Good Departure

The departure from the RCYC marina went well. Diane had told me that I could stay another day claiming engine trouble, which took some of the pressure off me. But at noon the wind was from the west, right on Pachuca's nose, at about 10 knots so I decided to go. James showed up a few minutes later from his visit to the Brazilian consulate (to get a visa) and I told him that I expected to shove off at 1 PM.

I made one last visit to the club to say goodbye to several people and hand all of my spare change to the waitresses to share amongst themselves. Back at the boat I brought in the shore power cable, uncovered the binnacle, connected the halyard to the mainsail, and got my life jacket ready. I connected the two GPS antennas to the laptop (via a hub) and got both Marine Plotter and OpenCPN working with no trouble. I went through my departure check list which was just as well because I had forgotten to turn on the AIS transponder. With that done all 35 items on the list were checked off. Just as I was about to get James he emerged from his boat sleepy eyed because fortunately for me two young men had woken him up to ask him about crewing on his boat.

There were three lines holding the boat: two aft and a springer to forward, which was the only one needed with the wind on the nose. All of the lines were looped such that I could ship them from the boat. I shipped the stern lines and while James guarded against the boat moving backward onto the Monitor I released the bow line and the boat was free, with the bow off the jetty and nicely pointing slightly down the fairway. James and I exchanged farewells and I motored out with ease.

Table Bay was very calm. I put the boat on Autopilot and shipped and stowed the fenders then coiled and stowed the mooring lines. The boat was the most shipshape that it had ever been on a departure. I had managed to think of just about everything and there were no frantic activity trying to put something right. For once I was departing with every system on the boat in working order.

The sea outside of Table Bay was calm with a very low swell, so motoring was easy and pleasant. At one point I tried out the jib but there was just not enough wind to keep it filled. It didn't matter because the boat was making a solid 5 kts to the south with the engine at 2000 rpm, current or no current. I expected to cross the latitude of Cape Point before 10 PM and after that I would be in a position to tack to the SE if I was forced to, though I much preferred moving due S to clear the southern end of the continental shelf, at latitude 37S, about 180 miles away.

The motoring was so pleasant that I cracked my first Heineken beer and wolfed down a Food Lover's smoked chicken roll while enjoying the spectacular views of Cape Town and Table Mountain. Life was good.

The swell increased throughout the afternoon. As sunset approached we were still under motor making about 5.2 kts. There was a breeze of about 10 kts but it was coming from the SSW and I was not able to make satisfactory headway under sail. We were almost level with Simons Town on the other side of the peninsula and about 13 miles from the latitude of Cape Point (which is only about 100 meters from the historical Cape of Good Hope.

It would be a long night because we were too close to land for drifting and in any case there was too much shipping rounding the cape.

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