I’ve crossed the Equator twice now, once southbound more than 2 years ago and northbound again yesterday.  You’d think there’d be a big dashed line like you see on globes and world maps but nope, nada!  In the old days, before GPS, we would mark our position by painting a spot on the water. Alternately, you could paint a spot on the side of the boat. Either way, you’d know one thing or another.

Of course, nobody precisely knows where equator is because zero degrees latitude (the Equator) is a made-up thing. That will come as some disappointment to people who build stone monuments with bronze plaques that say “Dude, you’re standing on the Equator”. I passed a sign by the gravel road in Namibia that said “Tropic of Capricorn” like they knew where it was. Trust me, Henry Miller’s book is way more interesting.

Over the years (centuries), increasingly refined mathematical models have evolved to represent the earth’s surface. The current model is an oblate spheroid (a sphere squished down a bit at the north and south poles) and designated as WGS84. WGS = World Geodetic System. It was preceded by WGS60, WGS72, and others. Of course, every time you change the model the location of the Equator in relation to physical points on the earth also changes.

The WGS84 model and datum are the basis for the latitude and longitude coordinates you get on any GPS device. The various GPS satellite constellations, there are now several, are actually datum-agnostic but WGS84 is the agreed datum they use. So everyone gets WGS84 coordinates and they drive, fly, sail, hike, etc. using them. Everyone is happy, right? Wrong.

The problem comes when you plot WGS84 coordinates on a map or chart that wasn’t drawn using the WGS84 datum and coordinate system. It will show your position in the wrong place. This problem is especially acute with nautical charts which have been drawn over a very long time using who-knows-what datum, map projection, coordinate system, etc.  Modern boats like mine are all equipped with “chartplotters”, fundamentally moving map displays like a satnav map you may use in your car. However, the electronic charts the chartplotter uses are often derived from old paper nautical charts without correcting them to WGS84.

I encountered this problem in Tierra del Fuego. I was motoring through a channel between two islands, pretty much in the center of the channel as I eyeballed it. However, the chartplotter showed my position way off to one side of the channel, almost on the shore of one of the islands. The Pacific is another place where the nautical e-charts can be far off. Through a somewhat convoluted process, tech-savvy cruisers are geo-referencing satellite imagery and loading that into their chartplotters. Not only does it accurately display their boat’s position relative to islands, reefs, sand bars, etc. it also shows other information like submerged coral heads as dark shapes in the water. It seems chartplotter makers should pick up on this data source as a product and make it easy for people to load satellite imagery into their chartplotters. Maybe they’re working on that.

So, if you’re ever at a cocktail party and someone comes up and asks “What’s your datum?” don’t be offended, just say “WGS84”. That will lead to a no doubt thrilling conversation about oblate spheroids, coordinate systems, map projections, datums and the like. You can toss in this factoid: even taking into account the mountains and ocean trenches, the Earth is still smoother than a cue ball! Ha. Or you can just say you’re datum-agnostic and walk away. 

This island is best known as the second exile location of Napoleon, the first exile being on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean which may be best known for the famous palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. I landed my plane in Elba, which is totally off the topic. Napoleon died on St. Helena in 1821 and was buried there. Through some diplomatic maneuvering, in 1840 the French persuaded the English to let them dig up Napoleon’s tomb and take his remains back to France.  They were re-interred at Les Invalides in Paris where they remain today.

Never inhabited before Europeans arrived, St. Helena was supposedly discovered in 1502 by some Portuguese guy with too many syllables in his name, though some dispute that. Even so, it was in use early on by ships making the journey from Asia back to Europe as a stop for fresh water, timber for repairs and provisions once it was populated with animals. In this way it was similar to La Reunion island I visited this summer, both formed by seamount volcanos. Reunion is much bigger with a population of over 800,000; St. Helena’s population is only about 4,500.  Of course, La Reunion is totally French-fried; St. Helena is tout à fait British. British pounds are used here although there is St. Helena money also in circulation on parity with the pound sterling. It’s hard to understand why they’d go to the trouble and expense of having their own currency which is useless elsewhere. They also have local credit cards which are more widely accepted than foreign credit cards like Visa.

