Elated, euphoric, ecstatic, dazed, dead tired and above all grateful—We did it! We made it! At 0600 on 1 January 2023, Corroboree tied up in Cape Town, South Africa, a huge milestone on our circumnavigation. The 900-mile voyage from Richards Bay wasn’t our longest, and it was broken up by three rest stops en route. But this coastline is widely recognized among sailors as one of the most difficult and dangerous in the world, and after a bottle of champagne at dinner and a full night’s sleep, the reality sank in. What a way to start 2023! We are in Cape Town and dancing for joy!
What makes this leg of a circumnavigation so daunting? First of all, the winds. Whether they’re coming from the east or the west half of the compass, they are strong, very strong, and they wrap around the southern end of the African continent with a vengeance. You cannot sail against them. Don’t even try. If you’re headed west, as we are, you must wait in port until they blow steadily from the NE-SE, ideally at 15-25 knots, for at least 2-3 days. Over 30 knots, it’s going to get hairy. Under 10 knots, you’ll need to motorsail quickly or be caught out when the wind swings around to the west and socks you in the face.
Now factor in the currents, especially the notorious Agulhas Current, which flows north to south and especially close to shore between Durban and East London, our first target port. It has hit reported speeds in excess of five knots, so you can’t go north against it. If you’re traveling south, as we were, it’s like getting free miles. But you dare not count on it. If the current doesn’t materialize or is weaker than projected, you either motorsail or, once again, get ambushed when the wind turns. You have been warned.
The approved strategy for reaching Cape Town, therefore, is to leave Richards Bay with the wind at your back, sail/motor as speedily as possible to the next port, and shelter there until another weather window opens. If you can’t reach a secure harbor in time, tuck in and anchor behind a convenient headland until it’s safe to proceed. Easy, right? No. Because most of the “convenient” headlands have serious drawbacks like poor holding ground and bad swells, and the mooring conditions in the main ports—tied to a rough fishing dock, for example—are not exactly yacht friendly. To add to the stress, even a seemingly reliable weather window can shrink and desert you at any time underway. For a boat of Corroboree’s size and speed trying to scurry from port to port, there is little room for error.
Our first leg, 339 miles to East London, began on the afternoon of 6 December with a grayish-white overcast and light and variable winds. We expected to motorsail at the start, and when the northeast wind did not materialize at midnight as predicted, we motored some more. At 0700 in the morning, little whitecaps began to fleck the water, and with the reefed main and jib set wing and wing, we were soon skipping along under a sparkling blue sky. Then we were hurtling at 8-9 knots, the wind blowing the water almost flat and streaked white with foam as we flew past Durban. Yet by 1600 we were back on the engine, the wind lackluster and no sign of the Agulhas Current. Radio calls between two other yachts reported no current until 10 miles offshore and that only 1-2 knots. Being then 6 miles offshore, we angled east for two hours and finally encountered the Agulhas Current at 12 miles out, flowing at 2-3 knots. We zipped through the night until, at dawn, the story changed once more.
Now, instead of the 15-25 knot northeast wind shown on every forecast, we had a light southwest wind and odd, flat, elliptical clouds hanging overhead. An email from our weather router, Des Cason, advised that the problem was a localized low-pressure trough. The trough would collapse by 1300 and the northeast wind gradually return. This did come to pass, but it was back to the motor meanwhile. At such times, the ocean feels eerie, the air still, the sky unfamiliar, the engine droning, the coastline lost in a spooky gray haze. It’s almost as if we had strayed into some kind of nautical Twilight Zone. Finally under sail again at 1500, Corroboree began moving so fast that we had to lower the jib and center the triple-reefed main to slow down and avoid a nighttime entry at East London. With only the current pushing us along, we zigzagged until sunup and arrived at the Buffalo River Yacht Club (BRYC) on 9 December around 0900. Of the 66 hours total for this leg, we had to motor 32 hours, almost half the time.
