Madagascar to South Africa Day 11/12 – Into South African Waters

Monday 18th October the wind persisted in blowing away as we sat anchored outside Maputo, the skies were grey, the sea was grey. It just wasn’t pleasant so we spent most of the day down below doing some boat checks, getting ready for the next leg, a few emails, a few games of cards and watching weather forecasts.

The forecast said all good to go Tuesday and it was a case of ‘chocks away’ come 11am. The anchor took some getting up, those 30-40 knots of wind meant it was well dug in.

The wind was due to go north slowly and so we headed out sailing upwind in a lumpy swell which made for a slightly uncomfortable lurching motion. And the wind certainly took its time to switch to the north. It was only by midnight that the winds actually moved north and then promptly died so we motored for the remainder of the night.

Dawn broke and much excitement we were in South African waters. Not much of a welcome – rain, grey horrible skies. More like the English channel on a bad day.

Good news is we have managed to secure a berth in Durban so will stop there rather than Richards Bay which is the traditional first stop. It saves us sailing an extra leg when we return from our land travels. Sadly we will miss our sailing friends Selim and Nadire who had kindly secured us a berth in Richards Bay and who we were looking forward to meeting up with.

Strong winds forecast today with associated seas, we have to keep focusing on the sailing. It’s a bit like Christmas Eve – the presents under the tree are so tantalisingly close yet still so far and the second hand on the clock seems to have gone into double-slow time.