34:11S 18:26E
Tales of Amok's Adventures
Mike Jones
Sat 6 Mar 2010 05:39
Well, the dust or should I say the spray, has finally settled and we are able to think clearly (well, more clearly...) after our eventful arrival into Simon's Town. We managed to tie up to a catamaran in the dark at about 22:30 on Tuesday night, thanks to Toby's gymnastic prowess. The wind continued to gust to 30 knots even while we were tying up. The gin and tonic and the beer (separate glasses) were duly produced, together with a few tears. The relief at arriving safely was enormous. I find it amazing that we have completed this leg of our voyage, when I mentioned in November that we were sailing to Cape Town, it sounded a bit like "nice talk, but let's see what happens." Now that we have arrived safely, it seems even more amazing that we have made our landfall, given the conditions of the last 36 hours of our voyage. We spoke today to a guy that had to be rescued as he was unsuccessful with his landfall. Cape Town is a very difficult landfall.
Without any doubt whatsoever, this voyage has been the most challenging adventure of my life, it has been exhilarating, educational, enlightening, wonderful, stressful and at times downright scary. We ended up rounding Cape of Good Hope with extremely poor visibility, gusts of 40 knots of wind, seas between 4-5 metres high and a very lucky wind shift which allowed us to get around it. We didn't see a single ship from St. Helena, until we got to the navy dockyard near False Bay, i.e. 20 ship free days, a remarkable fact.
We typically ploughed underneath every 3rd or 4th wave, it's a strange feeling when everything around you goes green because you have been hit by another green wave. One of the on deck 22 litre diesel containers broke free, but we luckily managed to get it. We learned today, that the staysail swivel fitting failed, exactly in the same manner as the yankee swivel fitting which failed near Portugal.
Toby was very plucky and went out on deck when required, I went out to rescue the trysail bag from falling overboard and I felt like a fly on a windscreen in a monsoon, it was impossible to look towards the weather, as the spray and sting to your eyes was just too great. We were disappointed not to see more of our landfall, it wasn't for lack of trying..
The kids flew back to Perth yesterday, Mike and I are returning shortly. Needless to say, Meerkat's bag has been packed for about 4 days now.
Thanks for keeping us company on this leg of our journey, it's a pity that the blog doesn't have a comments facility, I would have liked to read some of your responses. No doubt some of you would have told me to buck up (RAJS), pull my socks up and stop being such a girl (WW). Well, I did try at not being a wus, not always successfully. You can always email us at yachtamok at hotmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
That's all for now friends, next leg is Fremantle!!
AMOK out.
....and having to have the last word bye from mike
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