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Yacht – 2006 Knysna Lagoon 44
With a business focusing on the tourism industry, the infamous pandemic took its toll on WildWeb. Haemorrhaging savings and finally running low on liquidity, Sarah and I took the hard decision to sell our beloved Umdloti apartment. We called Anthony, an estate agent focusing in the Umdloti area. He lived two doors from us with his family.
In exchange for selling our house, I agreed to help Anthony and his family sail across the Atlantic on the first leg of their ’round the world’ adventure. Fast forward eight months and I found myself on board the yacht Quazami, with Anthony, Jules, their three young children and my nephew James. It was great to be back in Simonstown, having served my naval National Service on the submarine flotilla some 30 years earlier.
As usual, there was an endless amount of final jobs. Clearing customs for both the yacht and ourselves turned out to be a three day learning curve and required us to sail around to Cape Town. Finally, with the all clear, we were set to go.
Once out of the wind shadow of Table Bay, we had a good South Easter pushing us along at a great pace. The boat was going very well. At around 3 am on the third night, Anthony woke me as the autopilot was no longer steering the boat. Opening up the back of the boat, we discovered that the plate attaching the autopilot ram to the tiller had broken off. At sunrise, working in the steering compartment, we managed to replace the broken weld with a U bolt. The pilot was back online.
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As the wind eased, after the pilot was repaired, we launched the spinnaker and our boat speed picked up nicely. That afternoon, James awoke me to report that the spinnaker had wrapped around the forestay. After quite some time and a shimmy up the mast by James, we managed to get the spinnaker down. That evening, we enjoyed a much-deserved sundowner and an amazing sunset.
The breeze was great for the following days and surfing down waves, we were making impressive headway. During a reef (reducing sail area) we found the port gear box was, for some reason, just not engaging. After Anthony disassembled the unit, we found that the pin joining the exchange arm to the gears had broken. Some 3 hours later, we had both engines running and could motor sail in a very light breeze.
Light wind days followed and we caught a dorado – straight out of the sea and into the pan. Nothing better! Jules is quite susceptible to sea sickness but as the days passed, she gained her sea legs and started to get into the flow of teaching John (6), Beth (8) and Emma (10).
As the volcanic island of St Helena arose in front of us at sunrise one morning, we were all very excited to get ashore.
And then…
