12th July


The kids are still visiting so no actual work either school work or boat work has been done. We have received a few parts that were previously ordered and have been given Friday as a date for the last one.

We have spent the last few weeks doing holiday type things that seem to wear me out completely…we stay up late, get up early and fill the day with activities…I am not used to this so will probably need 2 weeks extra sleep once the kids head back to Joburg.

Rauen and Kyle have already agreed to long school hours to make up for 3 extra weeks of holiday…so we will be concentrating hard on getting Rauen’s next assignments in after that.

At least we have been doing some exciting things lately…playing on the Macski, making a potjie in the braai area at the club house, having Monday night braai, a murder mystery party at Nicolette’s house, movie marathon, dinghy ride through the harbour and the list continues…we are grateful that the weather has been great up to now…but it seems to have taken a turn for the worse today.

Why I love Catamarans - Keagan stands at sea and boxes don't move!

Amy and me

Hubbly at the potjie evening

The food is not yet ready...potjie takes forever...but is worth the wait.

24th June


Barry went to the doctor during the last 2 weeks and was instructed to do absolutely no activity with both his arms. He gave him some medicine and we are trying to treat his arms with special care. This actually means that no boat work is being done and we spend our days relaxing and enjoying the time together rather than work, work, work. The doctor explained that it should improve within 3 weeks, if not we are to return for some injections. So we are being very careful, following his instructions to the letter and we will see once 3 weeks have past. Hopefully by then there is a marked improvement.

This last week has flown by, we took a trip up to Amamzimtoti to see Barry’s parents and brought them back to the boat with us. While there Barry bought me a new dress and a couple of new tops.

Yesterday I wore the dress and received a heap of comments so I am very happy with the purchase…something that is relatively unusual for me.

We managed to get a lift with Anne, Ryun’s mom, up to Toti so did not have rent a car and came back down with Barry’s parents. On the way up we made a pit stop at Makro, where we purchased a few items, and then headed for Toti beach.

We stayed at the Toti Cabanas on the beach front and enjoyed our morning coffee on the balcony overlooking the ocean. Beautiful setting. We went to the Thirsty Whale for lunch and took a stroll on the beach front.

I think Barry’s mom and Charles enjoyed their visit to Richards Bay as well. Charles commented that he had never been here before and that it was absolutely beautiful! Perhaps he should sell up in Joburg and move…guess he loved the place.

On Friday night Keagan arrived and Barry and Charles went to fetch him at the Macdonalds in town. He was rather ill when he arrived and I drugged him up a bit and put him to bed almost immediately. He woke yesterday feeling much better and back to his jovial self.

Today was washing day and I have spent the morning doing hand washing yet again. It seems to be a never ending job but it beats the 9-5 grind everytime.

New port...different day

30th April


Okay…decision made, we head for East London as soon as we have repaired the motor, the reefing mechanism, the autopilot and the power problems.

We have removed the impellor unit and stripped it as we found the raw water leak in this unit. Being a series of public holidays this week we have not yet been able to arrange the spares but are working on it.

We have a navigation system technician seeing us tomorrow, even though it is a public holiday, to give us some advice and information so we can improve the systems on board and possibly add an AIS system.

In the meantime my sister Kim has been to visit and will pop past again tomorrow…it has been wonderful seeing her since it has been a long time, not to mention the fuel, cold drinks and bread rolls she brought us to tide us over . We had a great braai and took them out to the boat to see the new look Yrumoar.

Ryun will be leaving us in the next few days so we are taking it slow at the moment and spending some relaxing time with friends but come Thursday we will be in full action mode getting through our “at this port” list so we can move on.

As a whole Durban is similar to Richards Bay apart from the visiting pelicans. We sit on the yacht and watch in awe as these huge birds glide up and down and swim by ducking under the water and catching large fish only to swallow them whole. We have spent many lazy hours in the last two days just watching these fascinating birds.

Bluff Yacht club from the water

Hitting the ocean

27th April


Well…because I’m typing this we obviously arrived at the Bluff yacht club safely. But the real question is how did the trip go?

Well, we dropped the mooring lines at 12H40 and headed out into the harbour. I took the helm while Barry and Ryun tried to hoist the main sail in a reefed position so that we could keep it that way for the duration of the trip…this however, turned out to be our first obstacle. We discovered that the new stack pack did not have the reefing holes in the correct place and therefore did not work. We ended up making a jury rig…not a promising start but we stuck to our guns and after an hour we succeeded in getting the system working and headed out the harbour mouth.

The sea conditions were good even though there was a large swell running at 3.1m. The swell was stable but there were few eddies which made for a relatively comfortable ride. The wind was still blowing SE but was reducing and expected to swing before nightfall. We all sat comfortably in the cockpit until the sun set…Ryun and I were slowly becoming more and more queasy so I took a motion sickness tablet but it helped very little. Ryun took one later and had a similar experience…we should probably be taking these before we leave port next time.

Leo seeing us off in his Dinghy

At about 20H00 the wind swung around to the North and we had to change the genoa and drop the main as it was masking the wind to the genoa…this is normally a relatively simple task but while we were working with the sails we heard a beeping sound coming from the auto pilot.

