Anchoring or not...

15 Oct. 09

Managing to get to the boat every second weekend at the moment which is better than nothing, but have some other commitments and it seems to work out. Once we start cruising these commitments should no longer exist and even if they do we won’t be able to stick to our commitments. Wow always wanted to say that sorry but I won’t be able to commit to that for the next 10 years or so, so you may have to wait a bit.

Had a really rough sail the other day we went out in the morning with quite a strong wind but didn’t expect the conditions to get worse. As we let go the ropes in the marina and I reversed out of our slip the wind got hold of our boat and Lola and Rauen had to jump to the starboard side of the boat to stop us from crashing into the boat next door to ours. At this time we should have known, but against our better judgement we motored out of the marina and into the dam. Sailing downwind towards the dam wall was pleasant enough but as the conditions started to get worse and worse we decided to turn back toward home, at this point we opted to sail with only a small head sail but discovered that this is not the best idea as our boat had huge weather helm and would not turn into the wind to allow us to tack. The waves were breaking over the bow as we attempted to motor sail back to the marina but got stuck between villains point and the island, after two hours of wet struggle and turning towards the island in an attempt to hide in the lee in order to get an angle upwind to pass villains point, we managed to get back. Whew scary but also fun.
19 Oct. 09
Friday was not a good day, and no sailing this weekend past due to work commitments. Today we took our world map and our Africa map and with the use of prestick stuck them on our dining room wall. We find that because our plans are still so far away in the future that the maps help to keep the dream alive. Nearly everyday we attempt to find ways to move the dates closer but to no avail. We have drawn the trade wind directions on the maps and have decided that we are first going to take a shake down cruise up the Mozambique channel and around Madagascar and see the sites on the east coast of Africa before heading down to Cape town and on to St Helena using the trade winds.

26 Oct. 09

Managed to get away this weekend and arrived at the marina early on Friday afternoon, the plan was to try out our new anchor. So we studied the map of the dam and went out looking for a suitable spot to drop the anchor. After about 2 hours of excellent sailing the wind suddenly turned around and started howling in the opposite direction catching us completely of guard with full sails flying, both Lola and I panicked as we thought the boat was going to capsize, but we managed to pull in the head sail and turned back towards the marina with only the main sail up and sailed back so no anchoring yet. The next day we started out again and had an almost repeat of the previous day but this time we weren’t caught of guard as we were sailing along in almost perfect weather when the wind changed direction. This time we knew what was next so we studied the water and saw the gust coming across towards us and rolled in the head sail just before the wind arrived. This changing of wind direction is making the anchoring out seem very difficult as we may have to move the boat in the middle of the night if the wind decides to change direction.

There doesn’t appear to be an anchorage that is protected from all sides, or at least from the two sides that the wind normally comes from. Well this is in the part of the dam that we have seen so far. We also bought a rigid tender this weekend and rowed across to Axel’s spot for a quick visit on Sunday morning to wish Peta a happy birthday.