Cape Town
W2N 'Where to Next?'
Rob 'Bee' Clark
Sat 30 May 2009 07:54
Well, I made it… this far at least!
I arrived at the Royal Cape Yacht Club in Cape Town early on Wednesday morning after a short but stunning sail through the night. In so doing, I have finally made it to the first significant landmark in the ‘Where to Next?’ project with 10,000Nm of ocean in my wake. From here, I wave goodbye to my old friend; the Atlantic and dip a toe tentatively into the Indian while the formidable Southern roars along just a few degrees to the south. These are oceans of course and here, on the southern tip of South Africa, is the Cape of Good Hope – where all three come together.
In my head, RCYC was set idyllically in the heart of the city amongst a clutch of waterside bars, shops and chandleries. In my head, there was a cheerful and respectful welcome from folk whose prices suggest a more discerning clientele. In my head, from what I’d heard about the ‘Mother City’ and, more specifically, RCYC, I thought that for the first time since leaving British shores, I would be indulging in a certain degree of opulence.
Oh, how the mind plays such tricks!
Opulent perhaps, in a sort of superficial white-upper-middle-class elitist kind of way that’s not underwritten, not qualified by the manner of the reception staff or the general soulless ambiance. Unless of course, you are of the opinion that endless display cabinets groaning under the weight of a spectacular collection of yachting silverware and an unreasonably strict dress-code, are the essence of a club worthy of such unanimous esteem. The place clings desperately, precariously to an old-school, old-regime culture that, under the ANC is as endangered as South Africa’s famous ‘big five’.
It’s quite a relief then that two days after my first impressions were so grotesquely distorted by a sleepless night at sea and a succession of over-officious, overweight, overbearing and joyless women whose job it was to make my arrival in Cape Town as unpleasant as possible, I am actually looking forward to lifting Canasta out on Monday. Well, it’s a long story that I won’t go into now but the five weeks I’d spent in Saldanha without a valid SA visa, were, in Attila the Hun’s opinion, unacceptable! You can see her point, perhaps, but realising the futility of argument, I applied the Rob Clark charm and left the bleak, grey, Eastern European-looking building with a stamp in my passport, a verbal slap on the wrist and the faint glimmer of a smile on The Hun’s sour face. In fact, now I’m officially here, legally, I’m looking forward to enjoying a few days in the city that, according to popular opinion, is going to be a highlight of my adventure. I’ll reserve judgement on that for now if I may. It’s also a popular opinion that I am going to be robbed – no question. Well, the fun never stops! So far though, I’ve avoided being held at knife-point but looking at the daily marina rates and the cost of lifting Canasta onto the hardstanding, I can concur – I will be robbed! Okay, so the club’s not in the heart of the city and nor is it nestled amongst street cafes and bars. In fact, it’s tucked away in the corner of Duncan Dock amongst the throbbing industrial drone of commercial vessels. But, there is a small yet helpful chandlery on site, a helpful Marina Manager and the ‘Yellowtail’ I ate in the club restaurant overlooking the pontoons last night was exquisite. So it’s not all bad and to be honest, there’s free WiFi, clean showers, 24hr security and, looking SW, away from the supertankers, dredgers and loading cranes, Table Mountain looms majestically beyond the city with a mystical and ghostly presence. Then, just this morning, chatting to Steve from North Sails, I was invited to crew on an IMX40 in Sunday’s ‘round the cans’ racing and suddenly, the institutional snobbery and the rudeness seems irrelevant; a pitiably tenuous and harmless grip on an obsolete system that serves only to fuel my cynicism! I will enjoy Cape Town. I will enjoy being at the Royal Cape Yacht Club too and, you know what, I might even recommend it!
So, where was I up to with the repairs when we last ‘spoke’? I can’t remember exactly but if you’re interested, here’s a quick review of the,,, oh, no, tell you what, I know this is going back a while but here’s what happened on the way down from Luderitz that caused my emergency refuge in Saldanha. I’ll list the repairs in a minute…
The first few days sailing out of Luderitz were fairly uneventful although for some strange reason, I was feeling seasick. Not such that I was hanging over the leeward rail but enough to make me lethargic and nauseous. The wind was blowing steadily from SE so I decided to make one large tack about 400Nm offshore to avoid the deep-sea Hake fishing boats and get some rest. On 12th April, with the Benguela current pushing north as I tried to beat south into the wind, I decided to tack back inshore. That’s when the wind started building and when my torment began. Of course, I already new that Canasta’s Volvo Penta engine was starting poorly and I already new that the electronics needed some attention. The batteries weren’t coping with the demand on them and the nav lights, in the absence of any suitable spares in Luderitz, were sort of bodged, a bit, just to get me to Cape Town – the promised land of consumerism and efficiency!
