BAM! Our email is up and running. Nothing trumps tenacity.

It has been a tedious process, but after much determination we have been able to make it work. Since Sunday's bad weather, our email communication has been down and we have been limited to texts and calls.

Have a drink after work to celebrate this momentous occasion. We'll be sharing a slab of dairy chocolate.

An important reason for restoring an email connection was the ability to receive weather files. Something that we haven't been able to download since Sunday.

An equally important reason has been that we can continue to share our adventure with you. We will send through the blog entries that were written over the past few days later today to get you all up to date. Dad will also be speaking on RSG tomorrow (Friday) between 7am and 8am tomorrow, so if you have a chance you should try tune in. Lastly, The Stig is also able to pass on your emails to us, so feel free to email teamciaobella@gmail.com.

 

Quick update

 

The Robinson family and everyone at Team Ciao Bella would like to express their condolences to the crew and family of Bille. This does come a quite a shock and detail surrounding this is limited. More information will follow as soon as we receive anything.

 

On a positive note, the weather is much calmer and swells are down. The days ahead look to be much better and with a morning breeze passing us by.

 

Thank you to everyone following. We are working through the connectivity issues and will be on touch soon.

No full blog post today due to bad weather

Team Ciao Bella has been having email issues since yesterday due some very stormy weather. The quick sms they sent through to mission control said that whilst yesterday was a bit rough on the high seas, it has since cleared. Everyone on board is doing well and full of smiles!

DAY 1

Race day is always very emotional. Team Ciao Bella was down at the docks early, to tie up a few last minute bits and pieces. Each wearing a black band, in memory of Rob Meek.

There is something to be said about tossing off the mooring lines and departing the docks. There is an eruption of applause from the crowds on the deck, and the Royal Cape bell rings wildly. There are also many people that come out on yachts to wish you well.

The Swift Family

The start was slightly different to last time. It included a lap around Table Bay. Great for spectator value, but it’s a pity that given the light breeze, the sun will probably set with table mountain still in view.

The wind is very light and from the north west. We are heading out due west in hope of finding something more punchy. We have two gorgeous Zebra spinnakers that are dying to be flown.

Thanks to everyone that came down today. Also for the texts, calls and posts. The support has been tremendous, and we look forward to sharing our adventure with you.

Photos

 

Some amazing picture taken by Trevor Wilkins

 

 

Team Ciao Bella2 January 2014 09:05

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/photos/+TrevorWilkins/album/5963439748490113121

 

 

Happy Friday          :-D

2 Days left to go

 The past 24hours have been spent mourning the loss of someone really special.  Rob Meek, a very good sailing friend, lost his life whilst on holiday in the Transkei.  You couldn’t have met a more salt-of-the-earth, kind, loving and humble gentleman.  The Meek family are very dear to us, and we can’t even imagine the pain they are going through.  Di, Louise, Claudia, Steve and Geoff, we are so sorry. 

The news of Rob was devastating.  Royal Cape has been very sombre, with a flag at half-mast.   With everyone upset about the news, we left the yacht club and went for a walk in Newlands Forest, followed by lunch at The Vineyard.   

With race day looming, we are forced to continue with the boat preparation.  Our punch list, which at the start of our campaign had 300-odd items on it, is now down to 18.  Slowly but surely, things are coming together, and bits and pieces are being hit off the list. 

Yesterday morning we overcame a large hurdle, which was that of communications.  Courtesy of Xtra-link, we have a world class communication system, which will make communications from the middle of the South Atlantic that much simpler.  Followers will also be very chuffed to know that The Stig, who co-ordinated all the communications during the last race, has agreed to do it again.  He did a champion job at keeping all our followers up to date, and we are so thrilled to have him part of our on-shorecrew for this year’s race.     

All our new sails have also arrived.  These included three beautiful Investec-branded spinnakers, and a large asymmetric spinnaker.  Trevor Wilkins took some great shots of us out on the bay, and we will hopefully be able to upload some of these later today. 

The weather continues to look rather average for the race day. A 14knot windfrom the North West is predicted, and itis only due to shift around to the Southat 08h00 on Monday morning.  We’d obviously prefer to kick-off with the wind coming over our shoulder, but this is yacht racing so you take what you can get and try to make the most of it. 

Kathryn out. 

Preparation

Its time for an update...

We got a professional in and he checked ALL the electrics and fixed and replaced where necessary, with the main focus on the charging systems to make sure we don't get flat batteries. Next in line was to fix the instruments. Shortly after that, we set about removing all the old wires that were no longer being used.

You will recall the delivery of our "perfect" boat that dared to spring a .......  leak?

Well, it turns out it was a Houddini leak that had everyone hunting to find it. Luckily Kax was already in the Cape and was staying on the boat so the family decided, as payment for staying on the boat, she would have to try and find this leak. After many days of searching ....Eureka! She found the leak! The water was trickling through one of the keel bolts, so Dad flew down to Cape Town to check it out. He took the boat out of the water and sealed the keel bolts properly. Success! No more keel leaks. Dad was also chuffed with the new tiller.

While the boat was out the water, the family was excited to hear that the sponsorship from Investec had been finalised. Super timing! Now we placed our order at North Sails for 3 new spinnakers with Investec logo. Shortly after the order, our boat was branded with some "subtle" Investec stickers. Glider eyewear came around and gave us some stylish polarised sunglassses. Xtra-Link then came on board to help out with our telecommunication needs. I am really amped about this - this means we will be able to keep the blog running during the race!  It's awesome to get all the feed-back from our followers.

A few days later, back at home, Kax started to get our victuals ready. Dad was at work, Mom, Ryan, Ricky and I were at Midmar for Sailing Youth Nationals. Brennan was finishing up his studies. On the 22nd we all congregated at home - except for poor Bren. We finished getting the rations ready and packed the whole day. Afterwards we took a break and enjoyed the Carols by Candlelight in JHB.