BRYC is small and by its own cheerful admission “slapdash.” But it gives cruisers a warm welcome, beginning with a dinghy escort up the river and assistance tying up. Hot showers, a free washing machine, a clubhouse with bar, deck and braai (barbecue area), and friendly people are part of the deal. Without the hospitality of clubs like this, cruisers would have few secure havens to look forward to on the South African coast, and they deserve many thanks. As an added bonus, BRYC sits beside a forested cliff that harbors a number of bird species. You can guess how I spent my free time. Sadly, a high level of crime makes it unsafe to explore outside the yacht club on your own, but Uber can get you to destinations like the mall for provisioning.
Throughout our stay in East London, we monitored the weather assiduously, hoping to cover the next 320 miles to Mossel Bay in one hop. But when what seemed to be a promising 2-3 day window abruptly shortened to 36 hours, we were forced to shorten our sights as well. It was not a happy decision. Our new destination, Port Elizabeth, is primarily an industrial harbor, and cruising yachts bypass it if the weather allows. But it has a marina and yacht club, and at only 132 miles from East London, an overnight sail, it was doable within our reduced timeframe. We departed BRYC at 0500 on 18 December and had to motorsail in a limp wind the entire way. By the time we arrived the following morning we were already cutting it close. A mere four hours later, the wind turned southwest against us.
A sailor should never scoff at a safe haven, but Port Elizabeth was indeed a downer. The marina has a metal trailer for an office, one grotty toilet, and a number of derelict boats along its docks. The yacht club, a separate entity, grudgingly offers visiting sailors cold showers for a price but nothing else. Both are located within the industrial complex, and there is no appealing scenery or any stores within walking distance. On windy days, dust from a nearby manganese terminal blows onto your deck, and though Corroboree was spared that indignity during our stay, another inconvenience greeted us. The night before our arrival the gangway connecting the dock to the shore collapsed into the water, and the only way across was on a barge run by the marina staff. Eric and I looked at each other and exhaled a heavy sigh. In the falling rain, trapped on the dock and no weather window in sight, this was where we’d be spending the Solstice and Christmas.
But if the marina was a letdown, the people were not. The manager drove us to the grocery store and the gas station to refill our diesel jugs, the barge operators came when hailed, the locals advised us on safety, and a kind new friend offered the use of his car to go sightseeing. As in East London, much of Port Elizabeth is off-limits due to crime, and not having auto insurance, we declined with thanks. Instead, we Ubered to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum where we enjoyed the paintings, sculpture and intricate beadwork created by East Cape artists. Another day, we joined eight other tourists on a city sights minibus tour. Led by a very personable guide, the tour enabled us to see some of the attractive buildings and historical sites and form a more positive impression of the city. It should be noted that Port Elizabeth, founded in 1820 and named by the then-governor in memory of his deceased wife, was renamed Gqeberha in 2021, an African name for the river that flows through the city. Apparently, no one can pronounce Gqeberha. Everyone we met still called it “Port Elizabeth” or by its nickname “P E.”
We departed Port Elizabeth on Christmas Day for the third leg, 188 miles to Mossel Bay. It began with an afternoon of miserable, monotonous motorsailing in a gray mist and a whisper of southwest breeze, the promised south wind nowhere to be found. We tacked and tacked and reset the sails, and nothing worked very well. We were lucky that an unidentified current in our favor pushed us on at an extra ½-1 knot. Thank you, whoever sent it! It also helped that this being summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the nights are only 8 hours long instead of 12. That night the wind gradually came around to the northwest, and with the sails close hauled, we skirted the coast, slowly but steadily ticking off the miles. In mid-morning the wind at last shifted east, and Corroboree sang along wing and wing at 6-7 knots under a sheer blue sky. Alas, fickle as ever, the wind bid us adieu that night, and it was left to our faithful engine to propel us the remaining miles to Mossel Bay.
