Dawn and we were heading up toward Cape Point and Simons Town where we will be spending Christmas.

The further north we sailed the windier it was getting, blowing us into the bay. This sounds like a good idea at first but the bay is a very definite dead end. Seamen of old used to dread a lee shore... cruisers like us still do. If the engine refuses to start, or the wind really gets up you could have a problem. Well the wind did get up, touching on gale force but the engine did start and actually there is a reasonable lee behind the naval dockyard walls allowing us to round up and drop the sails before entering the marina which shelters in the corner behind the dock walls.

Arc Rock on the way into Simons Town harbour, the walls of the Naval dockyard are visible in the background.

In fact the wind continued to increase for the rest of the day until it was gusting to 50+ knots. These winds are very local, brought on by the steep hillsides that form a backdrop to False bay. Later in the day we heard a weather report from Cape Point giving only 20 knots of wind whilst we still had 35 knots. Apparently these winds are a feature of Cape Town and the surrounding bays, especially at this time of year. We shall pick our weather for leaving here rather carefully!

In the meantime we've had our fridges inspected – all good at 10 years old. Have also taken our sails off for some TLC as they're looking a bit ragged around the edges, unsurprisingly as we've sailed about 30,000 miles to get this far.

The temperature has improved as summer progresses so all good at the moment.