Like Namibia, my AT&T cellphone wouldn’t roam onto the local network but I didn’t bother to get a SIM card; I really didn’t need to call anyone. I can’t remember the last place I was where the phone numbers are only 5 digits and the license plates are 4 digits.

I visited all the Napoleon stuff, of course, and took a tour of the island to get a feel for the place during the 4 days I was here.  It was mildly interesting. Tourists do come on the weekly flights from Johannesburg to visit these places and also swim with whale sharks. Cruise ships stop for a day about once a month.

They used to have a popular field of mooring buoys for visiting yachts but they shut it down in January, 2024, because it urgently needed repairs. They say it really needs to be entirely replaced but they don’t have the money to do it.  I had to anchor Phywave in 17 meters of water and let out most of my 80 meters of chain.  The anchorage is not great, pretty rolly. Fortunately they have a little harbour ferry boat that will pick people up from their anchored yachts and take them to shore, 2.50 pounds return, a bargain. 

I did manage to have conversations with a few locals in bars. One guy, a retired fisherman, claimed to have been born on St. Helena and spent most of his life there except for a stint in South Africa. He was slurring his words so I figured he’d already had a lot to drink or maybe he was just talking in cursive.  He told me that sometimes the swells and chop in the harbour get so bad the little ferry can’t operate. That’s great, I thought, I need to ride it at least once more to get back to Phywave. Not wanting to dwell on bad boat stories, we changed the subject and he started talking about his family. “My mother started walking 10 miles a day when she turned 65. Now she’s 93 and we have no idea where she is.” Yup.

It was time to say goodbye to St. Helena, climb back on my boat, and start sailing northwest. As I watched the island recede over the horizon, I felt sentimental and a bit sad that this voyage was coming to end even though there are still several thousand miles left to sail. From the early planning in 2020, to starting to sail in 2022, until now, if feels like I didn’t savor all the moments enough, that they quickly slipped by. I hope when I write the book about this voyage I can re-capture their fleeting intensity and enduring impact on how I’ve experienced the world.

I’ve spent almost my entire adult life living on the west coast, very near the Pacific Ocean, and yet I now feel like the Atlantic Ocean is my home ocean since I’ve sailed across it twice and now starting the third time. It seems familiar to me in a way only an ocean sailor can understand.

I am on the homestretch, headed west from Namibia to St. Helena Island, then onward to Antigua and South Florida, the finish line for my solo voyage to 7 continents I can now conceptually see over the horizon to the northwest. I expect to arrive there in early February. From St. Helena I’ll have about 5200 nm left to sail, shorter than my passage from Puerto Montt to the Marquesas.

Until now I kept thinking, generally, “I have a long way to go” without really putting a distance or time frame on it. Buying provisions was affected: I need a lot of food on board because I have a long way to go. I still have many cans of tuna, salmon and vegetables I bought in Chile 18 months ago.  I guess I need to start eating more tuna and draw down those reserves instead of buying new stuff because the remaining days are now certainly numbered.

I was reminded of these things this morning when I sailed across the Greenwich Meridian into the Western Hemisphere, definitely my home hemisphere, after spending more than a year on the east side.  I’m incrementally getting closer to US time zones so I won’t have to get up in the middle of the night to watch Oregon football games with Starlink. The winds and currents should be favorable for the remaining legs of my voyage, although I’ve learned never to take these things for granted or the mythology of the sea might rise up to smite me. You are well-served by humility when sailing the world’s oceans.

It’s probably not the tag line the Namibia PR people want to see but it’s accurate based on the week I spent here and the parts of the country I saw. There are other places I didn’t see in the north with big game but I do know that Namibia promotes the Namib desert and huge sand dunes as its primary attractions.

