Lola is going to town this morning whilst I go through our, 24 hour before we leave, check list. We made this check list to remind us to do certain things, like making sure the bilges are dry and the motors have enough coolant, before we go on a journey. Similar to checking your cars tyre pressure and oil level before you drive away on holiday. There are a lot more things to check on a boat than on a car, but then a boat is basically a combination of a car and a house all rolled into one.
I feel sorry for our youngest child, Kyle during all of this. Under his bed, sitting waiting patiently is a small, diesel eating, water spitting, metal beast. This beast has to be examined, and thus Kyle has to strip his bed and mattress. He also has a large sail locker under his bed. Every second or third day I find myself looking for something in this locker and then, Kyle’s bed, well, it gets moved.
12 Nov. 12
The last few days have been absolutely traumatic seeming to end yesterday with Lola finally suffering a complete meltdown. She broke into tears for the smallest things and nothing I said or did could ease her tension. The trip down from Richards bay coupled with female issues managed to get the better of her and her nerves finally snapped. We were very uncomfortably anchored in Durban which is an extremely busy harbour with tug boats passing near us every few minutes. These tugs create huge wakes that stumble across the water and meet the underside of Yrumoar causing us to rock violently from side to side. If this isn’t enough every second ass in Durban seems to own a power boat and comes roaring past us, as if on fire, creating more huge wakes to make our lives a living bouncing hell. We desperately needed at least one good nights sleep but the weather and all the commotion around us just wasn’t going to give us any respite.
It all started on Friday morning in Richards bay. Never start a journey on a Friday. This was one of the niggling thoughts in the back of my mind as we started the motors and undid the mooring lines for what we believe to be the final time we will be leaving Richards bay. On the dockside we said our, see you later, goodbye’s to our friends from Sea Shoes. In my mind I quietly thought about our last goodbye and hoped this time we would actually leave the harbour and not return a few minutes later.
The predicted wind was North east blowing at five knots for the morning then slowly building during the course of the day. The wind would peak out in the early evening at about twenty five knots when we were expected to arrive in Durban harbour. Wave heights were predicted between one and two metres about eight seconds apart. In the late afternoon the wave spacing became a bit short, around four seconds apart, but we decided this would not be much of a problem. Armed with this information we looked forward to some pleasant sailing conditions on our now to be repeated first leg of our trip.
Another small sailing vessel from offshore sailing academy in Durban was parked next to us for a few days and left the harbour on its trip back down about an hour before us. I had a quick chat with their instructor and he told me they would head out to about one hundred metres, about eight miles offshore, on their trip down. I told him that this time we decided to hug the coastline hoping to find something interesting to occupy our time. We watched them exiting the harbour as Rauen and I hoisted the mail sail on a triple reef. We triple reefed, firstly because we are lazy sailors, and secondly in anticipation of the twenty five knots expected to arrive in the afternoon. I tend to be overcautious and this makes me and the crew happy. We rounded the breakwater and motor sailed through the washing machine at the harbour mouth turning south east towards the large container ships anchored outside the harbour.
The wind was blowing a gentle five knots westerly, not at all as predicted, but we decided to motor sail anyway, hoping the predicted wind would arrive shortly. The wind kept blowing westerly for most of the morning and we had a pleasant motor sail managing to see whales performing huge jumps and splashes in the water. Our autopilot seemed to function quite well giving us all the time to just relax and enjoy the sailing.
Then our predicted wind arrived. Our speed increased and we turned off the motors. Now we were sailing. At this point we were all still happy and comfortable.
Just before we reached the halfway mark at the Tugela river mouth the wind started increasing in velocity. As the wind velocity increased so the waves built. The wind kept on increasing and the waves became bigger and bigger. Eventually the autopilot could no longer manage to keep us on course and Lola hand steered whilst Rauen and I went onto the coach roof to bring down the main sail. After wrestling with the small reefed main for about a half hour in the blustering wind and pitching deck we finally managed to get it packed back into our stack-pack. We then rolled in the roller furler sail until only a small piece of sail was open to the now gale force winds.
I had no idea at what force the wind was blowing since our wind instruments don’t work, but I could feel it was blowing way above the predicted twenty five knots. Looking at my weather study book and the sea conditions, I judged the wind to be blowing around forty knots.
The conditions kept on deteriorating with the wind screaming through our rigging, the waves becoming steeper and bigger. I hand steered trying to keep us on our course towards Durban but eventually had to turn Yrumoar off course and run down wind. I kept looking over my shoulder to try predict the wave action on our stern and would watch as huge walls of green sea water came rushing towards us, the crests tumbling crashing and rolling down the face of the wave towards us. White foam sprayed off the surface of the waves and the air was wet, filled with sea spray making the helm steering slippery and hard to control.
The large mountains of water, now the height of our cockpit roof, would reach the stern, smashing into our dingy tied sideways onto the dive platform and wash into the cockpit. The waves kept trying to turn Yrumoar broadside on and I kept fighting to keep her pointing away from their attempts at capsizing her.
At about three in the afternoon we received a call on the radio from the sailing school instructor on the sailing vessel that left just before us in the morning asking if we are all okay. Lola told him we were running down wind but were all fine. He replied stating that the conditions were horrific but they were also fine. I asked Lola to ask them what the wind speed was. They replied, thirty five to forty knots.
At eight in the evening we fought our way into Durban harbour vowing to put a “for sale” sign on Yrumoar first thing in the morning.
It was after ten in the evening by the time we had Yrumoar safely tied onto a walk-on at the bluff yacht club.
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