Some pictures from Zululand Yacht Club. 

  

  

Eileen & Ken (Aurora) with Natasha from the Zululand Yacht Club.

 

Alex and Inez having fun with Michelle and Daniel as well as some other kids from the club. 

 

On Saturday the 18th of November we left Richard’s Bay going off sailing the Eastern Cape towards Cape Town. The usual good byes among Alex and Inez’s newly found friends. Saying goodbye to Michelle. 

  

 

Sailing around the Cape can be a quite tricky passage if one does not follow the weather. What makes it really tricky is the Alguhas current that flows from Mozambique all the way down to the Souther tip of the Cape. The Agulhas Current is the western boundary current of the southwest Indian Ocean. It flows down the east coast of Africa from 27°S to 40°S. It is narrow, swift and strong. It is suggested that it is the largest western boundary current in the world ocean, with an estimated net transport of 70 Sverdrups (Sv, millions m³/s), as western boundary currents at comparable latitudes transport less. 

As we said earlier the current can be as quick as up to 6 knots! Due to this, one only wants to sail this passage with the wind, that means when it blows from the North East. When it blows from the South West, one does definitely not want to sail down the Alguhas current as that weather combination (the current from the North and the wind from the South West) creates standing waves and can be very hazardous or even dangerous. 

As before the 1960' there were no coast guard along the Cape, although there were always some boats that capsized every year. However a particular incident occurred in the 1960’s where several fishing boats were lost. The fishermen had had a quite bad fishing year and they needed to come out further to catch their fish and make a living. However they were caught in this bad weather condition and only one boat among several came back safely. After this the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI )was created and since then it is operated only thanks to volunteers. In order to be able for them to know who is out there, we are obliged to check out and check in at every port we are stopping. This is so that the NSRI knows which vessels are out there rounding the Cape. A great service !

This is why we had to leave Richard’s Bay only 5 days after arriving there. The weather showed a favourable “weather window”, which means that the winds were going to blow in our favour starting from Saturday 18th of November. As we did not know

when the next weather window would occur and that we wished to arrive in Cape Town by the beginning of December, we needed to leave so early. So there was no choice than to go. We left together with 10 boats from the World ARC: Sandvita, Lexington, Hanna, Tulla Mhor, Skyelark, Owl, Arabela, Ashia and Toujours Belle. Coming out of Richard’s Bay, the sea was very very rolly. Plenty of big cargo ships were anchored just outside and even these heavy boats were rolling back and forth like small plastic boat toys. As the wind was blowing pretty hard, we started by taking a reef in the main sail. We thought that the Alguha’s current would give us more knots, but we should be happy with at least 2 knots. However the wind dropped totally and we had to motor during the night.