Day 48, Year 6 Mossel Bay, Here We Come
Date: Saturday, December 11, 2010
Weather: Overcast, Squally Weather with a Little Rain
Winds: Overnight SW 20-25 to SE 15-20 by 10am, Afternoon S 15-20
Latitude: 34 18.947 S
Longitude: 023 44.820 E
Miles Traveled: 596
Miles to Go: 81
Location: Passage from Richards Bay to Mossel Bay, Day 4
With less than a hundred miles to go, we should be in Mossel Bay tomorrow morning. We no longer have that four knot current with us, but we do still have half a knot and are making good time. I don’t think we’ll ever see a 222 mile day again as the last 24 hours was ‘only’ 165, but it was fun while it lasted! The thing that is most noticeable as we head south and west is that it is getting cooler. We have had to wear two shirts, long pants, wool socks, a fleece vest, and a windbreaker at night to keep warm. During the day we can shed some of the layers, but since there has been no sunshine, it remains cool all day. Last night we added a polar fleece blanket to wrap up in out in the cockpit, and tonight we might have to break out the foul weather gear for the first time since leaving the Chesapeake Bay in November of 2005. The temperature here is 68-70 degrees F which shouldn’t feel so cool, but out here on the water with the wind blowing in from behind us and the dampness in the air, it feels more like 45-50 degrees F to us. It is certainly not freezing, but after spending most of the past year much closer to the equator, it is going to take us a while to get used to these more moderate temperatures.
Our BUOY weather reports warned us that we would have a period of southwest winds, but neither of our weather nets forecast that. So even with the good radio nets, it is still important to keep gathering your own information. Evidently a coastal low has been hanging over us providing the totally overcast skies, dark clouds that pass packing stronger winds and rain for a few minutes here and there, and the southwest winds. The winds are now coming from the south and should be from the south or southeast for the next four days. Closer to Cape Town, they are forecasting very strong winds and we are being told to stay put in Mossel Bay until next Wednesday or Thursday. By that time the winds should moderate again and give us a good ride around Cape Agulhas, Africa’s southernmost cape. Cape Point or the Cape of Good Hope is the one with the famed reputation, but it is just slightly north of Cape Agulhas. We are hoping that we will be spending the next month in False Bay Yacht Club which is located just before the Cape of Good Hope. We heard from our friends Pieter and Carla on Odulphus that they were able to make a reservation at the Yacht Club and we got an email this morning from friends Jean and Ken on Renaissance 2000 back in Jacksonville, Florida, telling us that on December 6 there were 6 slips available. That stressed the immediacy of getting in touch, but we have spotty cell phone service and we have been trying to call and email the yacht club all day. We finally got a man named John who told us he might have a swing mooring for us. That is not what we were hoping for, but it will be something until a slip becomes available. He told us to email him and gave us the address, but both the email address that Renaissance sent us and the one John gave us keep getting rejected. Since tomorrow is Sunday, we will probably have to wait until Monday morning to confirm that we can have the mooring. Thanks to Ken and Jean for sending us that email. The cruiser communication line is strong.
South Africa has nine provinces or states. We drove through parts of Limpopo and Mpungalanga when we went north to Kruger. Richards Bay is in the KwaZulu Natal province. As we sailed south on this passage, we were off the coast of the Eastern Cape Province. And now we are sailing along the eastern most parts of the Western Cape Province. We’ll be spending the remainder of our time in South Africa in the Western Cape and we hope to take advantage of our few days in Mossel Bay to see parts of what is called the Garden Route. There is a steam train that runs two hours inland from Mossel Bay and back that we hope to be able to take. The Lonely Planet says the scenery is really beautiful. There is also a Bartholomeu Dias Maritime Museum in Mossel Bay and I’d like to visit that as well. The Portuguese explorers Bartholomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama were the first Europeans to come into Mossel Bay in the late 1400’s and there is a modern day replica of the caravel (small ship) that Dias used on his 1488 ‘voyage of discovery.’ So that will be fun to see. We should probably sit still and get over these colds that we both have, but knowing us, I don’t think that is going to happen.