With my boat tied to a great concrete jetty, a 1 km walk from the Walvis Bay Yacht Club facilities, I rented a 4×4 Ranger pickup and headed out, first north to Swakopmund and the Skeleton Coast. Leaving Walvis Bay, the scenery quickly turned to pure desert on both sides of the road which ran parallel to the ocean a couple of hundred meters inland. There’s really nothing to see until Swakopmund.

Swakopmund is regarded here as probably the most attractive town in Namibia. Situated right on the water, it’s a pleasant, walkable place with many restaurants, shops, and hotels, unlike Walvis Bay which is a heavy-duty industrial port town.

I drove north from Swakopmund along what is known as the Skeleton Coast because of many wrecked ships there over the centuries, and because many dead whales that have washed ashore, their bleached bones sometimes scavenged in the past by local tribes to build huts. Essentially, all the shipwrecks have been so degraded over time there’s nothing left to see. One recent, very visible wreck, the “Zelia”, not far north of Swakopmund, had actually been sold for scrap and was in the process of being towed from Walvis Bay when the tow line broke. It drifted to its current location aground, not because of a navigation error or a storm. A pretty inauspicious shipwreck story.

After a night in a Swakopmund hotel I drove over rough gravel roads into the Moon Valley and spent the night at the Goanikontes Oasis, a cluster of bungalows and camping sites among the trees along the river at the bottom of the parched dry Moon Valley.  Not a particularly impressive place to stay but the restaurant and bar were OK.

Next I moved on to the “show-stopper” in Namibia, the big red sand dunes of Sossusvlei. It’s about a 300 km drive from Walvis Bay over a road that is only partially paved, the rest being gravel, sometimes very rough washboard gravel, that rattles the bones and the vehicle. I was glad I was driving a 4×4.

From all this driving I had the impression I could have been in many desert landscapes I have known, like driving around Nevada or Arizona. It just wasn’t that different or special. The Moon Valley had exposed rock formations along a river that distinguished it from the flat desert around it but otherwise not particularly noteworthy. Nevertheless, it is definitely promoted as a tourist attraction in Namibia.  I came to realize Namibia is being over-promoted in many ways.

I stayed two nights in the Sossusvlei Lodge, certainly the nicest accommodation near the big sand dunes. I thought I would need a full day to see the place but a half day was enough. The park gate opens at 6 am so everyone is lined up to enter then and see the dunes before it gets too hot.  I drove in with the rest, stop at a few viewpoints, then got to Dune 45 (yes, they’re named or numbered). This is a very popular dune to climb so I made the effort. Younger, stronger people passing me going up and down.  There really isn’t any opportunity to exercise on the boat so my cardio fitness and basic muscle strength has deteriorated since I started this voyage. But I persevered and made it to the top after a 40 minute climb.

After Dune 45 the road leads farther into the valley to the last 6 km over sand where it’s advisable to take a 4×4 shuttle with an experienced sand driver. Deadvlei is a large, ancient flat pan where water dried up eons ago leaving stark dead trees. It is found at the end of the road after a 1.5 km walk over relatively flat sand. This is also the starting point to climb “Big Daddy”, the largest dune in the park and one of the largest in the world at almost 300 meters tall.  After the struggle to climb the smaller Dune 45, there’d be no Big Daddy for me.

And that’s it. There’s a smaller version of Deadvlei called Hiddenvlei if you want to see it. There is also Sesreim Canyon, a 30 meter deep rocky canyon that runs for about 2 km. Because of shade throughout the day, sometimes water will still pool there attracting animals. None were there when I stopped. Anyway, you can do it all before lunch and before the afternoon heat.  Overall, I was disappointed with the place. There are certainly the huge red sand dunes but they’re far away from the road so you don’t get the sense of them looming over you.

