Sailing along South Africa – Sailing with Saphir

Port Elisabeth to Cape Town

Happy New year, it is the 3 Jan 2025 when this blog is posted. We have been in Cape Town since 1 dec and having a great time here, and the last two weeks Elise have been visiting us. More about that in a later blog. In the last blog we arrived to Port Elisabeth so let’s start there.

It is great to be moored here in Port Elisabeth specially as the wind speeds up. Even in the harbour we feel the wind as it was up to 20 m/sec. We discuss the weather and when it is best to leave with the 6 other Arc boats. Feels good to be sailing with them to Cape Town. One of the evenings we have a sundowner on Saphir. It was very packed.

Since we knew, that we were going to be stuck in Port Elisabeth for a few days, we decided to go for a Safari to Addo the Elephant park with Chris and Karen. What a great place. We saw lots of Elephants, ‘pumbas’, zebras, antilopes, kudus, buffles, one hyena and many different birds

Me and Karen took an uber to Sacramento to hike. It was a great walk and fabulous scenery although the weather could have been better. Shifting between sun, rain and wind. When we almost dried up the wind got more intense, the rain came and we got soaked, then it stopped raining and the sun came out for a while before it started all over again. Before going back to our boats we had lunch at Sacrament restaurant.

The weather window is opening up and we are out in the ocean again and heading to Cape Town. On the second night we pass Point Augulhas which means we left the Indian Ocean and are back in the Atlantic sea. This is also the most southerly part of Africa.

When we passed the Good Hope on the 1 dec at 12 we still had five hours left to Cape Town . We enjoy the last Nm and are looking for whales. Edgar sees a squirt from a whale. We see him/her just in front of the boat and that scared us a lot but it manage to dive before we came to close.

3 and 1/2 days on the sea and we are getting in to CapeTown. Now we have till 11 Jan to fix things on the boat such as toalett, sail and lots of other things. I will also make a trip back home to Sweden to see all my grandchildren, family and some friends.

Big hugs Eva

Sailing along the wild coast

Early morning is and a few more boats leave Richard’s bay and hope to get all the way to East London. We really like to get as south as possible before the heavy winds comes. The morning is beautiful and we enjoy the sunrise.

When we got out of the harbour we got very good help from the current, we almost never went under 8kn. So nice to be more or less flying forward. We arrived at East London and Buffalo river just before five, and at 17.15 Saphir is moored along the pier. The pier is for bigger boats so it is very high up to the edge of the pier, luckily there is a ladder attached in the wall of the pier that makes it easier to get on land. Mistral is lying just infront of us and the other boats are on bouy’s in the river.

We went over to the yacht club, to meet up with the others and also get some dinner. This night there was a barbecue, you either buy the meat or bring your on and grill it. Magnus and Karen were in charge of our grilling and they did a great job.

How many people do you need to fix Mistrals dinghy engine??? It turned out that it needed a new battery which arrived the next day. Great! then we didn’t need to get our dinghy in the water. It is a bit of a hassle since the engine is not attached on the dinghy, so it is not only just getting the dinghy in the water. We all went for lunch in Mistrals dinghy at a fish and chips restaurant up the river. An other early night since we are heading out at 4.30 in the morning to get to Port Elisabeth. Magnus jumps off Saphir to head home to his family. Thank you Magnus for all the help from Mauritius to East London. It has been a pleasure to have you onboard. Now I have to go back doing all the cooking and washing up!!!

Now we are back beeing only us two again. Luckily it is not that many nights on the sea. Once again we have good current with us and we have only one night sailing. After 43 hours we a do are moored in Port Elisabeth with great help from the harbour master. A night cap on Mistral before we head to bed.

Hugs Eva

Richard Bay

Sorry way behind read and enjoy

15-21 nov

We are so happy to be here. Now we will have almost one week to relax, fixing, explore the area. The Arc have made a nice program for the week. It starts with a mingel in the evening and many more during the following days. It was very nice to meet up with the rest of the fleet and hear about their sailing. One of my jobs is to fix the roof in Magnus cabin. He had a few bad leaks that we will see if we can solve with some sikaflex when the deck is dry. Meanwhile I am emptying the water and letting the celling panels dry. Then I need to attach the fake skin back and happy that our friend boat have an electric stapler. New thing on the wish list to the boat.

Saturday morning at five we meet up for the Safari tour. Hoping to see the big fives. After 2 hours in the bus we are at Nomcondo – Big Five Hlabias where the guides and jeeps are waiting for us. Wow! What an adventure. So fantastic to see all these wild animals and fantastic to see that some of the species are actually together. We saw lots of antelopes, buffaloes, gnu, monkeys,“Pumba” sadly not “Timon” , zebra, rhinos that they sadly had cut off the horn a month ago to provent poaching. It was harder to spot the elephant but we finally saw some behind the bushes. The giraffes was not either easy to spot, but we saw some and I even manage to capture one with my iPhone even if it is not that clear. The hardest was the lion, I saw him but my camera was not good enough so I got a picture from one of the other.

Me and Edgar decided to have a night for ourself. The hotel we wanted was fully booked so Edgar found an other that was not so far from the marina in a walking distance he thought. We ended up to take a cab so actually we could have chosen an other hotel. Anyway we stayed at Meer an Sea a bed and breakfast place which I missed. This means that they don’t serve dinner or any drinks so the owner kindly drove us to buy some snacks and drinks and in the evening we had home delivery of pizza.

Few more days with a wine tasting evening, food shopping and I didn’t know that Edgar had his own store. The last evening we hade the prize giving awards with local dance and a dinner. This time we got a price for arriving closest to our estimated time of arrival. We arrived only 55 minutes later than ETA. We would have been even closer if we didn’t had to wait for an hour outside the harbour due to cargo ships going in and out of the big harbour that was further in. It was too narrow in the canal in to meet the cargo ship so we didn’t mind waiting outside.( even if we are saying we are not competing when we sail but this time…???)

The morning after is it time for us to leave and sail south. Some of you might wonder why we left when we did, special since it was after the big dinner and event that Arc had planned. The things is sailing along the east coast of South Africa is very special. You can have a good weather window for two-three days and then for a few days really bad weather with strong winds,high sea etc. Which means you might get stuck for up to a week if you are unlucky. So the weather window was right for us to leave in the morning the next day which lead to an early evening since we plan to leave around four thirty in the morning. Very early!!!

Hugs Eva