Harmonie - In Search of a Good Home - Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richard's Bay, South Africa

In Search of a Good Home - Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richard's Bay, South Africa

Harmonie

Don and Anne Myers

Sat 23 Jun 2012 10:53

28:47.639S 32:04.763E

May 31, 2012 - June 23, 2012

A good home. Easy to find for us, but not so easy for Harmonie. It has been a while since Harmonie has looked so large. In the fancy marinas of Southeast Asia, a fifty-odd foot sailboat is commonplace, many are much larger, others a little smaller. The same can be said for Australia, parts of New Zealand and the few marinas spread across the Pacific. Not so in South Africa, at least in this part of South Africa. The docks are old, slightly rickety, a bit wobbly, with very short, unanchored fingers perfectly suitable for a 36 foot boat. We can deal with rickety and wobbly, and even short fingers, but not in a place known for its big winter blows. We have always left Harmonie hauled out on solid ground while we've traveled home, but hauling out and storing 'on the hard' in this area is proving to be difficult for a 52 foot, two-masted boat. So, what to do?

First, the yacht club.

Two days after checking in to South Africa, we moved over to Zululand Yacht Club. Reknowned for its friendliness, the yacht club is just a mile or so from the small craft harbor where we cleared in. We tied off at the end of the one of the docks, with a catamaran behind us and our bow sticking well out (and mostly untethered) into the channel. We had heard the yacht club had haul out facilities, so Don, John and I wasted no time before walking over to the hard dock area to take a look.

This is the yacht club's hard dock area. Ok, so some of the boats look like they've been here a while, and the cradles, well, the cradles aren't exactly cradles, but - we thought to ourselves - as long as we can safely haul the boat out of the water, there's sure to be a way we can prop it up so it will stay put while we're away.

This frame, and a big tractor to pull it, are the sum total of Zululand Yacht Club's haul out equipment. Perfectly adequate for a smaller boat, but what about our rather portly, longish, two-masted, eighteen ton, home-away-from home? The debate didn't last long. Our over-protective nature won out and we decided to forego hauling Harmonie here.

Maybe Durban?

Yeah, Durban! It's a big city, lots of boats, several yacht clubs and a marina. There's bound to be a haul out facility with a plenty big travelift and lots of hard storage, or at least space in the marina with docks that can easily withstand big southwesterly blows with longish boats tied to them. We rented a car, the three of us piled in, and a short two hours later our hopeful bubbles were burst. There is a haul out facility in Durban, but no hard dock storage. This is the problem with a place that never freezes over - no need to haul and store boats on dry land. The Durban marina has the same slightly rickety, wobbly docks with short fingers so popular in Richard's Bay, but a power connection is not guaranteed and a nasty port tax is levied on all foreign boats berthed for more than thirty days. The yacht clubs are full with no room for transients. Shoot! Durban is not the answer. All was not lost though, we drowned our sorrows in a delightful Indian curry lunch served with local beer in the Royal Natal Yacht Club by Lawrence, an extremely amiable fellow. Durban is home to a sizable Indian community, so when Lawrence said the curry was good, he wasn't lying.

Nothing a good braai won't fix.

A braai is the South African version of a barbecue. Braais are a national sport, art, and obsession. These people eat a lot of meat. A lot of meat. And the meat is good! And cheap! So why not? We attended the Friday night braai at the yacht club, and were treated to a huge slab of t-bone steak served with mealie pap (maize porridge) and peri peri (hot) sauce. As we got to know the few boater leftovers from last year (their term, not ours - they are cruisers who crossed the Indian Ocean last year, but chose to stay in Richard's Bay for an extra year before rounding the cape and crossing the Atlantic), we were entertained by a group of local yacht club members enthusiastically singing various songs in Afrikaans after sampling a fair amount of excellent South African beer. The next morning, the docks were unusually quiet. In truth, this being winter and all, aside from Friday night at the braai with the singing Afrikanners, the week we spent at the yacht club was extremely quiet. The leftover cruisers were off on a land trip to Botswana, and all the locals vacated the premises for things like work. We are so used to being surrounded by retired cruiser people like us that it's a shock when faced with a place filled with local boats, and working people. It makes for very quiet weekdays and excellent access to the laundry room.

New sails.

The yacht club couldn't guarantee us a slip after thirty days, but we'll need one for nearly five months, so we decided our only option was to move to tiny Tuzi Gazi Marina in the small craft harbor near where we cleared in. We paid a quick visit, decided we could make do with the wobbly docks and short fingers in the well-sheltered marina, and planned to move the boat over from the yacht club on June 8. In the meantime, Don received a few quotes for new main and mizzen sails, and we agreed to go with North Sails, based in Cape Town. They sent a local agent out to the yacht club to take measurements, which was slightly embarrassing given the state of our main (at last count it had 14 patches and two unattended tears), but the agent assured us he'd seen worse. At the moment we are waiting for the final quote, but the sails should be ready to go come mid-October when we return to South Africa. Last week, our genoa was taken away for its much needed sun cover repairs. Before we move on from Richard's Bay, Harmonie will once again be standing proud with mostly new sails - a huge relief after skulking about the Indian Ocean for so long in a constant state of sail-related embarrassment.