And here our spirits lifted. Mossel Bay is also a commercial port, home to a fishing fleet, and the harbormaster originally directed us to tie up to the very rough sea wall, buffered by huge, black tires and afflicted by incoming swells; getting off the boat at low tide was dangerous if not impossible. But once we explained our concerns, he arranged for us to take one of the few available berths at the very small marina and also waived the fee. Better still, unlike our two previous ports, Mossel Bay is safe to explore. The downtown is appealing and only a ten-minute walk. Beyond that is a pretty beach with a cluster of hotels, restaurants, and waterfront activities. It being the final week of December, holidaymakers were out in force, and we relished the festive atmosphere.
Best of all, smack in the center of town is the Dias Museum. It houses a life-sized replica of the caravel sailed by Portuguese mariner Bartolomeu Dias around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, the first European to venture that far. The replica was built in Portugal and sailed to Mossel Bay in 1988 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of that event, and the accompanying story panels chronicle the advances in navigation and marine cartography during the Age of Discovery. We took our time checking out the ship and absorbing the information. Those bold navigators and beautiful maps were stepping stones to the GPS charts on our iPads, and we wouldn’t be here without them.
Now came the final leg to Cape Town, 241 miles, and when a weather window opened the morning of 30 December, off we went. Double-reefed and wing and wing, we sped along with a northeast wind at our back. At 0400 the following morning we passed Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point on the African continent and the longitude where the warm Indian Ocean “meets” the cold Atlantic. Its turbulent waters can be a terror spot for yachts, but we sneaked by with little commotion. However, the following morning brought an unforeseen complication as Corroboree began to encounter patches of bull kelp—thick, ropy strands of brown seaweed that pull free from the ocean floor and tangle together in large, floating, snake-like rafts. For several hours we took turns, one of us as a spotter at the bow, shouting “Go starboard! Go port!” while the other turned the helm to dodge them. It delayed us in reducing the mainsail to the third reef, and when we did, the wind, now from the southeast, hit hard. Eric was cross about the sloppy reefing job he did in the bucking sea, but it served the purpose.
At 25-30+ knots, the wind proceeded to blast Corroboree the rest of the way to Cape Town. I can only say that Bartolomeu Dias didn’t name this part of the world the Cape of Storms for nothing. It was a fierce, cold, strenuous 18 hours, and despite multiple layers of clothing, we shivered through our watches. The only thing to do was keep our heads down and carry on. At sunset on New Year’s Eve we rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the tip of the long, jagged peninsula that stabs downward from the coast like a stone dagger. At midnight, approaching Cape Town under a half moon, the scene was magical, the lights of the city draped over the dark mountainsides like a multi-tiered necklace of glowing Christmas tree lights. In the final hours, the wind became erratic as it was either blocked by the mountains or shrieked between them. Some of the gusts brought a burst of warmth laden with a rich, earthy smell. I wish we could have taken photos or videos to capture the experiences and our emotions during those last 18 hours, but there was no leaving the wheel. It was intense and exhausting.
We entered the Cape Town outer harbor at sunup and proceeded through a swing bridge, then a bascule bridge to the Victoria & Alfred Marina in the heart of the waterfront. Our friends Dick and Laura on Maia rose early to catch our lines, a big help as Eric maneuvered Corroboree into the slip that will be our base for the next two months. We stepped off the boat pumped with adrenalin and glassy-eyed with fatigue, and after welcoming hugs, Dick and Laura returned to Maia to let us nap. Later that day they took us on a recon trek around the Cape Town waterfront.
Now it’s real. Since leaving Darwin in May, we have covered 8,399 miles and are three-quarters of the way around the world on our circumnavigation. We have faced up to our hardest sailing yet, and though we’ve certainly blundered at times, we’ve persevered and overcome. We don’t usually brag, but for once let me say how proud I am of us. Whoever thought we’d be here? Bring out another bottle of champagne!