East African sailing trip – Log 1
SAILING LOG 1
Sailaway
This is the beginning account of Yacht Karibu sailing trip in 2004 – up the East African coast from Richards Bay in South Africa. These are excerpts from my journal and newsletters. I hope you enjoy them…
June 20, 2004
After months of preparation and years of planning & dreaming we set ourselves free as we cast off from the mooring lines that held Yacht Karibu – our home afloat, capture for the past 5 years. During this time we had worked in Canada to obtain our Canadian passports and enough funding to allow us a 1 year hiatus.
We purchased her as hull, deck & bulkheads with basic furniture structure, already in place. 3 years of intensive work, months of visualizing, planning and praying, 10 years of saving, goal-setting and more dreaming had culminated to give this exhilarating freedom we now experienced.
Out into the blue ocean and up the East Coast from Richards Bay, South Africa, heading North towards the Mozambique coast, and whatever destinations we decided upon… Just the two of us at the mercy of the elements but in the knowledge that we are in God’s hands.
The weatherman assured us of a good wind to filled our sails and pull us toward our goal, however, this was not to be – and we found ourselves pounding into a headwind and having to use the motors.
June 22, 2004
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3:30am and Yacht Karibu is motor-sailing at 4.5kt just off the Inhaca lighthouse, the promised Southerly winds the weatherman had forecast still have not materialized but our spirits are high and the choppy seas can’t bring us down.
We wait until dawn and begin to enter the Maputu Bay. No sooner do we begin to navigate this notoriously sandy bay than one of our newly installed Yanmar motors cuts out due to a blocked fuel hose.
Wolf my dearest clever husband and skipper manages to clear it, working in the tiny engine compartment creased up like a pretzel. He gets them going and we make our way through the sandbars.
By 10:15am we drop anchor in the channel off the Inhaca Hotel. Exhausted and relieved we fall onto our bunks and sleep deeply for 2 hours. We wake up with the sunshine streaming into our cabin and are compelled to go out and enjoy it.
We sit on the dive platform chatting when a local taxi-boat approaches. 2 guests from the hotel are returning from their snorkeling trip and decide to come and make their acquaintance. They easily convince us to join them ashore.
The hotel is lovely – ethnic and in keeping with the holiday atmosphere of the Island, We order Prego and chips and our new friends offer us their room key where we relish in a hot fresh water shower. What super people Johnny and Molly are!
They too are “yachties” on a 5 day holiday break from their home town of Port Elizabeth. We leave them tired but extremely happy.