East London to Port Elizabeth

Good morning Port Elizabeth. Yes, we have left East London and are now technically past the wild cost. We have done what lots of sailors have not.

After our last failed attempt, I wasn't sure if this was going to happen. Two weeks ago we tried to sail to PE and the waves were to short and the sea was unpleasant. We decided to go back and give up.

After a week of tension between the family, we decided that we still want to do this. My mom looked for a weather window. She saw a nice one for Sunday, it was a week away and its hard to predict weather so far into the week. So we just kept out eyes on it and waited.

Friday came and the weather still looked good. We launched a flight plan and started getting ready. The week took forever as we waited. All we wanted to do was leave.

Sunday came. We all got a good nights rest the day before, and were all up and ready to go. At about 9 we dropped the lines and headed out. We called port control and they said the bar had a massive swell. That's not the thing you like to hear when you just started sailing.

My mom already started to panic saying if port control says it bad, then its really bad. But we said let's look and we'll decide. We motored to the exit of the harbour and we saw a wall of water. I couldn't see past the wave. There was a blue water everywhere. But we easily floated over the wave. But then there was another that seemed bigger. My dad tried to stay in the middle of the waves because they were crashing on both sides of us.

Five heart attacks later, we were past the bar of East London. The waves instantly became smaller and very pleasant. I knew we weren't going to turn around, trying to get back in would be even more dangerous then carrying on.

The wind was calm and the waves were peaceful, so we let out the genoa and I headed back in and watch some series on the laptop. Every hour on the hour we plotted our course on the chart. I decided to learn how to do this in case my mom one day get too sick to do this and I can jump in.

 

At about two in the morning my mom sent me to bed. I went to bed and listened to the boat sail. I woke up at about five in the morning when I had a heated argument with myself to get out of bed:
Me: it's daylight, we have to get up and help.
Me: no, my mom will wake me up if they need me.
Me: my mom said get up at daylight.
Me: she'll wake me if she needs me.

This went on for about two hours and I wasn't tired anymore and got out of bed. I sat outside with my mom for most of the day whilst my dad tried to get some sleep in before we docked.

Whilst I was a sleep we slowed down our speed by half. My parents know I know the most, I need to be awake to keep the boat up to speed. It took about five more hours to get to PE harbour. We got in about lunch time.

We docked and we all were cranky because no-one has had a good nights sleep. So we communicated through fighting. But we got the boat tied up and went for lunch.

When we got back from lunch we saw kids on a neighbouring boat. We introduced ourselves and we got along well. I spent the rest of the day talking to them. It's good to find someone my own age, or close to, at a yacht club.

Our long sail to nowhere

19 September 2013

Here we are sitting peacefully at anchor. Not sure how we ended up here. It all happened so fast. It started yesterday morning:

We all got up and felt dirty because we hadn't showered in 2 days. So we packed a shower bag and we headed to the yacht club. We all showered and got back to the boat.

We were running low on groceries, so we decided to go to town. We called a taxi. For the first time using Eagle Taxis we felt safe. We finally found a driver who can drive at the speed limit.

In the shops, I found out that my dad and I behave ourselves and everyone else is reckless. We were walking up and down the aisle and there was this lady who kept trying to crash into us. I hope she knows she can't claim road accident fund.

Then we had this old lady attack us. My mom went to get some deodorant, this lady must of thought we were trying to kill her or something, because she started throwing the deodorants everywhere. We were ducking and diving behind the lady who crashed into us.

After our life threatening shopping excursion, we headed to our safe boat. We packed away the groceries and decided to relax. About an hour later a guy arrived and told us to move. It is unsafe. So much for a safe boat. I guess we like living on the edge.

We phoned port control and asked what this was all about. They told us the dock is unsafe and we have to move. So my mom checked the weather and saw that there was a weather window for PE. We thought we should move all the way to PE.

We spent the next hour trying to get the boat ready. At about 4 we left. We were heading to PE. Kyle and I sat watching tv shows on the computer.

I headed to bed early so that I could be up for a part of the night and the rest of the day. My mom woke me up to tell me that we are turning around. But not on purpose. The wind was getting to violent and in the wrong direction.

The next morning we got back to East London harbour and anchored our boat. So from the wall to the anchorage, which is about 800 meters took us a whole night to get to. Shows you how slow boats are, or it could be that GPS' don't work properly and lead you astray.

20 September 2013

We have tied up to the wall again. John, he is the guy who runs the harbour charters, told us we can park here, it belongs to him. We could have moved yesterday but we liked being anchored.

During the night, just after I got to bed, I'm sure they did it on purpose, another boat here dragged anchor. I had to get out of bed and get dressed again and we rowed there to let them know.

This morning they came and thanked us. They also decided to park again the wall behind us. With the planks here and the tide change, we went from anchor watch to fendor watch.