Day 72, Year 6 Busy Day
Date: Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Weather: Sunny; No Wind All Day and Warmer Temps
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa
The nighttime temps here in Simon’s Town have been in the 50’s and low 60’s (degrees F) since we arrived, but this evening there is a hot wind blowing after a day of calm. I don’t think we’ll be using the duvet on the bed tonight and I actually had to turn a fan on just to sit here and write the log. In addition to being hotter than normal, we had a busier than normal day. Odulphus had arranged for our main sail to be picked up today, not by Quantum Sails as I said in last night’s, but by North Sails. So we started the day by going to get a cart to take the sail up to the Yacht Club. Mark returned with the cart but said that Pieter had an appointment to take Odulphus to the fuel dock to get fuel and that he would ask the guy who pumps the fuel to stick around to fill our jerry cans. You have to make an appointment here so it just seemed easier to piggy back on Odulphus. So we switched gears and launched the dinghy. Mark delivered the jerry cans to the fuel dock by dinghy and then he came back and we put the main sail in the dinghy and took it to Odulphus at the fuel dock which kept us from walking this long and difficult dock with a heavy cart. Odulphus then returned to their main dock “home” very close to the yacht club, so this saved us a lot of trouble. Mark and I made three trips in the dinghy getting six 5-gallon jugs of fuel on each run and coming back to fill our empty center fuel tank. We now have as much fuel as we can carry, so that job is done.
The man from North Sails came and promised to have our sails back no later than Jan 15. We then went to the Yacht Club to have lunch, but it was a very busy place today. The scaled-down version of the yacht America was set for splash down today and there was quite a crowd to watch this four-hour long process that never ended. The boat is still sitting on the ramp and I suppose it will go in tomorrow. The boat is named Coracle. It is built of bamboo but because of its size it is way too heavy for the tiny little travel lift they have here. We ate lunch and then stayed in the club house to use the free wifi to do more searching for places to meet our kids in Culebra or Vieques. So we were there all afternoon and watched out the windows as the boat was inched this way and that to get positioned on the ramp. We really don’t know why they didn’t go ahead and put the boat in but I’m sure we’ll find out tomorrow.
We meet Giovanni and Nola at 7:45 am tomorrow morning to drive to the nearby town of Fish Hoek for a walk up the mountain. I just hope the path is not TOO steep. I’ll let you know about that tomorrow night.
 |
| 110104 Day 72 South Africa–Launching of Coracle |
