It’s June and our bit of paradise here is starting to feel like a cage. We’ve been waiting for the wind to swing to the SE, E, or NE for long enough for us to get out through the heads, down to Cape Agulhas about 160 naut. miles from here, whip around into the Atlantic and get up the hundred miles or so to False Bay and Simon’s Town. It’s only a 2-3 day run.
This last weekend looked promising and we got the boat ready, only to have a big seas warning come through. They have closed the heads here and we can hear the surf from over the mountain ridge. With its old name being the Cape of Storms and 5 meter waves coming at our port side forward quarter we could very quickly lose our love of sailing, even if we could get out.
Right now it’s cold and rainy so we’re taking refuge. But up until this mucky stuff arrived we have still being enjoying Knysna. Clive eventually finished the bench/table area on the back deck and we’ve used the delay to get a couple of coats of teak oil sealer onto the benches and varnish onto the table. Sandy has also given the area around and under it a couple of coats of paint so it has come up really well. We’ve had some glorious sunset evenings out there already and I know we will use it all the time in the tropics. The first time we used it we even had a seal swim by and pop his head up for a look.
Sandy decided we needed new coasters for our new table and spent a few days painting patterns on plywood squares cut to coaster size. She found a craft supply shop and got the right paint and varnish. I made teak fiddles to stick on the edges which has effectively framed the paintings and finished them off. They really do look good.
About a week ago when it looked like we’d be leaving I arranged to take Wind Wanderer into the little harbour where we could tie up to the wall along the restaurant strip and meet the bowser from the Caltex garage nearby. We wanted to take on 800 litres of diesel and that is no fun with jerry cans. We also needed to time it for the top of the tide to be able to get in, load, and get back to the mooring. And the last factor, we needed little to no wind. It’s a tight entry and the wall is only just long enough to take us. The angle needs us to kind of sidle in, and we don’t have a bow thruster. I’ve been stewing over this event for weeks.
Come the day we fired up the old diesel, secured the dinghy to the mooring and crept up the channel. The boat seemed to be getting bigger as we entered the harbour. I’d decided to go starboard side to the wall because I was unsure just how close we could get without our bowsprit taking out light poles and the like, and a sharp burst of reverse uses the engine’s rotation to push the stern to starboard. It’s a useful way to kick the stern in without actually reversing.
We got pretty close anyway and Sandy threw the center line to the guy on the shore. It fell short and while she gathered it in I hit reverse. The boat kicked in, and with this throw the line sailed across and the guy on shore tied us off. We’re a hell of a team! Fore and aft lines secured and we could relax feeling very proud of ourselves.
The bowser had to do 2 trips so we were there for an hour or more. There are restaurants and shops all around the waterfront and we became quite the center of attention. People stopped by to take pictures and chat. A class of school kids happened to be having an outing and it was funny to hear the teacher explaining all kinds of things to them. Apparently the way we get to the top of the mast is, “… they put on a thing like a nappy and get pulled to the top with a rope!”.
Sandy was on shore taking pictures and overheard her telling the kids the flag at our first spreader showed it was a South African boat. Sandy couldn’t stand having these kids growing up in ignorance so explained that the boat is Australian, with the Australian flag (what’s left of it), flying at the stern, and that the flag at the spreaders was a courtesy flag because we’re a foreign boat just visiting. The teacher apparently didn’t mind being corrected.
The tide was falling by the time we could leave but we started the engine, let go fore and aft and as we let the centre go I gave the bow a hefty shove from the wall. It was enough to be able to ‘prop walk’ the boat around in the tiny space and head for the exit. Back on the mooring we enjoyed the feeling of a job well done with an early sundowner on our new back deck.
May is also the month someone has a birthday. No clues, but mine’s in December. Just another meal at our favourite restaurant would hardly feel special, so we hired a car for the day and drove round to Buffalo Bay. Friends of ours have been going there for years and have a great collection of nautilus, paper nautilus, and pansy shells, sometimes called sand dollars.
The day was cool but sunny and we had a great walk along the beach. We saw many different shells but all common types. Not a sign of nautilus or pansy anywhere. We’d missed breakfast so shared a ‘magic mushroom’ pancake and bowl of chips with their secret sauce. The names got us. Well the mushrooms were magic alright, most of them had vanished, and the secret sauce at a guess would be mayo, vinegar and maybe some dill. But the view was great and we were hungry. We were even treated to something swimming out in the bay. It was likely to be dolphins but they didn’t swim like dolphins. The other guess was whales. But they just broke the surface and would sink again, slowly like whales sometimes do. Or maybe it was the magic mushrooms.
We still had half a day in hand so we decided to drive to Mossel Bay. We had a good time and visited their Maritime museum.
Mossel Bay’s claim to fame is that the first European, Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese navigator rounded the bottom of Africa and made his landfall here to take on water and meat. In 1988, 500 years later, a replica of his Caravel was built and sailed from Lisbon to Mossel Bay and is now on display. It was fascinating to see how they explored the world back then, in a boat from tip to tip not much longer than ours. But it was much beamier and higher and without a bowsprit it actually had a lot more volume. It had to, they carried a crew of 33.
Most of the replicas we’ve seen around have a thumping great diesel and get used for tourism and charters. Not this one. They sailed it out with no engine, and managed to get here in half the original time, still managing to get here on the day. Not a bad effort.
In the same grounds is the post office tree. It’s an ancient milkwood tree believed to be over 600 years old. In about 1500 a passing ship left a message in a boot under the tree, and a ship passing the other way picked it up and delivered it back in the home country. This then continued as a basic mail service and today there is a shoe shaped letterbox that you can post letters in. From what we hear the original ships were more reliable and quicker!
Apart from the fun stuff, our outboard motor saga continues. The last prop repair I did involved pushing the limits by drilling and tapping the inner spline so the grub screws could go deeper. I knew I’d taken it to the limit because the prop wouldn’t just slide onto the shaft splines. I had to tap the prop on with a hammer.
The good part was that the prop worked brilliantly and I was confident that with nursing it would last until we get to Cape Town where our new prop from the States is waiting for us (Thanks Roger).
One morning Sandy and I hopped into the dinghy and found that once again we had no thrust. Tipped the motor, and the whole prop was missing! I couldn’t believe it. The prop was held on by a washer and slotted nut, secured with a splitpin. I can only imagine that with the repeated removal of the prop the split pin suffered metal fatigue and failed. And I had in fact checked it. It seemed fine but obviously wasn’t. To add to our dramas I haven’t been able to find a nut of any description that matches the shaft thread. I just hope it’s not a Tohatsu special thread no common nut will match. The search continues.
We’ve had two days of cold and rain but this morning the sun is back, although on low beam. We’ve got a bunch of wet towels out drying as usual after heavy rain. We use them to block gaps in the cockpit covers and mop up a couple of leaky spots down below.
It’s looking promising for a weekend departure again. We’ve used the delay to get a small rigging job done so we don’t have to do it in Simon’s Town. Sandy spotted a hairline crack on a pin that one of the main mast shrouds attaches to. I dismantled it and found a couple more on the same pin. It’s the kind of thing that could still last for years, or let go in the next storm. Stainless steel gives no warning. Now we have our fingers crossed we will have it all back together in the next day or so.
Until next time…