So there I was, happily creaming along at about 6.5knots under three reefs in the main and a scrap of genoa when the furling line snapped. I was still feeling a little unwell and the swell was up to about four metres so it was, well, not the best time to be trying to fix things on the bow. It’s hard to explain clearly but when the furling line snapped and the genoa came rattling out to its full glory, the line (or rather – half of the line) wound itself up into the furling drum making it impossible to re-furl the genoa completely. Well it would, wouldn’t it? In this case, because there was only a scrap of canvas exposed when it snapped, there was only enough line to furl away an arbitrary amount of sail. Still with me? I did manage to tie the remainder of the line back on and furl in enough to get the boat back under control but with the wind building to about 35knots, the line snapped again making me wonder if in fact it was a good idea to buy ‘cheap’ rope from a ‘boat jumble’! I decided to drop the genoa and hoist the storm staysail instead (something that, with hindsight, I should perhaps have already done!) By now though, with the genoa unfurled and flailing wildly in the building breeze, the sheets had tied themselves into a tight fist of a knot and shredded themselves on the guardwire – which also came undone. The extent of the damage was unclear at the time but I know now that the leechline cleat ripped out its rivets, the footline did the same and the UV strip came almost entirely unstitched.
I started the engine for steerage and managed eventually to drop the genoa onto the deck where I tied it to the starboard rail and severed the ragged sheets with a deck knife that I then inadvertently dropped over the side. I still felt sick! With no headsail and three reefs in the main, I returned to the cockpit feeling very sorry myself. When I’d recovered enough to tackle the problem again, I went forward with the storm staysail and got it all rigged quickly. Beautiful! She balanced well, sat off the wind at about 40 degrees and settled down, momentarily, for what I hoped would be the remainder of the leg. No such luck. Coming back on watch after a little sleep, I noticed that the storm staysail halyard had snapped. It’s interesting to note here that upwind, Canasta will hold a ‘close-hauled’ point of sail regardless of the sail combination. Even with the staysail crumpled on the deck and two reefs in the main, she held a course without any help from the autopilot. Gotta love her, eh!
I couldn’t have known at the time but just two days previously, my good friend from St Helena, Nic Robinson, had entered his position in Sea Jade’s logbook for the last time before climbing the mast to make halyard repairs. I thought about doing the same but, disturbingly, the day I lost my nerve and decided instead to use the spinnaker halyard to re-hoist the staysail, Sea Jade was found drifting some 700Nm NW of me. The same day!
So, the staysail was back up although, because I’d used the spinnaker halyard, I couldn’t get a decent luff tension and set off again no higher than 50 or 55 degrees off the wind. Frustrating. She was struggling to hold a course too. The genoa was still sail-tied onto the starboard rail but the first time I tacked involuntarily, the waves washing over the deck began tugging greedily at the stowed sail dragging it through the guardwire and into the ocean. It took all the strength and willpower I could muster to pull the heavy sail back on deck and down the hatch into the forward cabin (I’ve now rigged some fancy ropework through the guardrails to prevent that happening again!) When the wind started to drop, I decided to have another go at rigging the genoa as I’d found a sturdy length of halyard suitable to make some genoa sheets out of. I’m not going to go into detail about how a single-hander goes about trying to thread a huge sail into the slot while hoisting from the cockpit winches. It’s a two-man job requiring one at each end of the boat and being single-handed, it must have looked like something from a slapstick comedy, a Buster Keaton sketch! Anyway, I finally got it up, filled and powering along nicely – lovely! That was the last of my rigging dramas but my engine still had a little trick up its sleeve and the electronics were just waiting for their turn to self-destruct. I even ran out of cooking gas on that leg!
