Day 36 - Motoring Toward Cape Town

I got phenomenal performance from the 2 PM Sailmail session yesterday: 5000 bytes/min sending and 2400 bytes/min receiving. That is 25 times faster than some of the transmission rates that I've had to endure and about 12 times faster than the slowest receive rate.

I got the bright idea of getting a "spot" wind report for every 6 hours of the next 4 days at a location just south of Cape Point, on the approach to Simons Town. The idea was to get an idea of what to expect when we made our landfall. The wind predictions through to noon on 7 January are excellent, with no winds greater than 18 kts and most below 15 kts. The only fly in that ointment was two periods of light winds predicted in the next few days, which might threaten my arrival date. This made me hungry for speed and before I finished that first cup of wine I suited up and went topside and raised the mainsail even though the swell was still high and the wind close to 20 kts. I wanted to do it to maintain boat speed during the expected lighter winds throughout the night. It was a spell of good old fashioned sailing with the headsail luffing as the boat pointed as far as possible into the howling wind and big swell sent spray everywhere, and me working frantically at the winches and hauling various lines by hand. The Monitor could not handle the conditions so I switched to the autopilot knowing that if it went on standby the boat would merely luff up into the wind. The job got done with lots of sweat and little drama, and I returned to my wine satisfied with my decision and pleased with the speeds of over 6 kts that I was seeing.

Based on advice from a person with impeccable knowledge of the area I had decided to make landfall at Simons Town. That decision felt right and I was starting to get the whiff of success even before I had gotten a whiff of Africa. Cape Town had never felt right for various reasons, or maybe it was just that Simons Town always looked so much more inviting in contrast. From here on in I will quote distances to Simons Town, which is 7 miles shorter than Cape Town by air but actually 8 miles longer because I must make the run up from Cape Point. (Got that? Don't worry about it, its inconsequential.)

I went into a sleep regime of waking up every two hours for checks and the boat held steady, tracking due east at well over 6 kts until the 2 AM check. I was drifting back to sleep when I felt the slight shudder of the headsail luffing and could hear a slight increase in the wind speed. The autopilot had thrown itself into standby mode after what must have been 10 or 11 hours of flawless performance. There was no damage other than our being 45 degrees off course and heading SE instead of E. I restored our course then decided to stay up a while to watch the boat. It was a pleasure to see the boat racing through the relatively calm water in the pale moonlight. We were on a beam reach with the mainsail double reefed and the headsail rolled out to the shrouds. High overhead through a break in the clouds I could see the Southern Cross.By then I had had close to 6 hours of sleep. Jeanne Socrates had given me the name of the top man in the Cape area for Raymarine work. I would mention the autopilot standby problem when I saw him about replacement of the ST60 Plus masthead unit.

Fifteen minutes later the autopilot disengaged gain. Something had changed that the autopilot didn't like, perhaps a subtle change in the wind speed had changed the balance of the sails. I rolled in about 2 ft of headsail the set the boat back on course. Over my shoulder I could see "prima luce" the first light of dawn and I figured that I might as well stay up and have coffee and toast - and stay suited up. I would catnap during the day as I usually did. At the chart plotter I could see that our speed was still over 6 kts. The wind speed numbers were jumping all over the place but the average seemed to have dropped to 16 or 17 kts.

At 3.30 AM we were 200 miles from Simons Town. I was concerned with the bouts of light airs ahead but I was not averse to using the engine in this scale of distances.

As usual the equipment had noticed the wind change before I had. By 4 AM the wind was down to about 12 kts (as predicted) and I transferred the steering to Jeff the Monitor.

I spent some time studying the chart and doing "what ifs" with various courses and concluded that it didn't make sense to approach the coast from 36W, so I decided to start working the boat up to 35S. That would put me 30 miles south of Cape Point, the southern tip of the peninsula where Simons Town was located on the east side. If I found myself dealing with adverse winds I would have to beat my way through it, but it was worth the risk.

I had a good session with SAMMNet at 6.35 AM. The winds around the CT area are very calm. It was Sam who had told me that it was OK for me to make landfall at Simons Town, based no doubt on his years of experience dealing with visiting yachts. But to his credit he told me that he had done some checking last night. There was a directive issued in late November stating a firm policy that all yachts visiting for the first time must proceed to RCYC at Cape Town, so it appears that there has been a crack down. Sam will do more investigation this morning and will give me the final word at the 11.35 AM session. I told SAM that I was going to move north to 35S for my final run and he had no problem with that. He told me that the current and danger of overshooting Cape Town is an issue only if there is a strong SE blowing.

Things are quiet now and I am determined to tie ups either in CT or Simons Town within the next 2 days. At 7.15 AM we are 192 miles out of CT and we are still making about 3 kts on a falling wind, with the boom slamming every few minutes. My plan is to get as much distance as possible from the falling wind then start the engine. Already I am in motoring range but I should be able to greatly reduce the motoring distance with bouts of sailing whenever a useful wind comes up.

I must get into the habit of looking around more when I'm on deck. I was on top of the cabin doing some preparatory work for dropping the mainsail when I head an alarm from the chart plotter. I went down below and saw that cargo ship Meghna Princess bound for Chittagong was only 3 miles away and would pass me within 2 miles of my starboard side. All I had to do was to look up and I would have seen the ship immediately. It was all to the good because during the distraction the wind picked up enough to stop the destructive slatting of both sails.

At 10 AM I dropped the mainsail and tried running with a reduced jib for a while. Just before the 11.35 AM SAMMNet session I rolled in the headsail and put the boat ahull. When thing settled down I noticed that our drift was about 0.5 kts to the NE.

At the SAMMNet session Sam confirmed that I MUST proceed to Cape Town to make my entry into the country. He said that in the past the authorities did not enforce that policy (though according to Jeanne they would grumble), but in late November the strict policy was gazetted and will be enforced. I thanked Sam for his research on my behalf and told him that after the session I would start the engine and motor toward Cape Town.

At noon our position was 35S22, 015E17, giving us a n-n distance of 115 miles to the east (085T), thanks to the wise decision to run with the mainsail overnight. We were 180 miles out of Cape Town. The barometer was at 1023 HPa, a rise of 3 points.

I checked the engine levels (added a bit of coolant) then started the engine just past noon and noted that we were doing about 4.3 kts at 1800 rpm. I did not expect to motor all of the way to Cape Town because spells of usable wind were predicted. Watching the autopilot was an issue because if it went into standby the boat would begin to do large counter clockwise circles until I attended to it. I would probably stay up with no catnaps then shut down the engine and drift for the serious sleep during the night. For some reason I have always been reluctant to use the engine for travel on this scale but then I thought about it and figured that I had spent big dollars for a top quality engine and I had already paid the price of bringing all of the extra fuel from Brazil, so why not use it? I calculated that the 140 liters in the full fuel tanks would be sufficient to drive the boat all of the 180 miles to CT but to be sure to be sure I would probably transfer fuel from the 140 liters or so on deck.

At 4.3 kts it would require 42 hours to reach CT if I assumed that sail could be substituted for motoring at 4.3 kts, but then there was sleep to think about. Factoring it all in I figured that I could reach CT comfortably by noon of the 7th, 72 hours away.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com