From Sossusvlei I drove back to Walvis Bay along the same poor road. I spent my last morning there, before departure on November 21, on a half day tour south to Sandwich Harbour. That tour is basically a lot of dune driving on big while sand dunes that run down to the sea.  I went on this tour mainly to satisfy myself that I had seen it all in terms of what Namibia primarily promotes as their top attractions.

According to a few local tour guides I met along the way, “land of sand” tourism suffers from the poor roads and limited infrastructure. Tour operators from Europe and elsewhere don’t want to send people here and subject them to the bad roads and sparse accommodations.

I’m glad I saw it for myself, though.  If you’re in the neighborhood, as I was, it’s worth a visit but I don’t think Namibia is spectacular enough to warrant a special trip just to see it.

I chose to stop at Saldanha Bay about 50 nm north of Cape Town mainly to clear out of South Africa. The process was relatively new for Saldanha Bay and was reported to be much more streamlined than clearing out at Cape Town, the alternative. That turned out to be the case.

I was able to book a berth at the small marina at Yachtport in Saldanha Bay. They primarily do maintenance on boats, especially hull maintenance on large boats because they have the only 100 ton travel lift in South Africa. A travel lift is a large steel frame on wheels with heavy straps that are placed under the boat while it’s in the water.  Electric winches on the travel lift hoist the boat out of the water so it can be moved to a place on dry land ( “on the hard” in boat lingo).  Once there, fixed supports are used to hold the boat so the travel lift can be released for another job.  The process is reversed to put the boat back in the water.

Of course, I didn’t need  the travel lift service having just done this in Richards Bay where I had the hull cleaned and new anti-fouling paint applied.  Incidentally, Phywave was much faster in the water after that work, at least a knot or more. It pays to have a clean hull.

Given the technicians on-site at Yachtport, I had them do a few maintenance items, like an oil change in the Volvo-Penta D2-50 engine. I also had them clean one side of my dual Racor diesel fuel filter and replace the 10 micron filter cartridge. I furnished the filters and oil which I already had on board.  All this was in preparation for crossing the Atlantic and avoiding any potential problems along the way. I won’t have any serious help with engine problems, or get new filters or parts, until I reach the Caribbean.

I also took the opportunity to add to my provisions. With a rental car I visited the Checkers supermarkets in 2 large malls that are within about a 20 minute drive from Yachtport.

The biggest thing I did while in Saldanha Bay was change my route. Since being in South Africa people have been telling me how great Namibia is, that I really should stop there. In particular, a cruiser I met in Hout Bay who is from Namibia gave me some specific information on where to go and what to see.  I vacillated for several days over whether to go. This voyage is beginning to wear on me so I’m anxious to complete my 7 continents mission by returning to North America.  However, I realized I would probably never pass this way again so if I ever wanted to see Namibia, now is the time. Secondarily, I didn’t want to arrive in the Caribbean too soon, like over the Christmas and  New Years holidays when the place will no doubt be jammed with boats and people.  Some further delay, like a stop in Namibia, would help.

With those two factors in mind, I decided to head for Namibia to be followed by St. Helena on my original itinerary.  I left Yachtport Friday,  November 8, at 1200z, headed north to Walvis Bay with very favorable winds forecast along the route.

I kept my boat a total of 10 days at the Hout Bay Yacht Club marina, partly to fix a few things but also to have some time to explore this southwestern part of South Africa.

One thing I wanted to accomplish while there were some simple repairs to my mainsail. One of the batten sleeves needed to be re-sewn and I needed to replace the broken top batten. Unlike my previous stops in South Africa, Cape Town has capable sail-makers who could easily accomplish these tasks. I contacted Ullman Sails on Friday and they sent a team Monday morning to collect the sail from my boat and take it back to their shop. They came with a long sail bag and 4 guys so the sail could be rolled up with the battens still in place and taken away, especially easy with a furling boom. This is very efficient, avoiding having to take the sail down, removing the battens, and flake (fold) the sail into a square bundle for transport. They brought it back Thursday afternoon with the repairs made and fitted back on the boom, with my direction. It was expensive have the sail collected and delivered from their shop in Cape Town but the convenience was well worth it.

