After more than six months without a blog post, no one will ever accuse either of us of being prolific writers. A lot has happened since our last post. Most importantly, after owning Harmony for ten months we finally sailed her away from what has been her home port for the last ten years.
Our friends Mark and Liz joined us for the trip from Knysna to Cape Town. The trip was roughly 290 nautical miles and took about 40 hours. Winds were variable, as high as 34 knots. We learned that the autopilot stopped working when the water pumps were running and we ripped the main sail. But hey, that's what shakedown cruises are all about.
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| Sunrise somewhere between Knysna and Cape Town |
We spent three weeks in Cape Town doing lots of shopping, boat maintenance and repairs, and provisioning. We had the water pumps moved so they no longer interfered with the compass and we had the main sail repaired. We endured 74 knot winds at the Royal Cape Yacht Club.
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Royal Cape Yacht Club
Photo Credit: Mark Beard
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View from our cockpit at Royal Cape Yacht Club
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We were able to convince Mark and Liz to join us once again for the next two legs of the trip. First was a 60 nautical mile day sail to Langabaan. Still having issues with autopilot, we hand steered in two hour shifts. We saw dolphin, whales, and seals and anchored for the night in a beautiful secluded spot in Kraal Bay with views of kite surfers.
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Our backyard while in Kraal Bay
Photo Credit: Mark Beard |
Liz and Mark made it clear in no uncertain terms: they were not hand steering all the way to Luderitz. We concurred, so we motored to Yacht Port in Saldanha where we fortunately found a competent repairman to fix the autopilot.
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| How many men does it take to fix and autopilot? |
After a night at the dock in Saldanha, we set off for the 420 nautical mile trip to Luderitz, Namibia. We had purchased a new furler in Cape Town so we were finally able to use our code zero sail. Conditions were very calm, almost no swell with variable winds up to about 30 knots. Captain Dave did an excellent job at selecting a good weather window for this voyage.
| David and Mark working on the code zero sail |
The sunrises and sunsets were incredible. The most magical moment was on the last night, right at the moment the sun went below the horizon we heard and saw two orcas off the port side of the boat. Unfortunately we didn't capture the moment as nature was much faster than our camera.
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Sunset right before we saw two orcas.
Photo credit: Mark Beard
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After nearly 60 hours we reached the Luderitz Harbor at 13:42. We anchored, got a few hours of rest, had a nice breakfast and then moved to a mooring.
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| Luderitz Harbor. If you look closely you can see SV Harmony anchored way off in the distance between the two flags |
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Raising the Namibian courtesy flag after checking in
at customs and immigration
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After a few days of sight seeing, Mark and Liz have returned to Knysna. We really enjoyed having them on board and are very thankful to have had their help during this part of our journey. We remain in Luderitz. We plan to spend the next four months or so in Namibia and South Africa waiting out cyclone season before heading to Madagascar in April. We promise at least one blog post before then.
Oh, and by the way, this is a picture of our guest cabin. This is where Mark and Liz stayed. They survived nearly 800 nautical miles and more than two weeks with us. Won't you at least consider coming to visit us?