Barry headed back to the helm and reset it a few times without success…we would have to hand steer the rest of the way. Kyle decided to go to sleep and headed to his room, luckily Rauen had had a nap already and was awake and ready to take shifts with the steering. Ryun slotted in occasionally when he felt up to it and I kept a look out for ships and plotted fixes on the paper charts we had laid out on the saloon table, taking naps on the saloon bench in between.

Last of the ships achored off Richards Bay

The weather stayed stable and we had a comfortable motor sail…we learned a few important things, the first being that we need to keep record of the bearing we are on as when the autopilot went down we did not know this bearing and it took almost an hour to get us back on course and heading the right direction. During this hour we only managed to make 2 miles headway which was highly frustrating.

We discovered that we should hoist more sail rather than less and cut the motors but being our first passage I was nervous and I guess we kept them on the whole way just for my sake.

Kyle on route before sunset

We discovered that we can motor at the same speed using 1 motor only and do not need to run both which would make fuel efficiency much better but we had had trouble with this in the harbour…in the ocean the swell sends you off course with every wave so the difference is negligible and we will in future only use 1 motor at the time whilst in the ocean.

This last discovery was made when about an hour out of Durban, our starboard motor warned us it was overheating and we had to shut it down…our speed was maintained even using only the port motor…lesson learned.

Rauen early morning after helming all night

Today we plan to replace the impellor on the starboard motor as we believe this is the problem, we are presently sitting in the yacht club typing and doing school work but have a few small boat projects to do…the autohelm will definitely need to be sorted out before we can head off again, if we want to head off again…I think our general consensus is that the passages are long and boring…do we want to spend all that time bored? If we changed our minds about the trip we would have to think of another mode of transport, none of us were afraid or feel we can’t do the trip the question is more if we want to do the trip? This is a discussion we will be having before spending any money but in the mean time we have a few things to do while we mull over the idea of heading to East London.

We join the Inhaca Race

9th March


This has been a crazy, wonderful week! So much has happened I am not sure where to begin. Cyclone Irina made landfall just north of us bringing torrential rain and huge winds…I was relatively calm throughout the storm and managed to sleep without panic, I am obviously getting better at this. 3 days of rain and wind made life on board a little boring…there is not much you can really do in that sort of weather.

During this terrible weather we spotted a huge amount of water inside the boat, in the kitchen cupboards and under the saloon seating. We traced the problem and found a rather serious bit of wood rot just behind the mast step. We have cut it out and left it open to dry out at the moment…we got an expert opinion from Dylan and have decided we will effect this repair on the water. Yip on the water!

So we cleared out under the boat, packed up the last of our workshop and had them place the trailer under us and lift her into the air…we are flying 2 hulls at the moment…so we could complete the work under the keels.

Yesterday we managed to epoxy that as well as sand, we are prepped for antifouling. Today we do the last bits of the antifoul, under the keels, on the props and saildrives and inside the underwater skin fittings. We will be back in the water after major repair and construction tonight! Yip, finally back on the water and getting closer to the goal of sailing. Not that the work is complete, we have a list of things that need to be done before we cast off but we are definitely heading in the right direction.

I simply can’t wait to lulled to sleep on the never still water on a floating Yrumoar…



Things never seem to work out as planned…our precious Yrumoar was injured on her passage across the land towards the water and we had to effect repairs to her starboard rudder before we could actually launch her on Saturday. We spend Friday night sleeping on a friend’s boat because she was standing in the slipway with a wet epoxied rudder at a 45 degree slope making it impossible to lie down on the beds.

Anyway by Saturday afternoon we had completed the repair and launched her into the water, we would finally sleep on our own boat in the water!

Both Barry and I have not been feeling too well and decided that once in the water we would go and see a doctor. As we only launched on Saturday we waited for Monday, doing little in the way of work. On Monday morning we hailed a taxi and headed to town to visit a doctor as well as an upholsterer.

The doctor prescribed an antibiotic for me and some steroids and REST for Barry and gave us a large list of medicines that need prescription for Yrumoar, our medicine chest is complete with general purpose antibiotics and all!

We dropped off the helm chair we had manufactured while still on land, chose the material to cover it and left it with them. Did a few grocery items and headed back to the boat.

On Tuesday we collected the trampolines we purchased from the yacht club…they do not fit Yrumoar but as they are not sewn we can cut the battons shorter and adjust them size and we will have fantastic trampolines! Wednesday saw us doing one of the two.

Ryun’s yacht Seashoes was launched early Wednesday morning and we joined them aboard for some champagne. Then headed off to make our trampolines but only managed to finish one before return to Seashoes for evening cocktails.

Yesterday saw Barry actually taking the doctor’s advice and resting. He will be doing that again today as his arms seem to be showing signs of improvement. We will probably start working again either on the weekend or Monday…then it is full steam ahead as we have just over 2 weeks to get Yrumoar ready for the Inhaca race, our official sea trial and the largest racing event from this yacht club. We will be at sea for both Barry’s and Kyle’s birthdays…and the greatest thing about entering the race is that we receive jackets with our yacht name embroidered on the front!