Brennan was let off the study leash to join us for a strategy session over a delicious Christmas eve dinner - courtesy of our resident chef: Dad.

Eight days to go........ I can't wait!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Michaela

Mossel Bay 2 Cape Town in a humans eyes

Hi all,

So here's what happened...

We left Mossel Bay harbour at 22:30 on 26/11/2013 after having our safety briefing and getting into our oilies and putting on our harnesses and casting off. There was no wind leaving MB so we motored out. Bren and myself were on the first watch, I was sent to the foredeck with a flash light to look out for rocks, whales  and containers. I spotted a whale about 20 meters starboard to us and managed to get past it quietly. At 23:15 we decided to put the main up. I helmed until I couldn't anymore (because I got sick). Just before the end of my shift I was leaning  over the end when I suddenly saw Torpedoes. there were so many dolphins following us for 15 minutes in the phosphorescence. The next day was ok, but there I was,super sea sick.

Photo taken by Jay Caboz

The evening of the 27th was nice we had the code zero up, but I was still horribly sick so I didn't go on my first watch. Alexa did it for me. The my next watch was the dog watch and boy oh boy that was not pleasant (because I was still a bit sick, and it was really early). As the clock struck 04:45, we were broaching like there was no tomorrow, so when it was the end of our shift at 05:00 we called up Dad and Jay and tried to get this HUGE Code Zero down. We were battling, just the four of us so I called Alex. I had to eventually get on the foredeck with Bren and help. That was really cool, exciting but also scary because we were still broaching.  

Jay Caboz 

We poled out the number 3 and started SHUNTING. To quote what a dashing young man once said from a few years back (Brennan): “There were waves the size of mountains and the wind blowing the spots of dog and we were just sitting  in it FLYING, FLYING”. We crossed False Bay really quickly.

Photo taken by Jay Caboz

As soon as we got to Clifton the wind died and we had to motor the rest of the way which doesn't look good considering you just sailed from Mossel bay or  Durban. We tied up at Royal Cape around 11h00.

Jay Caboz

The next morning I woke up to Bren and Dad super chuffed because they got the desalinater working again. Ciao Bella looked and felt very good, and I think she is just about ready for the race.

Go to http://jaycaboz.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/port-elizabeth-to-cape-town-on-a-yacht/ to check out more of Jay Caboz's pictures

Michaela out.

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

Durban to Mossel Bay

The westerly had just abated and we left Durban harbour at 22:00 on the night of Thursday 21/11. Heaven forbid we leave on a Friday, every mariner knows what bad luck that brings! We started off in little to no wind, but by 10:00 the next morning the north-easter had arrived. When the breeze passed the 18 knot threshold, we dropped Günter (our new light spinnaker) and put up our trusted heavy black kite.

At around midday the breeze had increased significantly to around 28 knots, and that's when we got the spinnaker wrapped on the forestay. We tried everything to get it down, but after about 20 minutes, the top of the spinnaker gave in and tore down to the middle - tightening the wrap on the forestay in the process. The wind was now so strong and the wrap so tight, that the only way to get the remaining spinnaker off the forestay was to cut it free. It was a heartbreaking call to make, but it had to be done.


After that we hoisted our little red storm spinnaker, but when the wind touched 30 knots we decided that discretion was the betternpart of valour. We dropped the spinnaker and polled out the storm jib in stead.
We saw through the night with a reefed mainsail and the storm jib poled out. Nice and comfortable. At 2 am our sleigh-ride ended with the north easter disappearing. Some time after 20:00 that night we lost our speed and depth instruments to water damage, but the last top speed that we saw was 16.2 knots over water. The water damage also took out our GPS, so we were resorting to three-point fixes, dipping light-houses and other non-electronic methods of fixing our position.


At 10:00 the next morning (Saturday 23/11) we managed to bypass the broken instruments in the SeaTalk system, and get our GPS working again, thanks to our resident electrical engineer - Oom Andries. We were past East London at this stage and had made excellent time.


Halfway between East London and Port Alfred the south-wester returned, at about 20 knots on the nose. The sailing was uncomfortable and wet for the 12 hours it lasted, until it died off completely near Bird Island lighthouse. It was a long motor across Algoa (Nelson Mandela) Bay, and we stopped in at Port Elizabeth at 09:00.


The purpose of the stop was twofold: the rudder bearings had  a bit of movement in them to be inspected, and we had to make a crew exchange. Wentzel had to fly home for a family commitment, and a friend from Wits, Jay Caboz, was to get his first taste of ocean sailing. Jay is a journalist with Forbes Africa  magazine, and very talented photographer.


We had some other friends meet us in PE too, but not for the sail. Ronnie Baer arranged us a mooring for the day, and carted people around to airports, shops and petrol stations. Dad's cousin Christine Schoeman brought us some essential stocks (rusks, brownies and a phone charger), and her husband Oom Louis brought along some tools to help us disassemble the rudder bearing.


By lunch time, we were ready again, and the easterly wind had arrived. Jay had his baptism of fire beating up past Cape Recife, but as soon as we turned the corner life just got much better. We had about 25-30 knots behind us and building, and the storm jib poled out with 2 reefs in the main.


What a night that was. We headed out downwind on port-tack, and put a gybe in close to midnight. By the time the morning rolled around we had almost reached Knysna!  In two shifts during the night (3 hours each) we covered almost 90 nautical miles. Our maximum apparent wind was 42 knots, so we're guessing that the true wind speed crossed the 50 mark at a stage.

The breeze had dropped off by morning. Which left us a bit of light wind beating to Mossel Bay.


There's still more to come...



Brennan