Capetown arrival
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Wed 20 Jul 2011 17:37
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Wednesday 20 July 1846 Local 1646 UTC
33:54.484S 018:25.117E
We had some fantactic sailing on this trip from
Durban along with a mix of conditions, but on the whole we were happy not to get
a real beating up and to making the passage in one hop and in four days flat!
Flying all sail in the downwind conditions on one day made me look
forward to the initial part of the south Atlantic run home which should be
downwind. Should be..... At just after 0700this morning and exactly four
days after clearing Durban harbour we turned in towards Capetown harbour. We had
slowed the boat down all night so that we would not arrive into the harbour
before the marina opened.
The Marina is accessed through two lifting bridges
which are not manned until 0800. The Victoria & Alfred waterfront
development in the centre of Capetown with the marina at the hub of it is
spectacular. Our pontoon was occupied by Cape Fur Seals the bulls of which
are quite aggressive so our volunteer line handlers needed to chase them
off so the lines could be made fast.
The Capetown arrival is a real threshold on the
journey and it seemed hard to believe we would ever get this far when in early
February that reckless idiot, the skipper broke his back and the realisation
that we could not make a return home through the Gulf of Aden dawned on
me. But by "eating the elephant one bite at a time" we are
here.
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