We are expecting our first visitors today. Here’s what brought us to this point…
13th June 2010
We left home at 12 on Wednesday after a quick KFC lunch and change of clothes for the boys. The car was fully loaded and we were expecting to arrive about 8pm.
As we turned onto the highway Barry said he thinks we should give the old road one more chance (it seems to be like child birth, you forget the pain of it rather quickly). The road between Heidelberg and Standerton is definitely the worst part of the journey. We opted not to fill the car in Volksrust as we still had a ¾ tank of fuel. This turned out to be a bad decision as we very nearly ran out of petrol before we reached the fuel stop in Melmoth. Luckily we made it with 4km of fuel to spare (according to the car’s computer). The sun had just set and we were making good time, we managed to reach the yacht club at 6:30pm.
We found Yrumoar at our newly acquired mooring, C15, just as expected and managed to unload the car before going to bed.
I had made a complete grocery list at home and early Thursday morning we headed for the Richards Bay mall, breakfast at Maxi’s was the first stop, then a whirlwind trip through the mall, stopping at all the home stores to take a look at bedding and towels, the chemist (for seasickness pills and cough syrup as I was still feeling very ill), the bottle store as well as the both Checkers and Pick ‘n Pay. We managed to find some great items, a dust buster vacuum that only draws 400mA on charge, a battery operated hand sealer (to reseal all those open packets), some fantastic new towels and a butterfly mop (2 mops are better than 1 we discovered). We also bought groceries for the next 19 days, we will now only need to buy bread and milk once during next week, as I am not baking bread yet!
The expedition for the day was not so much the buying (which took 5½ hours) but the packing away (that I am yet to absolutely complete), finding a place for everything and managing to clean the fridge and both freezers before the frozen goods defrosted, clean out cupboards for groceries and generally pack everything in a specific place. This took all afternoon and is still a work in progress as we have a couple of items we have not found permanent homes for yet.
Once we were done it was sundowners in the cockpit, while watching in amazement as 2 adult dolphins we feeding less than 2 metres away, we could have leaned over and touched them! Somehow seeing animals in the wild rather than in captivity is far more awesome.
On Friday morning Barry first had to deal with a work call, we made arrangements for the office to call us on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so that we would still be in touch with what was happening but at the same time our holiday was not taken up with work all the time. I made breakfast, using the stove for the first time, not completely successfully but at least the food was edible. Eggs on toast with viennas all made in a single frying pan.
Today was world cup opening day and I had planned on doing all the laundry, we headed to the Laundromat (which is conveniently located a the yacht club) to see what we would need, there are 2 washing machines, 2 tumble driers, 3 outdoor sinks for hand washing, a standard double sink and a washing line. Tokens were needed so we went to the yacht club office to buy some. We lugged the laundry including all the bedding to the washing room and I spent the next 3 hours doing laundry. Barry went down to make lunch for the boys and brought some up for us to have while waiting for the last load to dry.
Once we were back on the boat we had an hour before we wanted to go up to the yacht club and watch the opening match so we opened the headsail, just to have a look. The headsail is filthy, we will need to take it down and scrub it with scouring powder and good old elbow grease, I decided the next day was good for that!
We then headed up to the yacht club bought a cold drink for each of us and settled down to watch the big game. Rauen was invited to play soccer with a few of the kids on the lawn and both Rauen and Kyle joined in the fun, making some new friends in the process.
The game was all we expected it to be. It opened with some tense moments in the first 4 minutes as Mexico came just too close to scoring for our comfort levels. The game calmed down and Bafana Bafana managed to keep it together, very scary moments when Mexico scored a goal but it was disallowed for off sides, half time came with no score on the board. Less than 20 minutes into the second half and Bafana scored! We had managed to score the opening goal and we were all ecstatic, perhaps we had a chance after all! Now we were in the lead, we were less nervous and watching, hoping they kept up the aggressive game rather than turning to defence. 10 minutes later the ref did not see the Mexican grab our player by the shirt and pull him to the ground inside their penalty area while he was in position to score again, this should have given us a penalty and turned the game but sadly it missed the refs eye and he was let off the hook. 3 Minutes later Mexico scored and the game was even, first came the disappointment of their scoring, then the realisation that this score is not a loss but a draw and we are still in it. The game finally ended with a draw and Bafana Bafana managing to make the country proud. Well done Boys!
We came back to the yacht, had a celebratory drink and I ducked off to bed, hoping a little extra sleep would get me over this flu that has been nagging for the last 2 weeks.
Yesterday we woke up hoping to drop the headsail and get to work scrubbing and cleaning. Barry and I first hauled the sail out and in again to check the furler. I lay on the trampoline removing tie wraps and ropes pieces that were obstructing the furler. We opened the lazy jack on the main sail to find the halyard for the Genoa, we checked each rope and what it was being used for, but were unable to find a Genoa halyard. Barry fetched the binoculars and had a look up at the top of the mast to find a rope, but still there was nothing. Barry climbed the mast to the first spreaders and removed more unused rope but still there was no halyard for the Genoa. I went down below searching for a bosun chair as it was listed on the inventory list. Unable to find it we decided to have a look for it in the storage room that came with the yacht.
We headed up to the room and unlocked the door. Inside we found a treasure chest of goodies, some instant jumble sale items, replacement parts for much of the yacht, plenty fibreglass, insulation, LED lights, taps, the liferaft, a surf board, a folding bicycle, paints, resins, a battery charger, a compressor, the solar panels for the boat, the watermaker and so much more. We unfolded some spare sails to see where they fitted and also found the dinghy complete with pump and oars etc. We spent most of the day unpacking this 3m x 1,5m room packed to the roof with treasures. By the end of the day we had still not managed to find the bosun chair or take down the roller furler but we had managed to repack the storage room and take out some items for immediate use. Tammy phoned while we were busy and said they would be coming to visit today, bring all 5 kids and sleeping over tonight.
This leads us to where we are, finding a place for the last few items lying around, getting breakfast ready so Rauen can go out with his new found friends dinghy sailing, (they apparently sail Lasers and Rauen should enjoy that) and getting the boat ready to go out this afternoon for at least a Harbour tour, perhaps pointing Yrumoar's nose out into the ocean and finally returning for a braai with Tammy and Jason.
Gonna have a great sailing day!
