What? No plan?
Casamara
John & Susan Simpson
Mon 24 Nov 2025 18:35
| Team Casamara has a bit of a reputation for forward planning. We were chatting to our friends Derek and Letitia, who have travelled many miles alongside us in their yacht Mary Doll, and they were astonished to discover we didn’t have a plan for what we were going to do on arrival in South Africa. In truth it was because we’d just finished 8 months of land-travel in SE Asia and couldn’t face the prospect of putting together another spreadsheet of accommodation and transport, but it has turned out to be a fortunate change in approach. Normally, we would have worked out a schedule of where we were going to be when, what that was to do or see, and then set up a plan for each destination. On the East coast of South Africa that is nigh on impossible. From Richard’s Bay where we arrived in the country down to Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), the Agulhas current runs at pace from north to south and very close to the coast. Any time the wind blows from the south the sea state becomes untenable for small craft like ours as steep, massive waves build very quickly. There are few safe ports along the way so the trick is to wait for a weather window long enough to get you safely to the next port and only move on from there when it’s safe to do so. The weather systems change rapidly and the winds flip from north to south in a matter of hours so we have to keep an eye on the weather constantly and be ready to go as soon as the time is right. We’re very glad now that we didn’t put ourselves under pressure to be sticking to a pre-arranged plan. Richard’s Bay was a great introduction to South Africa and the Zululand Yacht Club made the World ARC rally fleet very welcome. We’ll remember their friendly hospitality and their Braais (BBQs) with a menu of enormous quantities of meat, meat and more meat! From Zulu dancing at the prize giving dinner, to getting up close to wild animals on safari, or trying some words of Xhosa language where an ‘X’ is a click with your tongue inside your cheek, we felt we got a good flavour of the KwaZulu-Natal province. Zulu dancers gathered on the Yacht Club lawn We visited the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi (pronounced shlooshloowee-imfolozee) Park for a half-day safari drive and were amazed at the beauty of the scenery only a few miles in from the coast. The views stretched for miles over craggy hills and green wilderness. I was really keen to see a giraffe in the wild and within half an hour of the drive we came across a small tower of them. I love that a group of giraffes standing still is called a tower, but if they’re moving it’s called a journey. We saw towers and journeys of them and loved the way they seemed to skulk along behind bushes with only their heads nodding backwards and forwards as they walked. It was almost as if they thought we couldn’t see them if we could only see their heads! We saw many, many other animals and birds on the drive. John kept a list and I think it ran to 16 different species by the time we’d finished. One of many giraffes seen There was too much jollity going on in the hide for any animals to come close! We were sad to say goodbye to Ian and Chris after they’d managed to put up with us for 7 weeks! We’d had great fun with them on board and it felt very strange to be on Casamara without them. After just over a week at Zululand Yacht Club a weather window opened up for us to make our first hop down the coast to Durban and we left at 1700 for an overnight sail. I would say we soon settled back into sailing Casamara as a twosome again but it wasn’t a particularly comfortable sail so settled doesn’t seem quite the right term. Nevertheless, we made it to Durban and once we’d negotiated our entry into the harbour, tied up to a pontoon at Durban Marina. The entry procedure for Durban required us to call the port authority on VHF channel 09 once we were 1 mile from the entrance. John made his call, only to be told in no uncertain terms that he was actually 2 miles from the entrance and must call back when he was a mile closer! Once we were definitely 1 mile from the harbour entrance we were asked to wait for a ship to come out of the channel. Thankfully after that we were allowed to proceed without further ado. Durban harbour entrance 48 hours after arrival in Durban, the weather looks good for our next hop down the coast. We will leave at 0500 tomorrow bound for East London (the South Africa version) by lunchtime the next day and before the weather flips back again. |