by the horns and after very briefly bidding farewell to great friends and fellow yachties we threw off the lines and made for the Mountain once again.

Thank goodness for Uber, we hopped all over getting the last provisions and goodies. On Friday Kevin got to visit the British Consulate to swear allegiance to the Queen and officially gain his British Citizenship, which is fantastic as he is now eligible for a British Passport, just makes travelling a little easier.

Little Gogga, the cat at RCYC has had a nose issue for a few weeks but they have been unable to catch her to take her to the vet. Saturday morning early Kevin found her in reception and before she could object he bundled her into a cat basket and Jenny was awesome enough to get her to the vet where they ran tests and she got a clean and good bill of health bar cancer on her little nose which is treatable over a few sessions, hopefully she will be a bit more pain free now.

All the fresh stuff from the market

s

Getting geared up for our Saturday morning departure, we visited Port Control the day before only to be informed by Immigration that we would be confined to Port if they  stamped our passports then.

We still needed to purchase the fresh produce so that couldn’t happen so Saturday morning after visiting the Oranjezicht market in Greenpoint for the fresh off the farm veg we got back to Immigration only to be told the letter we had been given by Port Control was incorrect. Our hearts sank but fortunately there was a really friendly happy government employee (really rare commodity) in the Office next door who gave us the correct paper and, after the last diesel and water top up we tossed the lines and are now on our merry way to St Helena.

We leave you with this link, it is the tracking link for our trip.  You will need to register on Farkwar before you can start, sign up using e-mail is the easiest, then search for Maxscene, click on the map and it will show a yellow circle with a number indicating the number of waypoints we have marked. Zoom in on this yellow circle and you will see all our waypoints we drop as we travel, if you click on them they will come up with a date, and a message about that day.

 https://farkwar.com/boats/sy-maxscene

So that’s pretty much it for now, cheers all and we’ll chat again once we are in St Helena

Cheers.....