A stop in Richards Bay

So here we are, happily bobbing around at the Zululand Yacht Club in Richards Bay… and about to leave again! We have been very settled here, enjoying the green lawns, coconut palms, laundry, proximity to shops (everything is very close in this little town!), access to chandlery (yacht retail goods) and competent help and Yacht Club pub with fine fare at a very low price!

We are delighted to have on board Laura and Shane, both recently-qualified coastal skippers from Cape Town who need their miles before they can go for their yacht masters qualifications. They will remain with us until we reach Nosy Be in Madagascar, and share all ships’ duties with us – this will certainly reduce the load on us and hopefully make a pleasant trip for all.

Ketoro is docked up against the wall at the yacht club, a very interesting and new situation as we have previously been alongside ‘walk-on’ jetties, which rise and fall along with the boats as dictated by the tides. The wall, of course, is not as obliging, and on top of this it is spring tides (full moon), resulting in the following challenges to getting on and off the boat using our tatty wooden “gangplanks” (the high-tide situation demonstrated by Shane and Laura …. and Rolf, carrying Irene’s handbag!)…

This has also been a lovely place to receive visitors: family from Durban and the kids from Pretoria who gave us an excuse for play-time in the middle of the working!

So we are off tomorrow; the weather is not going to be perfect (wind on the nose, so we will bump our way uncomfortably into the seas) but if we wait for perfect we will wait forever. Rolf read somewhere that whilst sailing, one in three sailing days is excellent (i.e. the weather, dolphins, water-maker and bilges all behave, I guess!!) so the sooner we get going, the sooner we will find them!