Day 42, Year 6 Another Day of Slow but Steady Progress
Date: Sunday, December 5, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny, Light Winds AM, Winds S 10-15 PM
Location: Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa
The long list of chores is still there staring at us and I don’t think we crossed off anything new today. But we did do a lot of things not on the list. We put up the headsail that we took down when we first arrived here in order to do some sewing repairs. Mark also pulled out the anchor chain, power washed it, marked it, and cleaned out the anchor locker while he was at it. He then put something called Penetrol on our newly polished stainless. This is an Australian product that is sold here and it does many things, one of them being to prevent rust on stainless. We’ve never used it before, but we heard from others that it really works. So we figured it was worth a try. While he was applying this, I was in the main cabin editing photos from Kruger. I was fine one minute, and then the next minute I had an instant killer cold. I think it really must be an allergic reaction to the Penetrol as colds don’t usually come on that quickly, but it is still with me this evening. I’m just hoping that whatever it is, it goes away quickly.
We continue to work on the Christmas shopping thing for the grandchildren which required more Skype calls and we also heard from our friends Piet Hein and Tory from Cape Town. They are the first world cruising couple we met and they finished their circumnavigation last year. We met them in Curacao in the Caribbean in 2005 and are looking forward to seeing them when we reach Cape Town. We also talked to Ken and Jean of Renaissance 2000. We met them in the Sail Indonesia Rally and they returned to North America last year. They are currently in Jacksonville, Florida for the winter and it was good to catch up with them.
The weather reports are still looking like we might have a three or four day window to head south starting on Wednesday of this week. That can only happen if our anchor that went in to be re-galvanized and our gypsy that went in to be braised really return tomorrow as promised. We can’t leave without them, but if they do return and the weather report holds, we could be leaving here on Wednesday with the goal of heading as far south as the weather allows.
