Two days, one night and 214 miles got us to Walvis Bay. There are just so many fur seals here, they are everywhere. It is estimated that some 100,000 live in just one colony at Cape Cross in Namibia and there are about 25 colonies on this Atlantic coast of Southern Africa, massive fish stocks are needed to sustain them. In the Lonely Planet Guide it reports that seals take a million tonnes of shoal fish, squid and other sea food each year, that’s 300,000 tonnes more than the combined fishing fleets of South Africa and Namibia and there is concern about overfishing so the fishing fraternity are not happy about the seals’ takings. We didn’t compete and caught no fish.

We spent a long time motoring for lack of wind with 3 metre swells and oddly, current against us for long periods so not a joyous passage. However, it was a joy to see albatross soaring; we haven’t seen any for a very long time. We also saw lots of dolphins but the photographs are naff as they were too fast for us this time.

Happily we arrived at Walvis Bay in daylight, it is an enormous bay and there is a lot of work going on. There is, of course, a lot of sand and much of the bay is shallow so there are plenty of dredging operations. There is also a lot of reclamation work in progress for a completely new dock area which will turn this into an extensive port; it is already quite a large container terminal and fish harbour. The yachting Pilot book for this coast is not bang up to date so these works are not shown and we had an abortive trip down the long buoyed channel into a dead end, ugh! We had to retrace and eventually found our way round the reclamation area and into the yacht club mooring field by which time we were extremely pleased to have arrived before dark else we could have had problems. Luckily for us there were mooring buoys available, again we are the only visiting yacht, the others are either deserted or they are tour boats that take people out to see the marine life.

One of the delights of being here is that there are big white pelicans in the bay which are quite tame as the tour boats feed them.

A remarkable bird is the pelican,

His bill can hold more than his belly can,

He can hold in his beak enough food for a week

But I’m damned if I know how the hell e’can.

Just round the corner from the Yacht Club is a very large shallow lagoon and it is just full of flamingos. Over 100,000 greater and lesser flamingos feed here in the nutrient rich waters.

Oysters are cultivated here and we can vouch that they are excellent fare. The lagoon also has large areas devoted to salt production. It could hardly be more ideal with shallow salty water, no rain and high temperatures, although the Benguelas current still makes it cool here at night.

The salt works.

The salt flats.

The salt pans with a slight pink tinge.

Much of the water is very red in these pools, but we’re not sure if this is also because of the algae that causes of the red colouration of the flamingos.

Even the vegetation has a red hue. On stopping we discovered this was samphire which seemed as edible as the UK variety but a bit too salty!

We ventured out a short way into the desert where Chris had a quick and exhausting climb up this impressive sand dune, Dune 7.

The view from the top, about 200 feet, with his shadow in the foreground!

We travelled out to Swakopmund some 30 kilometres north of here. Originally a port established by German settlers it features the grand German architecture found in Luderitz but as a port it offers poor protection for any vessel and poor landing possibilities; people where winched ashore onto a pier in giant baskets at one stage in its short history, Walvis Bay has taken over. Swakopmund is now a holiday destination for Namibians and German tourists with lots of accommodation, a very good private museum that we really enjoyed, beaches (and cold waters) as well as all the high adventure desert activities such as sand boarding and ski-ing, paragliding, quad-biking and desert cycling.

There is certainly lots to do here but Walvis Bay with its seals and wonderful bird populations has afforded us a good rest time before we set of on our passage to St Helena some 1200 miles WNW into the Atlantic.