I had rental car while in Hout Bay I picked up at the Cape Town airport, using Uber to get there from Hout Bay. I drove east to visit friends Alex and Ronel Ponot, and their three kids who now live in Stilbaai on the coast. I first met them in Oregon where they owned a motel in Pacific City and then a horse ranch near Salem. A few years ago they sold it all and moved to the Perigord region of France, including transporting several horses there. They had a horse ranch in Perigord as well but Alex, who is French, said the French bureaucracy was so stifling he couldn’t make a business of it so they decided to move again, this time to South Africa but without the horses this time. Ronel is originally from Pretoria. They have a beach house in Stillbaai and a large ranch outside of town where I stayed with them for the night. I had a good time seeing a slice of South African life visitors don’t normally see.

After Stilbaai I drove down to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point in Africa, where I spent the night in a great B&B near the lighthouse at the cape. Of course, they also have a prominent marker, and precise line, declaring it the point separating the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, all a pretty artificial construct. The oceans don’t know their names or where one begins and the other ends.

On the drive to Stilbaai and back I was amazed by the vast farm fields, orchards, and vineyards on both sides of the N2 highway. The soil and climate must certainly be conducive to agriculture, no doubt a key reason Europeans were drawn to settle here centuries ago.

Before returning to my boat in Hout Bay I spent the afternoon at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) section of Cape Town, an area of old industrial wharfs and warehouses that have been re-purposed and expanded to house many restaurants and shops. With broad walkways and plazas along the water, it reminded me a little of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. There is also a nice marina here where I could have put the boat instead of Hout Bay. If you want your boat in Cape Town this is a better place to go than the larger marina at the Royal Cape Yacht Club. I had lunch at RCYC one day when I was in town buying spare parts. The club and marina are situated in a very industrial part of the port. Walking out the front door you are confronted with railroad tracks and long lines of trucks waiting to unload their containers. Unlike the V&A marina, there are no restaurants or shops anywhere nearby. You would definitely need a car if you put your boat at the RCYC marina.

Just about 12 miles south of Cape Town and a much easier place to find a berth for my boat compared to the two crowded marinas in Cape Town, the marina at Hout Bay Yacht Club is a great alternative. Arriving here still represents a complete transit of the coast of South Africa from Richards Bay and puts me decidedly on the Atlantic Ocean side of Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point in Africa.

The entire coastal transit took three 2-days passages spread over 15 days with stops in East London(5 nights) and Knysna(4 nights). True to its reputation, the weather along the coast is volatile and violent. On each of the three passages I had to contend with gale force winds, fortunately at my stern, and large, very choppy and confused seas that made getting any sleep difficult. That’s partly due to sailing in the shallow coastal waters where the typical depths are only 50 – 150 meters. In the open ocean with water depths of thousands of meters, the swells and flow of the wind waves take on a much more regular and rhythmic characteristic.

Leaving Knysna through the narrow “heads” at high slack tide was a few minutes of challenging boat handling. The wind was blowing into the narrow passage creating 3 – 4 meter swells I had to drive through, some of them breaking. The boat would ride up on the face of a swell, the bow then crashing down on the backside, sometimes getting a bit buried in the face of the next swell. It took full concentration, increased engine power, and a solid grip on the wheel to keep the boat perpendicular to the swells as I powered through to cleared them. Getting caught sideways in a broach would have been a disaster in that narrow, rocky place. I was surprised the water was so busy. When I arrived a few days before, I had flat water passing through the heads into the Knysna estuary.

I’m damn glad to be in Hout Bay and in a pretty nice marina. In a week or so I’ll move Phywave 70 nm north to Saldanha Bay and skip going in to Cape Town. Just recently Saldanha was added as a port where you can clear out of South Africa. I’ll be one of the first boats taking advantage of that change. From there I’ll be looking at my homestretch passage across the Atlantic (for the third time) to North America via St. Helena and the Caribbean.

