NORDLYS - Exciting times in Durban

Exciting times in Durban

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Sat 1 Dec 2007 02:50

Durban and a dose of African weather

34:15S 22:45E

en route to Mossel Bay.

0300hrs 1st December 2007

Writing about a traumatic experience is never an easy thing to do. At one end of the scale hyperbole will loose the reader and at the other bare facts will create an even more erroneous impression. I will try my best.

We left Richards Bay late afternoon on the 25th November, a month to the day after we arrived. The cheers, calls of good wishes and blowing of a conch horn were worthy of departure for an ocean crossing rather than the 85 mile trip to Durban. Our friends were either keen to see us go or showing how much we had all enjoyed each others company over the preceding few weeks. I hope the latter. An uneventful if boisterous night sail followed and dawn revealed the impressive Durban sky line. High rises, huge dock cranes and a narrow entrance. After a call to Port Control we entered this large commercial harbour and arrived off the Royal Durban Yacht Club marina. Dropping the hook in the rather crowded anchorage we had our usual scrambled eggs washed down with an 'anchor dram' and slept. Later in the day Port Control told us we had to check in with them and the customs authorities. This necessitated a trip to the marina office and the services of a kind girl who faxed the paperwork through. As I returned to Nordlys with our Aussie friend Dan who had taken me ashore in his dinghy the afternoon sky was turning a strange mottled colour. Dull greys right through to almost turquoise were painted across the heavens. At the same time lines of lightening criss crossed this colourful backdrop. Dan decided not to stay for a beer but to return to Jacana, he and his wife's 47 foot sailing home. How sensible he was.

I was just thinking that I should search out the camera and record this extraordinary sky when the far side of the harbour showed a line of steaming water. A few seconds later it struck. Wind like I have never experienced and never wish to experience again hit us. The next hour will remain forever etched in my mind. Our staysail is furled on its stay but the wind forced the top half open and five or so feet flogged with a noise that was noticeable even over the scream of the wind. I had the engine on, mostly flat out, we still dragged. Somehow we missed all the other boats that were doing the same. I remember seeing Sea Rose Star, 30 metres and eight million euros worth of lovely Jongert we had met in Cocos and the Seychelles heeled to her gunwale and crossing the harbour sideways. I later learnt that her skipper had only managed to stop this drift and get control when he was less than 50 metres off the sea wall. Through the spume I noticed 5 metres on the depth gauge and glancing over my shoulder the waves crashing on a mole were very near. Annette later told me it got down to 2.7 metres, i.e. 20cm under the keel before miraculously the wind stopped as quickly as it had started. Shaken but still under the effects of the adrenaline rush we re-anchored along with half the other boats. Only about four of the twenty or so of us had stayed put. We were later to learn that damage was fantastically light with only two boats actually hitting each other. Our staysail has survived and our only damage is a badly vibrating wind generator. The fact that it has survived at all is a miracle. Hopefully a set of new bearings will sort it out. A tug captain near us noted over 80 knots of wind, the papers said 100knots were recorded. I know not the figure, I just know that for half an hour I honestly believed that I could not save Noodles and although neither of us felt in any personal danger, nor do I think we were, we both felt that the days of our beloved floating home were numbered and this created an awful knot of despair that was hard to overcome. For the first time I understand the problem of bodily and mentally making oneself not give up.

With the fatigue that follows such an adrenaline rush settling upon us we decided that we could not relax until we had delved deep into the bowls of the fo'castle and dug out our 30kg of Bruce anchor. We hauled up our trusty 25kg Delta and covered in mud and harbour refuse I changed it for the Bruce. This not inconsiderable amount of work paid off for that night a steady thirty knots of South Wester blew across Durban and set up quite a fetch as the harbour is over a mile wide. On edge I did two hours anchor watch in the early hours before it quietened down. We had not moved an inch.

Ashore all was not so well. Trees were uprooted, roofs blown off and the marina was severely damaged. One whole finger of it being blown ashore. The main stairway from shore to dock had come adrift so a dinghy was needed to get onto any dock. Luckily the part reserved for the International visitors which was full to overflowing was unscathed. I spent a long morning going from one office to another in pouring rain to get the necessary paperwork completed before we could leave this terrible place. On a technical front the main lesson we have learnt is that with the staysail set up Nordlys will, when the wind gets over forty knots, not hang to her anchor but try to sail about it. This sets up huge strains and dragging results. It must be a centre of effort/centre of windage thing. It was this that caused us to drag when at anchor at the top of Madagascar. In over 55,000 miles of cruising we have had now had three occasions when the wellbeing of our floating home has been in doubt. In the Tuamotus, in Morea and now in Durban. On all occasions it has been when at anchor, never when at sea. Three is enough.

So with the paperwork done and a weather window opening an armada of weather trapped boats left Durban on the morning of the 29th November. Cold, wet and windless we were happy to be at sea. Now as I write this with 30nm to go to Mossel Bay in Western Cape, Durban is nearly five hundred miles behind us. We have had a 250nm day with wind and the famed Agulhas current in our favour. Most of the flotilla that left when we did are behind us and in such as East London or Port Elizabeth. Dan and Yo our Aussie friends and the only people to have their boat badly damaged in Durban are as I write anchoring in Plettenberg Bay a few miles north east of us. The Danish 56 foot X yacht Northern Star and our German friends on Noa are Mossel Bay bound so we should have a party while we let what looks like three days of SW gales blow through. Meanwhile Nordlys is sailing herself over a peaceful sea and ten knots of beam wind giving us five or six knots. The phosphorescence makes the bow wake like cream and above to the east the waning moon is backlighting some scattered clouds whilst to our south the Southern Cross, that emblem of this hemisphere is tilting its way across the sky. I should leave you with traumatic pictures of uprooted trees and lopsided marina dock but somehow they never got taken.

David