John, Don and Rob, from the local (Durban) sail loft, measuring our soon-to-be-retired main.

Note the good-sized diagonal tear part-way up the sail toward the mast. There's another further up (outside the frame of the picture), and patches all over the foot (bottom) end of the sail, which are hard to see in the photo given the angle of light and the sail's mildew stains. John suggested we save the worst patched over and torn parts of the sail, take them home, and frame them. An excellent idea. After all, Don and I and this sail have been through a lot together over the past six years, and the memories of each rip and subsequent patch application are near and dear to our hearts.

A lot of wind.

We moved the boat to Tuzi Gazi Marina as planned on June 8. On June 9, we decided our bow (which was sticking well out from the short dock), was too exposed to the southwest. Southwest is usually the direction of a big blow around here, and one was forecasted to arrive the next day. So we moved Harmonie to a slip on the opposite side of the main dock where our stern would take the brunt of the southwest wind instead. A good plan until a twenty knot southeast wind cropped up later that day and pushed our exposed bow to port, twisting the short dock finger and the whole boat such that the stern was a bit too cozy with the main dock and the port side fenders too cozy with the small sailboat next to us. Ok, third time's a charm, right? This time, we moved to an empty double berth, and hogged up the entire space, tying Harmonie off to the short fingers on both sides, as well as the main dock. In the end, we had eighteen lines securing Harmonie to the docks, but still felt like the boat might take the windward dock finger with it in a big southwesterly.

This theory was well-tested the next day. The wind blew hard from the southwest, and continued to do so for ten or twelve hours. The Tuzi Gazi Marina is extremely well protected by large walls in nearly every direction, but the relentless wind whipped through the rigging, and pushed the masts hard to port, straining the poor little twisted and groaning dock finger to the max. In fact, the entire dock complex was groaning, twisting and buckling. After sunset the howling continued, so the only sane thing to do was to leave the boat and moaning docks, and escape into the relative calm of one of the nearby restaurants for dinner. We had been monitoring the wind all day and seen gusts up over 40 knots. However, just as we three stepped off the boat onto the moving dock, the wind churned up a mighty blast and we held our breath as we watched the boat heel, and the dock strain. It held. We scurried down the dock with the wind pushing us sharply from behind, and watched the small sailboat we were berthed next to the previous day heel hard into the dock with a ferocious wind blast. With one last look back at Harmonie to be sure all was still in one piece, we rushed up onto solid ground, bracing ourselves against the cold. As we approached one of the waterfront buildings, there was a loud noise, and Don nearly tripped over something. Then a crash, and another crash, and we realized chunks of something were flying through the air and smashing on the ground right in front of us. Whoa! Roof tiles! The red clay tiles were blowing off the roof two stories above our heads! We gingerly got out of the way, and hustled into the restaurant where all was quiet and calm. Wow, that was definitely more than 40 knots of wind. A few of those blasts had to be closer to 50. It's probably good we weren't on the boat watching the wind meter. In the quiet of the restaurant, we ordered a bottle of wine and some ribs, then watched the Canadian Formula One Grand Prix in an effort to forget about what was going on outside. Occasionally, one of us did sneak off to take a peek outside, just to be sure all the docks were still where we left them. By the time we finished dinner, things had calmed down.

The crew and owner of a very nice 50ish foot motor yacht moored in the double berth next to us chose to weather the windstorm in a slightly different fashion. They spent the entire day sitting outside one of the waterfront bars drinking rum and coke. We would have worried less about everything, had we done the same. Next time a big blow comes, we might seriously consider the rum and coke coping option.

It's hard to capture groaning, twisting, buckling docks in a photo, but this was the best I could do. You can see a little bit of the twisting and buckling, but will just have to imagine the groaning. Harmonie's stern is down the dock, on the left.

Tuzi Gazi berth number four.

Even though Harmonie survived her first big southwesterly well, we still worried about leaving her for three months in a place known to get southwest winds up to 60 knots. So we asked the marina folks about other berth options that might provide more security in a big wind. Then we asked again. Then a very kindly charter boat fisherman moved his boat out of the most desirable berth in the marina, and two days ago (June 21), we moved in. Ahhhh…..the dock finger on the port side may still be short, but the starboard side of the boat is happily tied bow to stern alongside the main dock. Yes! This is good. Yesterday, Don spent several hours tying nineteen dock lines just so, and Harmonie is now snugly settled. We purchased two larger fenders to add to our collection, and hired a local guy to look after Harmonie while we're away.