A Christmas Curse - Walvis Bay, Namibia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 29 Dec 2012 10:35
| 22:57.057S 14:28.951E December 12, 2012 - December 28, 2012 Things started out well on Christmas day. Don cooked a perfect bacon and egg breakfast, and that was good. Then we had a champagne lunch with fruit salad, and that was good. But then the wind whipped up to a nasty 33 knots, preventing us from going ashore in the dinghy for our special Christmas dinner at the semi-posh African/French fusion restaurant. That was bad. Then I cooked a lackluster calamari dinner in place of our nice dinner out. That was worse. It wasn't just Christmas day though. Walvis Bay has suddenly become infested with pink jellyfish - lovely to look at, but very smelly when dead and stuck in both toilets. Also annoying when sucked into the main water intake while the generator and water maker are running, nearly causing the generator's cooling water pump to blow another impeller and overheat the generator (luckily, the change in the water maker's normal operating hum was our first clue something was amiss - the water maker lost pressure indicating the main water intake was plugged - so we shut it all down before more harm was done). Shortly thereafter, when the wind kicked up (only 30 knots, not a Cape Town-like blow) and Don went to put out more chain, he noticed the chain counter was no longer counting. Newly replaced last year, this is nothing if not annoying. Annoying, but not critical. Now comfortably resting on the back burner, this problem will be tackled another time. A day or two after that, when Don fired up the generator, what happened? Nothing. No one likes it when the key, the switch, or the button is turned, flipped or pushed and nothing happens. Complete silence in those situations is so unnerving. This is especially true on a boat where every major system, is, well, major. This time Don's foray into the engine room turned up a loose ground wire, and once tightened, that took care of that. But then... A day or two later, the generator was humming along nicely when, nothing. It up and quit. A quick trip to the engine room revealed the safety cover for the generator's fan belt had come loose, exposing one of its sharp edges to the fan belt and slicing it neatly in half. That one was easy - fan belt changed, useless fan belt cover thrown in a locker. Result? Generator happy. Not for long. The generator then developed a slight cough when started - a little like a car when its battery is dying. So we hauled a brand new starting battery back to the boat in the dinghy, Don installed it, then fired up the generator. It coughed (a little). "Hmmm…", says Don, "maybe the brushes in the starter motor are worn, but I'm not going to pull that all apart now. If the starter quits, the starter quits, I'll replace the brushes then. We have spares aboard." Not one to argue with the head mechanic over things mechanical, that problem is also sitting on the back burner for now. Besides, it's not like Don has nothing else to do. The freezer stopped freezing (not completely, but enough to soften the extra large mound of frozen meat along with other equally precious items meant to keep us fed over the next six weeks). A freon leak was suspected, so a hasty trip to a refrigeration place was made, where hoses and connectors were assembled such that Don could re-charge the system (and replace a few o-rings in the process). We are anxiously awaiting the results of the freon-charging operation while our mound of meat teeters on the brink of thawing in our other much less than efficient fridge/freezer, which is currently struggling to freeze while simultaneously pulling a hefty (and constant) 2.5 amps out of our overworked battery bank. And then... While preparing for departure from Namibia (planned for Saturday, 12/29), we thought it best to top up our water supply by running the water maker. We've been limiting our water consumption and water maker usage due to the condition of the excessively silty seawater in the bay, but it's always best to start a long passage with lots of fresh water in the tank. So we fired up the water maker and it started doing its thing. Then, nothing. Done. Kaput. Quiet. After climbing into the cockpit port side locker to investigate, Don found the unit wasn't getting power. He switched out the water maker's control board with a spare leftover from Harmonie's previous owners (thank you Ralph!), and Bob's your uncle, all is well in our water maker's world. There is a bright spot. Just as they said they would, Amel shipped Harmonie's two new steering racks shortly after Don contacted them, and FedEx delivered them to Walvis Bay where we picked them up Thursday (12/27). So we didn't quite get our two front teeth for Christmas, but it was darn close. Not that it wasn't a little painful in the pocket, but at least the whole package (including shipping) was less than one Boat Unit (1 BU = $1,000). When dealing with boats, it's always best to talk Boat Units instead of dollars - it's much less depressing, and can sometimes be fun - especially when talking about other boaters' spent Boat Units. Anyway, in between changing out the engine start battery and recharging the freezer with freon, Don reassembled the rack and pinion steering, and reattached the steering cables to the rudder quadrant. All done in one afternoon, by the way. No one has ever accused Don of dilly-dallying when there's work to be done. And the best part? We have managed to have some fun during the two and a half weeks we've been anchored in Walvis Bay. It's quite pleasant here, despite the fact that it's a commercial port. The wind almost always blows from the southeast when it is blowing, so regardless of what they are loading or unloading in the port, it doesn't land on Harmonie. The only trouble is, it never rains here. Never. Deserts do tend to have this trait, but it's very strange to experience it for the first time. You might say, 'How nice! No rain!'