Our stay at Richards Bay has coincided with the arrival of the ARC World fleet and an unusually large influx of cruising yachts. This has meant the Zululand Yacht Club has been completely full and some boats have had to remain on the Q Berth. We were lucky and Jacques, who runs a yacht maintenance business here, was able to secure a berth for us on the basis that we needed to be here for him to work on the boat. Furthermore we are on an inshore pontoon berth rejected by larger yachts fearing it would be too shallow. We read 1.7m at low water springs (and draw 1.8m) but my plumb line showed almost a metre more than this. We suspect a deep layer of very soft silt overlying the firm bottom. Lots of local boats have been moved around or taken out to anchor to make as much room as possible for visiting yachts.

While still on the Q berth we attended a welcome evening at the yacht club and were included in the welcome and given a bottle of sparkling wine. It was all conducted with great warmth and humour and we have been made very welcome here. With a bar, restaurant, swimming pool, pontoon berths, chandlery and good repair and maintenance facilities it is the perfect stop before tackling the coast down to Cape Town.

Sailing this coast has to be carefully planned around the low pressure weather systems running from west to east across the bottom of South Africa. These feed strong southerly and south westerly winds up the coast which, blowing against the south flowing Aghulas current, can cause dangerous breaking and rogue waves. You have to pick the gaps between the lows and make sure you are in a safe anchorage as the next one approaches. The moment the barometer starts to drop you know trouble is on the way. At this time of year the gaps can be quite small - maybe a day or so - and so Durban at 80nm is a good first stop. Then it is 240nm to East London with no anchorages along that stretch of coast. Beyond East London are Port Elizabeth, Knysna, Mossel Bay and Simonstown before Capetown but that is pretty much it. In the event of running into a low pressure system the only option may be to turn around and try and make it back to the previous anchorage. It is 900nm from here to Cape Town which would take us about 8 days non-stop but in reality at least two weeks.

Most boats (including ourselves) plan to be in Cape Town before Christmas and in our case by 1st December. This clearly isn’t going to happen and we have now decided that our best bet is to leave Vega in Richards Bay, fly home from here and return at the end of December. January, February and March are the most favourable months for sailing this coast with more settled weather and longer gaps between the lows so it makes sense for us to do this. Other boats are pressing on for Cape Town and a short weather window today (Sunday) will get them to Durban where they will have to wait until the following weekend to make further progress.

We have a number of relatively small jobs to do on Vega but due to the high demand on Jacques and his maintenance company progress has been slower than hoped for. We initially thought all the work could wait until Cape Town but it makes sense to get it all completed whilst here and that is another reason for deferring our onward passage. Jobs to be undertaken include -

• New axle and pulley wheels in the masthead sheave. One of the wheels around which the topping lift runs has jammed and the other around which the mainsail halyard runs is stiff and squeaky. If this also jams it will make raising, but more critically lowering the mainsail more difficult.
• Replace the cable in the mast connecting the masthead anemometer to the cockpit reader.
• Replace the steel pin holding the forestay onto the furling drum. The existing pin is rusting and has a crack in the flange. Jacques will make a new pin and also tension up the forestay.
• Investigate the rust showing in the new wire standing rigging and where the wire is swaged into the turnbuckles. I have been in touch with the rigger who replaced the standing rigging in Thailand who assures me that high quality wire was used (Arcus KOS Hamma wire from Australia). He will speak with the rigger here.
• Straighten the bent yoke supporting the Duogen.
• Investigate and rectify the flexing and knocking from the vang when under sail. This has now been traced to the internal spacing tube between the gas strut and the bottom of the vang. The tube has been replaced by a longer one with plastic end caps that prevent the tube from moving around and knocking against the sides of the vang. It has also reinstated the full extension of the vang and the amount of adjustment now possible. (The vang is the adjustable strut between the underside of the boom and the base of the mast. It can be adjusted from the cockpit and stops the boom from rising when there is wind pressure in the sail. By shortening the vang you can pull down the boom and flatten the mainsail when sailing into the wind).
• Replace the wire guard rails along the side of the deck where they are rusting. I was advised in the Seychelles that the wire was rusting inside and through the end fittings but it turns out after acid treatment to be surface rust only and so no replacements are required.
• Replace the now completely failed shore power activated battery charger. A new one has been ordered.
• Replace the torn and degraded sun protection strip around the edge of the genoa.
• Investigate a new cooker. The handle has come off the oven door, the mechanism that stops the oven door from opening beyond the horizontal has broken (now replaced by a wire strop on one side), the metal grill that supports the pans had to be welded where a weld broke in Seychelles.