Ignore the K, pronounced nyz-na. Another quick trip along the South African coast where a suitable weather window for a passage consists of gale force winds blowing in the right direction. Rough but quick.  However, it was not quite quick enough to get me to Knysna before dark on Wednesday after leaving East London early Tuesday morning.  Knysna has a well-known tricky entrance through the heads to the estuary which shouldn’t be attempted at night or with the wrong tide, especially for someone like me who’s never done it

So I had to lay up at an anchorage in Plettenberg Bay, along the Robberg peninsula, about 20 nm east of Knysna.  I was initially indecisive about anchoring there, thinking I could lie ahull or heave-to and wait for daylight to enter Knysna. I sailed slow for some hours with that strategy in mind. But I finally decided the anchorage would be better, especially if the wind kicked up overnight (which it did). With that decision made, I motored through calm winds to the anchorage, arriving at 11 pm. It’s been a long time since I anchored in the dark of night in a strange place.  The e-charts on my chartplotter provided horizontal guidance and with the depth finder I was looking for a depth less than 8 meters.  Once found, I slowed the boat to zero knots, dropped the anchor, and put out about 40 meters of chain (5:1 slope).  With that done, I went to bed and actually got 5 hours solid sleep.

Leaving for Kynsna early the next day I knew I would be bashing into 15-20 kt headwinds and waves all the way. Nothing for it but to motor fast enough to hit the best time around 1200 to pass through the narrow entrance.  Mike Jacobs of the Knysna Yacht Club (KYC) is there via Whatsapp and radio to help newcomers get safely through.  It was straightforward, except for crabbing into the 20 kt westerly crosswind. It’s a little unnerving to steer the boat so the course-over-ground (COG) track is through the passage but the bow is pointed at the rocks.

KYC is a very welcoming place. They let me stay tied to the reception dock instead of putting me out on a swing mooring where I would need to unload the dinghy, attach the outboard motor, and use that to get to shore. KYC has a great restaurant and bar a few meters from where I’m tied up. From what I can tell, Kynsna is a sort of a resort, second home, tourist town.  50 meters from the yacht club there is a small shopping complex with many restaurants and few nearby hotels.  There are charter boats that take people out on the water for sailing excursions. It’s by far the most comfortable stop I’ve made since Darwin.

However, always onward. A good weather window is opening Sunday/Monday that will get me to Hout Bay, just 10 miles south of Cape Town. I plan to jump on that window to complete my passage along the coast of South Africa.

The visit to my home planet was a too-brief two weeks, barely enough time to get over jet lag before getting re-jet lagged on 32 hour en-route flight times from Richard Bays to Seattle and back.

The main reason for my return home was to participate as a pilot in the First World Flight Centennial, September 26-29. As the date got closer and I was still sitting around my boat, I volunteered for a few things that added to an already busy 2 weeks. The first was a dinner presentation at the Rainier Club in downtown Seattle, a venerable club in a classic brick building that’s existed for more than 100 years. The club hosted the first world flight pilots at dinner upon their return in 1924.  I usually talk to pilot groups about my flying where a lot of technical details are appropriate.  This was a much more diverse group of about 100 people at the Rainier Club so while I was still on the boat I started building a “highlight reel” of the most interested moments from my 4 major international flights, included some of the cool videos I’ve posted on YouTube (and linked on my website). It was a engaging group and dinner was great; I was delighted I accepted their speaking invitation.

I also hosted a BBQ dinner party for Earthrounder pilots and their guests at my house on Bainbridge Island, not just those pilots participating in the Centennial but also any Earthrounders who happened to be in town for the event. It was a lively group of 20 or so – the broiled steelhead, grilled steaks, and salads were perfect.

