Homeward Bound!
Our time in South Africa is drawing to a close. There is much we would have liked to see on the way but we now need to concentrate on sailing if we are to get back to Blighty by the end of June, so we’ve had to drop Namibia and any length of time in Brazil and the Caribbean. In July Annie’s son Alex and his partner Sarah are getting married and if we are to have any chance of completing our circumnavigation ahead of this we have to sail another 8,000nm of ocean in the next four months. We toyed with the idea of a slower cruise home, leaving the boat in Grenada in the Caribbean for the winter and returning after more cruising in 2024, but this raises insurance issues in the Caribbean and would add another year to our circumnavigation (although arguably this would have been completed by Grenada).
We have seen enough of South Africa to know that it is a spectacularly beautiful country and a wonderful place to visit. We have also seen that it is deeply troubled with immense financial disparity between the rich, largely white minority and the poor, largely black majority, poor (and corrupt) governance, much less racial integration than we had expected and a sense of foreboding that the country is falling apart. The Western Cape seems to be the exception to this. Cape Town, despite being the parliamentary capital of South Africa, is actually run by the Democratic Alliance Party which is the opposition party to the ruling ANC in the rest of South Africa. The infrastructure here is good, it is the French Riviera of Africa with a stunning apartment lined shoreline, fabulous leafy suburbs of gated villas and houses and surrounding vineyards, but cheek by jowl with shanty town settlements and street dwellers. It is still subject to regular power cuts from the underinvested and poorly run state generator and water shortage from the depleted groundwater sources. Politically the ANC ruling party is aligning with Russia and China and there have been joint military exercises off the coast. Some in the rest of South Africa see the Western Cape as a potential breakaway state in the event of political and economic collapse in wider South Africa. We have achieved our main goal of a trip up to the top of Table Mountain. After days of strong wind and the enveloping table cloth of cloud cause by warm moist air blowing across from the east, everything cleared yesterday and we queued for over two hours to board the cable car to the top. It was well worth it for the spectacular views over Cape Town and down to the Cape and must be one of the best cityscape views in the world. One of our more memorable coffee stops! Everything is repaired on Vega that needed to be now that we have replaced the bilge pump. There is no doubt that South Africa is the place for boat work with good technical skills, facilities and prices. We just have the genoa to put back after some minor repair work to the sun strip and receive a final provisioning delivery from Woolworths direct to the boat. It is wet and windy today - pretty foul actually - but they need the water and it should be clear tomorrow for our departure. After some unnervingly strong wind and wave predictions for our passage it now looks like lack of wind may be the biggest issue as we approach St Helena. We had planned to leave at midday but, continuing my tour of the world’s dermatology clinics, I have managed to get an appointment at 3pm to have some lesions zapped with liquid nitrogen before we depart. Quicker and cheaper than waiting until the UK. The passage to St Helena is 15 days and the link to our Garmin tracker site is https://share.garmin.com/FT65C I will post a short daily update on the blog and you can look forward to a longer update from St Helena on arrival! |
