Leaving Durban

Leaving Durban with ne crew. Faule Haut Skipper Ingo is in top mood.

I picked up my new crew, Immanuel, yesterday, a young but experienced sailor from Germany who will join me across the Atlantic up to the Caribbean. This will make the cruise a lot more interesting and entertaining and most likely less dangerous as well. He is a very sympathetic guy and we both are looking forward to the upcoming experience.

Immanuel has been a great help this morning already, when he fixed a disattached step on the companionway, which was not an easy task, because of the little access space in the motor compartment.

Shortly after that we got 100 liter diesel delivered to the boat.

It’s almost unbelievable: Durban is a huge port with hundreds of boats, but they don’t have a gas station for the pleasure craft. All fuel has to be carried to the boat by jerry cans. Same as I experienced in Indonesia.

A strong black guy came to the boat an asked for a job. He offered to clean the entire hull for just 400 South African Rand (26,- € or 30,- $US)

This came in handy, because it was full of barnacles again. I had the intention to do the cleaning myself once we reach Cape Town, but for that low price I decided to let him do it. This helped both of us.  That fellow did a great job and Faule Haut is clean now and ready for the Atlantic crossing.

But first we need to get to Cape Town. We are still sailing along the South African Coast in the Agulhas current where it is extremely dangerous if the weather is not playing right for you.

We left Durban two hours, ago and rIght now we are having good winds from astern.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to change and we will be facing southerly winds which will be very bad for us. But according to the forecast, this should only last for about one day. On from tomorrow morning we’ll be having a pretty uncomfortable cruise.

All the other boats here that are heading for Cape Town are waiting for Sunday to leave, but because we are already 9 days behind our schedule we decided to start today. Up to East London there will be no shelter along the coast, so we hope the weather won’t get to rough.