. While it's true there is no need for storm sewers or umbrellas in Walvis Bay, a bit of fresh water falling from the sky now and then is quite a good thing when living on a boat in a place where water is scarce. Harmonie is looking rather embarrassingly filthy at the moment with her coating of black powder acquired during the 3-day Cape Town blow, now covered with a spattering of salt, and a none too flattering dusting of Namibian sand. Add to that our dinghy, which is also coated in Namibian sand (some slung there by overzealous tykes at the Walvis Bay yacht club where we beach the dinghy when we go ashore), and the pile of washing that continues to grow despite our efforts to reduce the pile by wearing the same thing everyday. There is a good laundry service in Walvis Bay, but to use it we have to load the clothes in the dinghy, beach the dinghy, drag the dinghy up the beach and out of high tide's way, and either call for laundry pick-up or lug the clothes to town ourselves, and then do the whole thing in reverse when the clothes are done. It's much easier to keep wearing the same thing day after day. Since there are very few other cruising boaters around (most are in the Cape Town and Richard's Bay areas of South Africa), there's no one to keep track of our wardrobe (or lack thereof), so all's well. The Walvis Bay Yacht Club is very friendly and extremely accommodating given they charge no fees for use of their beach, restaurant, bar or showers (or moorings for that matter). Although the mornings around here are often gloomy with more than a normal dose of fog (but no rain!), the afternoons are usually breezy (but not too breezy) and sunny. There is a huge flock of flamingoes here at the moment, so between those elegant (while flying) but occasionally dorky-looking (while standing) beasts, and the pelicans and the pink jellyfish and the seals, we've been well entertained in spite of the lack of boater company. We rented car and drove to nearby Swakomund (still don't know how to properly pronounce this) where we met a South African safari guide over lunch. He confirmed our generally positive impression of Namibia when he said, "The more I travel in Namibia, the more I am amazed at the progress this country has made in comparison to South Africa over the same time span." It does seem to us the plight of the black Namibian population is much better than that of black South Africans, but that may be because we are in Walvis Bay, which is a busy commercial port with lots of light industry, some tourism, and presumably lots of jobs. Not having traveled inland, we're not sure the same would be true. Even so, the atmosphere here is more relaxed, black and white seem to be slightly more integrated, and crime is less of a worry. All good. We do wish we had been able to do some traveling inland, but without access to power, and being unwilling to hire someone to care for Harmonie while we are away (mainly because we strongly resemble paranoid control freaks when it comes to caring for our boat), we've decided not to do more than day trips. Aside from the trip to Swakomund, we did venture out for a quad bike desert tour. It was an excellent adventure definitely worth writing home about as you'll see in the photos below. The desert. The quad bikes. Neither Don nor I thought we'd ever ride one of these. It's good the bikes were automatics, and speed limited. No wheelies (intentional or unintentional) were possible. Don might have liked a little more power and speed, but it was just right for us more timid desert drivers. The dunes. Our guide Fanie patiently taught us how to safely slide down the rather intimidating 37 degree dune slopes - sit tight, no gas, pump the rear brakes, piece of cake. In the photo above, Don is successfully sliding down the dune while I wait my turn at the top. But it's more than just bikes and dunes. Our guide Fanie, a longtime resident of Walvis Bay, is a self-styled natural historian. He spends lots of time in the desert, and is delighted when something new from the past suddenly peeks out from under the constantly shifting sand dunes. The desert was not always a desert, and the mud flats lying under and around many of the dunes are full of fossilized human and animal footprints. This set of human footprints was dated recently by a group of scientists to be about 2,000 years old. The shifting sands don't always reveal footprints. In the short span of our four-hour tour, we saw at least ten or fifteen human skeletons laying in and around the sand. Not all of them were gazing out at us so eerily though. Nice teeth. The indigenous people buried their dead in the sands surrounding their camps, and weren't bothered if and when the bones found their way back to the surface. Apparently, bones don't last long under the intense rays of the African sun, so if some poke out every now and then, they aren't there for long. Life in the desert. There is more life in the desert than one might expect. Everything from dung beetles, snakes and scorpions to springbok as shown above. Flamingoes in Walvis Bay lagoon. There are hundreds of flamingoes here. When it's low tide in the lagoon they congregate to eat their favorite meal - the green muck left on the bottom as the tide recedes. More power to them - we do our best not to step in the green muck, let alone eat it. Although they are not obscenely pink, they do have a nice streak of pink underneath near their tail feathers. It's more visible when they are flying, but they were so busy eating when we came by to visit with the camera, they wouldn't fly for us. Don and his new teeth. Installing the new steering racks from Amel. All went back together smoothly including the wheel in the cockpit. Harmonie is feeling a bit more like herself again. Next up: Leaving Africa. Anne |