While home I discovered something that surprised me – I started to like flying again. After achieving the goals I had for international flying by 2019, I have to say I was a little burned out on flying.  Flying to local airports for lunch, just to fly somewhere, really had little appeal or imagination. By climbing into the plane for the Centennial, flying felt fresh again; maybe a 2+ year hiatus from flying is what I needed for a renewed perspective.  There is a simplicity and elegance to airplanes and flying, especially compared to sailing around in a cruising sailboat like mine.  My boat is filled with a myriad of systems to support living on it, the deck cluttered with standing and running rigging, the navigational systems more complex in some ways than those on my plane, the dinghy and outboard motor a whole separate “little boat”.  It’s a lot of stuff that needs maintenance, sometimes doesn’t work, and sometimes breaks. Not simple, not elegant.  I look forward to getting back in my plane when my voyage is completed.

Returning to my boat in Richards Bay, I was anxious to get moving again.  In a comfortable marina like the Zululand Yacht Club it’s easy to get stagnant and let the days drift by. I was determined to break that so while I was still at home I started looking for a suitable weather window to continue.  I arrived back in Richards Bay on October 4th and started sailing again on October 8th headed to East London, 350 nm southwest along South Africa’s “Wild Coast”, a name I now understand. For the first few hours the wind was sublime but rapidly built to 30-40 kts (gale force) with commensurate wave action.  To further complicate things there is the famous Agulhas Current that runs southwest along the coast at speeds that can reach nearly 5 kts, quite high for an ocean (not tidal) current.  As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog post, it is a seriously bad idea to sail in such a current when the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. Standing waves are created by the conflicting forces. Rogue waves along this coast can reach 30 meters in height. Many ships have been sunk or seriously damaged over the years. So even if the wind is stronger than I would like, if it’s blowing in the right direction I’ll take it, and I did.  The weather window was 60 hours long before the wind would change direction and blow opposite the current so I had to hustle down to East London. It wasn’t difficult; with the strong wind aft I could set only a fraction of a headsail and still clip along at 6+ knots (plus the boost from the current which added another 2 to 3 kts). In the end I deliberately slowed down, as I have before, so I would arrive in the port during daylight hours. I am now tied to fore/aft mooring lines, aligned with the river, at the Buffalo River Yacht Club so I don’t swing on the changing tidal flow in the river.

The people at the yacht club are great. As I arrived they found a mooring spot for me and hitched Phywave to the muddy mooring lines which need to be pulled up out of the water. A few hours later a guy came by in a dinghy and asked whether I needed fuel. I had 4 empty jerry cans I hadn’t filled in Richards Bay so I said yes. He took the cans away, filled them, and brought them back to the boat with a young woman from the club who had a credit card machine so I could pay. I’ve been in a lot marinas and anchorages but I’ve never experienced this kind of concierge service. Truly brilliant.

The balance of my voyage around to Cape Town will proceed in a similar fashion – wait for a weather window to move on to the next place along the coast – Port Elizabeth, Knysna or Mossel Bay, Simonstown, maybe Hout Bay. I will clear out of South Africa at Cape Town and begin the homestretch of my voyage back across the Atlantic for the third time and North America, my 7^th continent.

While they were working on cleaning and putting new anti-fouling paint on my boat in Richards Bay, I took a break from boating things and drove up to St. Lucia for a couple of days. The primary thing I wanted to do was take a tour of the Imfolozi Game Reserve, apparently the oldest game reserve Africa. In an open vehicle with a few other people and a guide, we saw a good variety of wildlife, including 4 of Africa’s Big Five (Elephant, Water Buffalo, Leopard, Lion and Rhinoceros). We missed out on a leopard, but did see a cheetah. I toured the major game parks in Kenya and Tanzania when I first visited Africa in 1975. We hired a VW van ourselves – no guide. We actually saw more animals then, and much closer, maybe a little too close when a hippo climbed out of the mud and charged the van. Good times!