Day 71, Year 6 It’s Back . . .
Date: Monday, January 3, 2011
Weather: Sunny; Winds Up and Down, 20 to 45 Knots
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa
In the middle of the night I awoke to that all too familiar roaring sound of the wind. After a couple of days of reprieve, it’s back . . . full force. An earlier report had told us that the winds would return for one day, but we now it is looking like we will have this windy weather until the January 6. Then we might get a few days of calm weather before it’s back again. But at least it calmed down long enough for our friends Dominique and Dominique on Kea to get to Hout Bay. They sent an SMS message telling us that they got securely tied to the dock before the 40 knot winds arrived, so for that we are thankful.
Mark and I spent our entire day at the Yacht Club working intensely on the internet to research possible places that we can afford to meet our kids on one of the two islands just off the east end of Puerto Rico–Culebra or Vieques. We don’t have enough information to know if we could safely anchor Windbird on the main island of Puerto Rico, but we do have information about Vieques and Culebra, so we have narrowed the search to those two islands. After a day of both of us searching and searching on two computers at the same time, Vieques, is coming out as the cheapest for the best accommodations. We went to the Yacht Club to do this searching because the wifi internet connection there is free. We have been using our cell modem connection on the boat and it is not free. We have a wifi booster that should allow us to get the free internet on the boat, but we have not been successful in getting it to work for us here. Mark took his computer and the booster into an internet shop today and they reset it for us, but it still does not seem to be working right. So we will probably have to return to the Yacht Club tomorrow to continue our search and hopefully make a decision on the “just right” place.
Tomorrow someone from Quantum Sails is supposed to come and pick up our main sail, and sails from Odulphus, for repair. We now know that we have a couple of tears in our mainsail, so we want them to do a close inspection and make any repairs necessary. Once we get a tentative return date for the sail, we can then make our plans for departure. Hopefully sometime in the next ten to fifteen days we will have the weather window we need for heading around the Cape of Good Hope and north to St. Helena.
Today while I had my computer on the internet (a rare occasion), I went to our blog site to get rid of the thousands of spam messages that accumulate every couple of weeks and to read recent “legitimate” comments. I was so excited when I read that Rich, a faithful blog reader and contributor, has bought the sailboat of his dreams. I can’t wait to hear the details on what boat was bought and why. So congratulations to Rich and family. And Rich, if you are reading this, we are actually planning to be in Ft. Lauderdale sometime between the middle and end of May before heading up the coast. So if your boat is there, we’d love to see it, and you too.
