East London

We arrived in East London just before lunch on Monday with a nice breeze. Not a bad spot at all up Buffalo River with a yacht club about a mile up near the bridge. We jumped onto a mooring that belonged to the club. A couple of our friends were already there that we hadn't seen for a while and we ended up having a couple of beers at the club. The following day we hired a car as the forecast wasn't that flash for the next few days. I have a lot of family about 500kms inland from here that I had never met so we took a drive with the first night stopping at a very nice country town called Summerset East. After having a couple of beers in the local pub we checked in at a B+B accross the road and chatted to a few of the locals. The next morning we carried on to Graaff-Reinet were the big McNaughton clan are from. Was great, we met Andrew and Jenny Mcnaughton and they were super friendly and welcoming like we had known them all our lives. They filled us in on the who's who in the family and we took of in the car and visited the old farm Aloe Ridge were my dad grew up until they left in the 60's for Australia. Its pretty brutal country for farming, very dry but they seem to do alright. Very pretty with a lot of mountains and natural reserves around the place and the old historic town is very well cared for. We stayed a couple of nights with Jenny and Andrew and then said our fair wells until the next time we visit. Was a great stay and to put faces and places to the names.

We hoped for a weather window to leave Saturday but the wind isn't to flash but from Tuesday on it looks like we have at least 3 good days so we should be able to make some good miles towards Cape Town  hopefully.

Back to normality

Well I went the backward (cheapest) route to South Africa from Australia via Dubai. This wouldn't have been too bad except one was late making me miss the next which meant a lot of running around in the airports like a mad man to get on the next flight back to Durban and then onto Sunflower with Julie. Ended up arriving onboard just after midnight. Julie also had a mission with 5 different legs back from Argentina! Anyway all was well when we were back onboard:)

The next few days was just sorting everything out to get ready to leave for the next weather window. We went to put up the headsail and the furler was jammed, this is a bit of a major as we have no drive in light winds. Turns out this is the older model of profurl and has steel ball bearings and if any water gets through the seal say goodbye. I had ordered a new staysail through Ulman sails and that arrived so at least that's something. They have a bearing kit in Cape Town so we decided to leave without the headsail and just have to motor a bit more in the lighter winds.

We checked out Friday to leave Saturday and are now on our way. Bit of motoring to start but managed to sail last night but then the sea is glass today and we are once again motoring. It's either all or nothing here and you just have to go whenever you can and we were lucky to get this window so soon. 20kts from behind is forecast for tonight and that should get us into East London tomorrow afternoon sometime were it looks like we might stay for a night or 2 until we can carry on. It's just under 900nm to Cape Town so we will have only 2/3rds to go. We have a strong current of 2-4 kts helping us now. 

All is good being back onboard just trying to get back in the sailing routine once again, still kicking things I shouldn't with my big toe;)