Simon's Town South Africa Monday 10 November 2014 34:11:47S 18:26:96E

Shaya Moya
Don & Susan Smyth
Wed 3 Dec 2014 16:14
What an amazing roller coaster ride of emotions sailing into False Bay,  Simon’s Town.  Whaleview Manor, Sue’s boutique hotel stood out like a lighthouse and casting my eyes over it one could see our house and behind that Ronnie and Joyce’s house. Ronnie would have been so excited to have welcomed us home. What a fitting tribute to have arrived in his home town. As we approached False Bay Yacht Club where we would moor up, we could see the welcoming committee of family and friends on the jetty cheering us in. What a wonderful sight.


This was the culmination of our crossing the Indian Ocean, arriving in Richards Bay and then heading to Cape Town via Durban. The leg from Durban to Cape Town is notorious for heavy seas of 9m and gale force winds, with very few places to run to for protection. We waited in Durban for a suitable weather window that would allow us to sail all the way to Cape Town. When it came we slipped moorings and motored out of Durban harbour. The voyage was a combination of light wind where we had to motor for hours on end, and gale force wind with a 2-3knot Agulhas current to speed us on our way. Luckily the wind was in our favour which helped us make good speed, even surfing down a few waves at 15-17kts at times. Exciting stuff. The photo below shows the ARC fleet spread out all along the coast en-route to Cape Town. They arrived in Richards Bay quite a bit after us and got held up there waiting for the weather to improve.


During the last night at sea before arriving in Simon’s Town the wind picked up to gale force and soon created huge 5-6m quartering seas making it extremely uncomfortable. We were sailing fast with reefed main and poled out genoa trying to make it around Cape Point to get into the relative shelter of the peninsula by daybreak Roger and I were on the 6-10am shift and our ETA for rounding the Cape was about midday. Sue called and suggested we come to Simon’s Town instead. Looking at the weather and the building seas I decided that this was a good idea as we could get there in daylight instead of the middle of the night in Cape Town. This meant I had to get Ted and Tom up earlier than their set time. By this time the wind was howling with huge seas. 


Making sure Tom was awake I sent him forward to take down the pole and store it again the mast, a manoeuvre we have done countless times. For some unfathomable reason Tom made a mistake and unclipped the two downhaul sheets that Ted was using to control the pole. The sea is an unforgiving mistress, and she chose at that point in time to throw a few huge quartering waves against us causing the boat to buck and pitch violently. Ted and Rogers eyes were huge as they watched in disbelief while Tom clung onto the pole and the mast in order to save the pole from swinging about and doing either himself or the boat damage. After sailing all the way here from New Zealand, we had our closest call only a few miles from home. Lesson learned. Sadly this is where Roger’s adventure finished. It was fantastic to be able to have him join me for the last four months, all the way from Australia to Simon’s Town. What an achievement. He will be sorely missed.


After a couple of days the wind calmed down and we set off early Thursday morning to the Victoria and Alfred marina in the Waterfront Cape Town where we will be until we leave again on the 12th January bound for Salvador in Brazil, via St Helena. Tom has a week to get through his works list to put Shaya Moya back in shape for us to have guests on board during the festive season. We will also get the main engine power issue resolved and both it and the generator serviced. Once again we will replace the Jonbouy man overboard device that we lost in heavy seas twice.  How benign the weather was for our trip around Cape Point. No wind at all so we had to motor for 10 hour. There are two bridges that have to be moved out of our way before we can get into the marina itself. The first one would not open for us and we had to wait for about an hour while they called out an engineer to fix it. This was to become a regular occurrence as the next time only one side of the bridge worked.