Resetting our plans around the maintenance and repair has meant time to explore the surrounding area. Locally this has involved trips to the large shopping mall courtesy of Eric who runs a taxi service and is a member of the yacht club. The supermarkets at the mall are brilliant and reprovisioning will be no problem. Prices are low (and very low compared with Mayotte and Seychelles!). Food at the yacht club and local restaurants is cheap enough that we eat out most evenings with our sailing friends. The brai (we have been told we must use this term and not ‘barbecue’) is an essential part of eating out here and I have discovered that it is possible to cook chicken properly and that isn’t black on the outside and raw in the middle.

Father afield we have spent two nights at a lodge in the Hluhluwe (pronounced Shushloowee but with the tongue rolled to one side) game reserve, hiring a car and going with Dick and Laura from Maia. This, together with the adjoining Imfolozi reserve, is the oldest game reserve in Africa. Way back in the 1870’s it was realised that protection was required for species such as the white rhino and they are still hanging on in there. We saw several including a pair with a very young calf. In fact we saw many of the iconic large African game species but sadly (and at times gladly) none of the big cats. The reserve is hilly and covered for the most part with bushy scrub, unlike the wide flat grasslands you see in tv documentaries. The animals can easily hide away. Interestingly the game do not perceive the cars and safari trucks as full of humans and your best chance of seeing them is from your car. The moment they are aware of people they quickly disappear or, in the case of buffalo, rhino and elephant may become agitated and charge. We walked for two hours in the bush with an armed guide and apart from a tortoise, fleeting glimpse of two antelope and footprints of lion and leopard saw absolutely nothing in the way of game. It was still magical and a fascinating reminder of how we are, for the most part, no longer an integral part of the natural world that, for nearly all of our evolutionary history, we have been.

Our initial impressions of South Africa are mixed. In the tourist areas, commercial suburbs and shopping malls it feels like a stable and prosperous country. Most yachties love it here and two of our friends stayed on for a year, touring the country by motorcycle. And yet there are daily power cuts with published schedules because the power infrastructure is now so degraded and under invested it cannot cope with demand. Our daily weather reports from Des in Durban were frequently late due to power cuts. South African sailing friends we have met along the way have been keen to find somewhere to settle outside of South Africa and locals we have spoken to would get out if they could. One couple managed to sell their farm and now live on their boat with the hope of sailing out. They tell tales of (white) farmers being tortured and murdered. One sailing couple hired a car to visit the marina in Durban and were shocked at the sprawling shanty towns they passed through en route. We are strongly advised not to walk around here at night and in places such as Durban you do not set foot outside the marina, day or night. 200 rand seems to be the going rate around here for bribing the police if you are pulled over in your car. Since the heady days of Nelson Mandela it seems to have been a story of political corruption, under investment and economic decline. To what extent this is true or a reflection of white disenchantment is not possible for me to judge. Apparently Cape Town and the western Cape are still vibrant and wonderful to visit so perhaps it is sad that we will now not have as much time there as planned. 

We are however looking forward to flying home for most of December and catching up with family and friends during the festive season. Hopefully all the work on Vega will by then be complete. On our return we can haul out, clean the bottom and replace the anodes before setting off again in early January for Cape Town, Namibia and the south Atlantic.