Day 63, Year 6 Laid-back Day After Christmas
Date: Sunday, December 26, 2010
Weather: Still Sunny; SE 20-25 am, SE 35-40 pm
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa
After a very busy Christmas Day and week leading up to Christmas, today was delightfully relaxed. We spent most of the morning thinking about our Atlantic crossing and making some decisions. Because of expense, we have decided to skip Brazil. We will leave here sometime between mid-and late-January and head to St. Helena, then Ascension Island, and then from there straight to Barbados. This is today’s plan, but it could change. But the current plan will get us to the Caribbean in plenty of time to hopefully have Mark’s sister and brother-in-law, ME and Lee, come sail with us for a few short hops in the Caribbean and we will still be in St. Martin by mid-April to meet up with our kids if they decide to come. Then we are hoping that Mark’s brother Steve will join us for our sail from the Caribbean to Ft. Lauderdale in Florida in May. So our morning of decision making was very productive. Then we started the computer search for a place for our children, their spouses, and the grandchildren to stay when we get to St. Martin. That search will continue as we have not found the perfect spot for the right price yet. In the midst of all this decision-making and internet searching, a young couple from Johannesburg stopped by our boat. Nevan and Leigh hope to sail around the world someday so they were “window shopping.” We invited them aboard for a little tour of Windbird. Just doing that reminded us of how happy we have been with our purchase of this boat to take us around the world. Later in the afternoon, Piet Hein and Tory, our Cape Town friends from the yacht Double Dutch stopped by to deliver the 14 kilos of rolled oats that Tory found for us. We have been searching for these oats since we arrived in Richards Bay and are very grateful to Tory for finding them for us. So now Windbird will have enough granola to make it back to the US!!!
This evening we braved the winds to walk up to the Yacht Club to meet Pieter and Carla of Odulphus. On the way we saw the huge resident Cape fur seal that plies the marina waters daily sleeping on one of the finger piers. This guy is huge. He is at least four, maybe five feet long and there is no way I could give him a hug as he is just too big around. He was sleeping peacefully in the sun. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me so we didn’t get to record this sighting. We’re not sure what we are doing tomorrow but maybe we will just have another wonderfully relaxed day.
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| 101226 Day 63 South Africa–Day After Christmas Visitors |
