Leaving Mossel Bay

There is nothing quite like the feeling of making port, and having friendly faces there to meet you. In Mossel Bay it was Rob Holden who met us on the docks and arranged a mooring for us for the night, as well as a hot shower at the MBYBC.

It had been a pretty arduous journey thus far, and thankfully we suffered minimal casualties. One was our cherished heavy black spinnaker which we had to set free off the wild coast, the other was Oom Andries, who took quite a hard fall during the last night of the passage and cracked a rib. Not to take any chances with it, we said farewell to Andries who hopped a plane the rest of the way to Cape Town.

Proudly brought to you by Jay Caboz

The rest of the day was spent turning the boat inside out to dry everything, and frantically calling around to organise delivery crew. Our dear friend from the Wits to Rio team, Alexa Brown, flew up from Cape Town to help out and to boost her night-watch hours.

Jay Caboz

We also figured that Dad's presence would be great, and somehow, young Michaela caught wind of this. When she asked Dad if she could come with, he said maybe. Keen as mustard, her bags were packed and at the door in the next 5 minutes. How can you say no to that?

So in one fell swoop not only did we have enough crew to take the boat the rest of the way to Cape Town, but we also unintentionally tipped the linguistic balance of the crew from 75% Afrikaans to 16.66% Afrikaans.

Everyone arrived in time for dinner with the Holdens and a 22:00 departure to catch the impending easterly.

This is where I let Michaela take over the storytelling...

Brennan