North to Namibia

We finally departed Cape Town on January 7th 2023, having enjoyed a brilliant New Year’s Eve concert at Kirstenbosch Gardens, starring Swing City and Mi Casa, and had a fabulous final day out on the City sightseeing bus tour to the wine estates in Constantia. This beautiful area of the Cape was where the first vines were planted by the Dutch, they thrived and this became a well known wine producing area. We enjoyed wandering around the museum and old Dutch colonial house at Groot Constantia, followed by the cellar tour and delicious 10 wine tasting.

Lunch was essential at this point and it was equally delicious, served in the delightfully converted barn restaurant. Then we wobbled back aboard the bus to visit the next vineyard, Eagles Nest, where we only managed 5 tasters, paired with a very tasty vegan Biltong! We made a third and final quick vineyard trip to Constantia Nek, where we enjoyed the view out to False Bay and just one glass of sparkling wine!

Our great day concluded in the evening with the World Rally restart at a welcome drinks party hosted by a Bistro on the V&A waterfront. Our friends had returned from the UK, Australia or inland tours ready to start the next leg to Namibia, and there were lots of new crew to meet as well.

We had also made the pilgrimage to Robben Island on the ferry, which was cancelled before NY because of rough seas. I have read “Long Walk to Freedom” but seeing with my own eyes and hearing the story first hand was incredibly powerful and I found it very moving when an ex-political prisoner showed us around the prison and explained their routine and treatment. We visited the cell in which Mandela spent 18 years and saw the solitary confinement accommodation where Sobukwe was guarded by 6 white guards who did not speak to him. We were also shown the lime quarry where Mandela and others served hard labour.

The history of the island is fascinating, it had been inhabited by the local Koi San with their cattle for thousands of years before becoming a staging post for the original Portuguese explorers. The Dutch East India Company used it as a prison for Muslim leaders evicted from their Spice Islands of Java and Batavia. Following this it was used as a leper colony and mental health hospital, before a new prison was built specifically for black, male, political prisoners in 1962.

White and female prisoners were incarcerated elsewhere. The visit was a reminder of the struggles in RSA and how far the country has moved on from the Apartheid years and managed to avoid a Civil War. The Museum is a celebration of the triumph of human kind over suppression and suffering.

It was exciting to set off with our small World Arc fleet and head north to Walvis Bay, Namibia. We had welcomed our new crew, Sue, who I first met in 1984 at the Mid Warwickshire School of Nursing in Leamington Spa and we qualified together in 1987, so we go along way back. We left Cape Town on a sunny morning with a light breeze, so once clear of the harbour and shipping lanes we launched our spinnaker. The launch went well and we had a pleasant afternoons sailing and teaching Sue the ropes, literally. Pleased to be on our way and sailing nicely with a good forecast, we decided to fly the spinnaker overnight, which we rarely risk, especially with inexperienced crew.

During the night the autohelm developed an electrical fault which meant it turned off randomly, then the boat would head off in a different direction and we would need to hand steer and turn it back on again. Sometimes this happened every minute, sometimes it would stay on for an hour, By morning the wind was a bit stronger and we needed to change to white sails. However, Richard had his head in various lockers and under beds trying to find the autohelm fault which meant I couldn’t step away from the wheel, not even for a wee or a woolly! Yes, it was also very cold! To cut a long story short, the boat went off course and the spinnaker wrapped itself around the forestay. By the time Richard and I managed to unwrap it and fight it down on the foredeck it was in shreds and the halyard was twisted and stuck at the top of the mast! A traumatic start for Sue as we hadn’t finished her introduction to the boat, but she coped admirably (ho ho, unintentional pun) taking over steering when the autohelm failed, pulling and releasing various ropes while we wrestled with our spinnaker and shouted instructions down the deck! When we have new crew Richard and I split the watches for the first 24-48 hours, so they are not left alone, and so we were feeling tired before all the spinnaker excitement. The added adrenaline and physical activity meant we were ready to sit down with a cup of tea, in fact Richard had gone back to bed. Then the fishing line jerked and we had caught a fish, which needed to be reeled in and dealt with, it certainly was an eventful start to our Namibia passage. However, the Yellow Fin Tuna was delicious lightly fried for dinner and made fabulous sushi the following day. Well worth the effort!

Thankfully, the rest of the passage was fairly mundane. Richard fixed the autohelm problem on the following evening and we sailed with white sails until the wind dropped away and then we motored for three days. It was surprisingly cold; hats, socks fleeces and big sailing coat weather! At these latitudes in the Northern Atlantic the butter is definitely melting, but here cold water from the Antarctic is being pushed up to the surface creating a cooling effect, hence no hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones in the South Atlantic! Sometimes it was cloudy even foggy, and though the moon was full when we set off, we still managed to glimpse the vast, sparkling, velvet heavens rotating sedately above. Wildlife was also spectacular and abundant. Sunfish, S. Atlantic seals and Dusky dolphins popped up everywhere and sometimes in large mixed groups along with a variety of feeding birds; gannets, cormorants and many others. The seals and dolphins were jumping, leaping, spinning, spy hopping all around us and the birds fed until they were too heavy to take of again. It was delightful entertainment that brought a smile and feeling of joy to all onboard.

Our arrival in Walvis Bay was in the early hours of Richard’s birthday, so once docked we enjoyed port and cheese before our well earned sleep. We celebrated properly the following evening along with the fleet in the Walvis Bay Yacht Club dining room!

The Nama people are descendants of the San, and when independence was gained they named the country from their word Namib, meaning "Vast dry plain". It is the country of sand dunes and the desert comes right down to the sea shore. Not so far inland are the Massive sand dunes that roll on into the Kalahari desert.

We hired a car to visit the town of Swakopmund which was established by German colonists in 1892, where we enjoyed lunch out in a quaint cafe set within an antique shop. Then we browsed around the town before heading for an area of the desert called Moon Valley.

The road turned into a sandy dirt track and we only saw one other car as we drove through this extraordinary landscape, it was very alien to anything I had seen before and we felt quite vulnerable in this wilderness.

The road went down and crossed the Swakop river bed which was dry and then we arrived at Guanikontes Oasis where there was a few houses, a bar, and some dusty bushes. So we quenched our thirst and then set off again this time heading back to Walvis Bay.

Back on our dock the seals were busy catching fish against the hull of the boat, so they make a sloshing, sighing noise and four or five splooshed and swam around us all day, waking us up in the morning with their noises and knocks against the hull.. There were also pelicans and avocets and a myriad of other birds to watch as well as two types of flamingos in the lagoon.

Time was running out as we only had five days to spend in Namibia so we got up early on our last day to visit the flamingos and drive round the lagoon to see the major salt producing area. I have never seen such huge pans of salt and high mountains of salt before. It was astonishing! Of course there was the usual paperwork for clearing in and out and the jobs on the boat to try to fit in as well, so it was a busy few days. We managed to get the spinnaker repaired by a good sailmaker and Richard hoisted me up the mast to recover the halyard from the blow out, which is a good job as our forecast is for light winds to St Helena 1200nm away. We plan to spend 2-3 days resting and exploring that island before continuing to Salvador in Brazil 1900miles from St Helena, just in time for Mardi Gras!