Location: 33° 54.5 S, 18° 25.2 E
Wednesday 16:00, 09.27.2006

Well, the Schooner Maggie B has moved a bit, but not too far. We are now in the Cape Grace Marina, in the inner harbor in the Waterfront, at 33° 54.5S, 18° 25.2E. The Royal Cape Yacht Club is wonderful, welcoming and efficient, but they had no good place for us to tie up and, besides the Club, it is about three kilometers to the nearest bar.

In the Cape Grace, however, we are about 100 feet from Bascule, one of the best bars in Cape Town (407 different scotch whiskeys!), let alone the rest of the Waterfront area, with perhaps 100 restaurants, 200 bars, and much better protection for the Maggie B.

Cape Town is a wonderful place. I knew that South Africa was "nice" and "scenic" and "First World," but I had no idea how great it is. When we arrived from Brazil (can it be more than a month ago?), we had a bunch of things we needed to fix. At the Royal Cape Yacht Club there is a company called Action Yachting. My list was to take down and repair the roller furler, repair a small rip in the jib, redo the lashings of the standing rigging, rebuild the damaged hydraulic system, install MaxSEA release 12.5 and get it working with the Furuno Ethernet, repair two stove planks in the Reepicheep, etc., etc. That was a Monday, by Friday almost everything was done. I don't believe that I've been in any town, anywhere with more depth and breath of valuable maritime skills and experience. And all the while you are getting fixed up, you have the great view of Table Mountain and other gorgeous scenery.

As the shining star of Africa, one of the big political issues is immigrants from other parts of Africa. You hear the same sort of arguments as in the States. But there are not many visible beggars or apparent political stresses (strikes, demonstrations, etc.). Certainly the townships have a long, long way to go to be acceptable places to live, but most of this area seems healthy.

One continuing theme is the presence of the Dutch influence. Readers may remember how I was surprised at the extent of Dutch influence in Natal, Brazil. Certainly it is easy to see here in Cape Town with the footprint of the Afrikaans.

Cape Town is a very hard working port. There are lots of container ships coming in and out, but also strange diamond dredgers, deep sea cable layers, Japanese and Chinese fishing trawlers, Norwegian research ships, South African Navy Stealth Frigates, etc.

Sailors here are very serious also. Kids are out there in 35 knots of wind doing their weekly races. They have an entrant (Shosholoza) in the Americas Cup. What is considered a "fun" single handed race is to St. Helena, 1000 miles away across empty ocean.

We went down to the Cape of Good Hope National Reserve. The scenery was just stunning. Rather like the Mendocino coast or the wilder parts of Oregon, but bigger and wilder. We saw a rare troop of baboons who had adapted to collecting shellfish at low tide.

As of 5 AM this morning, we have the crew for our next leg: Frank, Bori, Willis and Hannah. Since it is a new crew and we have had a lot of things worked on, we are going next just 50 miles, "around the corner" to Simonstown in False Bay. After that, we plan to head for Durban, to clear out of South Africa, then to Nose Be in Madagascar and on to Male in the Seychelles.

I am just beginning to get nervous to get out of the Indian Ocean before the typhoon season gets cranked up, so pretty soon we will be putting our miles in and watching the sky. The SE Coast of Africa is very, very serious for weather. This is where they "invented" the 100 foot waves. The basic action is the Angulas Current runs SW at speeds up to six knots. When they get a big gale, it is generally from the SE and the opposition of those two forces makes for highly dangerous conditions. We will be doing a lot of listening to experienced sailors...

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