Passage from Reunion to South Africa

After Kathy’s parcel arrived, we did one last walk of about six hours on the south east corner of the islands. It was very beautiful and mostly in woods. Back at St Pierre we spent our days preparing the boat. All the laundry was washed, provisions were bought and stowed, the rigging was thoroughly checked, the sails inspected and various sheets, lines and pulleys put in their sea going places. Our friends on La Freneuse decided to go on Tuesday 23 October, but we did not like the look of a 5 metre swell which they would encounter on the second day. On Wednesday, Passage Weather showed the swell to have decreased and the worst weather to be on the following Tuesday – east winds from behind of 25 to 30 knots. By that time we would be approaching the south of Madagascar and the danger would be southerlies. We announced we would leave at 1400 on Thursday. Two sailors from different boats came to tell us not to go as their weather was giving a different picture. (This can go on for a month!)

We left as planned and had a lovely sail with 16 knots of SSE winds. At 2100 the wind increased 36 knots and we had to reef the mainsail to its second reef and furl the genoa completely; our speed remained at 5 to 6 knots. The waves were continually breaking over the length of Sal Darago. The winds continued in the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties for thirty hours. After five months of very little sailing, this was a rude awakening. Kathy was uncomfortable and took Stugeron. I felt like a wet dish cloth. I certainly was wet. Everything one does is difficult in these conditions. For instance on opening the fridge, its contents have a habit of emptying onto the floor. On one occasion, Kathy opened the fridge and one of the lemonade cans shot out, punctured and sprayed everywhere with its sticky liquid. Then it had to be cleared up.

Mending the mainsail eye.

By Saturday afternoon the wind had dropped to 16 knots and I repaired a mainsail eye which had been ripped out of the sail on the luff edge just above the second reefing point. By 1900, the wind had dropped and the engine was on. There was thunder and lightning with heavy rain and the engine was running oddly. I increased the revs and the engine made a dreadful noise, sounding as if it had blown up (that is: either the big end or small end bearings had disintegrated). Immediately reducing the revs, the noise faded and a gradual increase in engine speed did not reproduce the noise. I left it alone and it worked for a further 12 hours without incident, thank goodness.

Making lunch in a life jacket.

During the twelve day passage we encountered six ships which were so close to us that we had to call them up on the VHF and ask them to move for us. Only one did not respond at all. The rest moved their course to give us more room. For the one which did not respond, we were motoring and Kathy was on watch, so she altered our course to avoid a collision. On one ship, the officer on watch was from Blackpool.

By Monday the wind was back up to 25 knots, the top end of a force six, and it stayed there all day. The current was with us and the wind was against us so the waves were building and Sal Darago was slamming down twice a minute. It was uncomfortable. We were approaching the south of Madagascar, where we turned more west than south on Tuesday evening. The winds increased to 38 knots at 2300. Both Kathy and I were scared. The wind was behind us and the seas were building. In the morning Kathy has written in the log “confused sea; tearing down swell; waves crashing; wind howling”. We saw a large grey tanker and using VHF, asked him for a weather update. His reply was that it would stay the same for some days!

How many knots of wind?

We arrived safely in Richards Bay on Tuesday morning, 6 November, at 0700. We had endured one force six, two force sevens (frequently called a yachtman’s gale), three gale eights and one severe gale force nine. The engine did die and on being taken to bits the fuel pipe was full of flakes of rust disturbed by the dreadful shaking of the entire boat in the gales. I did clean it out and the engine ran sweetly thereafter. The mainsail was ripped twice; the second rip just behind the luff tape and about 6 inches long. We were very lucky that it did not rip further. We ran out of bread, but it was too rough for one day to make any more (ship’s crackers substituted). The two spray dodgers on either side of the boat, where the name SAL DARAGO is printed in white, were ripped and we lost two solar (garden) lights overboard. The maximum wind speed we saw on the readout was 53knots, but that was fortunately only a gust. We were close hauled into the wind for over 50 hours and had so much water coming over the boat that it was not surprising that everywhere was wet or damp with salt water.

Double reefed mainsail

We are very pleased to be in South Africa. Neither of us could say that we enjoyed the voyage. We are pleased that our old Westerly, Sal Darago, held together so well and apart from a fair number of bruises, the crew did too! 

Severe gale force nine - Indian Ocean