I’d been running the engine every night to charge the batteries that were, by now, completely toasted. I think I’d let the fuel level get too low although it hadn’t yet dropped below the reserve indicator but when I transferred 20ltrs of diesel from the jerry can, I couldn’t get the engine restarted. I didn’t know why but assumed that I’d let some air into the fuel system or perhaps some grit. Either way, I needed to bleed the fuel through – a simple job. Simple, yes, but stripping the thread on the bleed nut is a disaster. I stripped the thread on…
Of course, because I wasn’t able to charge my batteries, I was reliant upon the solar panels through the day and a carefully rationed demand at night. When I say ‘carefully rationed’ of course, I mean no fridge, no nav lights (unless I saw another vessel – then I’d put the masthead anchor light on!), no radar, no VHF radio, no cabin lights, no music, no autopilot The Magnavox GPS had already failed earlier in the leg so I was using a backup battery-powered handheld Garmin unit for navigation.
The situation was ridiculous. I was contravening just about every rule in the book and I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Fortunately, earlier in the voyage, I’d been given paper charts by a couple of cruising South Africans heading north and I could see at a glance that I would very soon be able to lay Saldanha Bay just a few miles north of Cape Town. I seriously considered continuing onto Cape Town but the distant rumble of thunder forced a decision – I’d take refuge in Saldanha. With the decision made and lightning starting to crackle across the horizon to the north, I couldn’t have known then that Saldanha Bay would be my home for more than a month! Anyway, as the sun rose over Jutten Island, the marmalade sky darkened and one final storm swept past bringing squally, fickle winds and torrential rain. I was approaching the entrance to the bay, trying to establish my position through the fog and rain while making continual sail adjustments and attempting to raise the control tower on the VHF that was, by now, useless. This was all underlined by the fact that I had no autopilot and, with the wind swirling alarmingly, balancing the helm was just not possible. It was the finale to a thoroughly unpleasant leg of the voyage and I’m ashamed to admit that, once in the bay, after sailing around the SBYC moorings under a triple reefed mainsail, I waved down a passing Navy launch and asked for a tow onto a mooring – which I got. It wasn’t the dignified arrival in South Africa that, in my mind, I had thought would symbolise a fresh page and a new chapter in the W2N story. In reality, it was more like leaving the last chapter unfinished; a broken boat and a disillusioned skipper who, in just a couple of days, would hear of Nic’s tragic accident and for the second time since leaving the UK, considered abandoning the whole selfish, futile folly.
Canasta is everything I had dared to dream of. The W2N project is selfish, it is a folly but it’s not futile. The economic situation has compromised the adventure a little but there is purpose in my madness and the game must go on. Canasta is not only fixed – she’s in better shape than ever before and as for me, I’m discovering new values, the value of people, sincerity, new priorities and emotions. Ahead of me, dice willing, lies the islands and atolls of the Indian Ocean. Over my shoulder as I write is Table Mountain, one of the world’s most iconic landmarks and my inbox is peppered with thoughtful messages of support from new friends and old. How can the game not go on eh?
Repairs…
1) Engine bleed nut thread stripped on route from Luderitz – re-tapped in Saldanha – now working well
2) Engine starting poorly – Full service including injectors and re-seated an air supply pipe in Saldanha – now working beautifully
3) Diesel Bug causing poor running – new fuel filters and fuel additive – seems to have worked
4) Snapped furling line – replaced in Saldanha
5) Snapped Staysail Halyard – Replaced in Saldanha
6) Hatches leaking – new seals in Saldanha but now the locks have failed!
7) Genoa shredded – currently with North Sails in Cape Town
8) Stack-pack damaged – currently with North Sails in Cape Town
9) Batteries – Three new ‘deep-cycle’ batteries installed in Saldanha – working like a dream!
10) Battery charging – Bought a second-hand 650W petrol generator in Saldanha
11) Magnavox GPS Failed – Bought a second-hand Navman Tracker500 in Saldanha
12) Navigation Lights failed – bought new casing in Saldanha and new LED lamps in Cape Town – now working well (even if the green is a little blue!)
13) B&G Cockpit Display temperamental – not fixed but not essential
14) B&G Autopilot Display unclear – not fixed but not essential
15) External Sat Nav Antenna failed – Cable re-terminated and shortened in Saldanha
