Sailing with Saphir af Stockholm – Page 2

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

Indian Ocean Reunion to Richard Bay in 9days

Just after 10 a clock on the 6 November we cross the start line and start our sailing to South Africa and Richard Bay. Me and Edgar have prepared us with scoopoderm so we don’t get seasick. This sailing can and will be really rough so we are extra happy to have Magnus onboard since he don’t get seasick and that means he will not have problem to fix food for us when we don’t feel like going down in the boat to prepare dinner. We have not a gathered start just a time when we are okay to cross the start line. This time we are defiantly the first boat over the start line and we are enjoying taking the lead for some hours before part of the fleet will overtake us

On the second day( 7 November )we hoist the Blue water runner(BWR) early in the morning and sail with it until evening when the genua had taken over during the night. Next morning we take out the BWR and by the evening it goes back in to the forward lasarett. There will not be any good winds for our BWR in the next upcoming days. We continue sailing with the genua and just a tiny part of the main sail. It is still not working properly to take it in and out of the mast even if it is better now after the temporary repair in Mauritius. We don’t dare to take it fully out and not getting it in again. That is no fun to bring it down on the deck specially in the rough sea. Done that a few times already. On the fourth day when we are close to Madagascar the bad weather appears and we start to reef the genua until it is not much left in the evening. The genua makes the boat dip a bit to much and it is not comfortable sitting, sleeping and it is even dangerous to move in the boat. One hand always on the boat. The waves have grown up to 3-4 m and they comes from different directions and of course the wind get stronger. The most we have seen is around 15m/s in the gusts. The bed in the salon is the best place to sleep but to smal to share so I tie up the canvas and make my bed safe when it rolls. It is very uncomfortable. Our stove swinged so much that I locked it which led to that all the trays flew out on the floor. A while later the baking machine,the waffle iron and coffee machine also flew away anfd landed on the floor. All three are working but have new places when we sail. With the big waves comes also a lot of water on the boat which is natural and some of this water goes down in to the hull and then we need to pump it out which was not that much. That’s the normal procedure but sometimes the water decides to take an other way and this time again it went in to the bathroom in the front and all the way in to starboard cabin where Magnus sleeps. We can’t solve the problem on the sea so the only thing is to dry up the water..

After it calm down it was so calm that the engine had to be turn on and the sails was taken in. For the rest of the route the sails goes in and out , and the engine turns on and off. We have the do current with us sometimes which is very nice. Our watch schedule works well although I ends up to start my watch 1-2 hours earlier since the captain is so tired and needs to sleep. The rain also showed up but only for a day. We do relax in different ways, Magnus reads books, Edgar do sudoku and me listen to books and knit.

Finally we are outside Richard bay. There is some traffic with ships going in and out of the marina so we have to wait for our turn. It turned out to be an hour waiting and that also made us miss our estimated arrival time that we wrote up in one of the competitions we have with the arc. How it went with that will be in the next blog about our time in Richard bay.

We have permission to go in to the harbour. Once inside we followed the motorboat through the narrow and shallow canal to our berth.

We have crossed the Indian Ocean!!! Yeees. The last leg we made it in 8 days and 2 hours. After we had moored we was greeted but the Arc and the Marina. Now we will enjoy being here and just relax before we have start the normal fixing in and outside.

Hugs Eva

Short sail to Reunion

It is a very short distance to Reunion only 130nm (same distance back and forward Nynäshamn-Visby, which we thought was long before we started sailing round the world) . The start is at 14.00 due to the fast sailors wouldn’t arrive in the middle of the night. Nice to see all sailing from the start.

It was a smooth sailing we had a lovely sunset with some of the boats sailing in to it in front of us. Now when we are three on board we can have longer sleep which is so nice. So in the morning when we arrive none if us needed a napp. First we went to fuel up. Swade is helping us with the sheets at the fuel station.

We tide up next to Mistral and have a pink champagne breakfast before we check in.

Some maintenance need to be done as the window in the cabine. Not the most convenient place to work in but Edgar manage it well. On the way to Reunion Edgar noticed that the engine had new sounds that was not supposed to be there so he finds a guy here how can fix them. It takes the engineers two turns out of the harbour to make sure that the sound is gone. It was the engine mounts that was not correct attached and we also gut all four now attached.

We went up to the crater Sainte-Rose and had a fantastic walk on part of it. The Vulcan is still active and last time was 2020. Even if I haven’t been on the moon but this is how imagen how it would look although without all the vegetation. After we went for lunch at a very different place. Didn’t look like a restaurant at all and lots of animals on the backside and some not so happy turkeys.

I also hade the benefit to go diving twice together with Karen, Madelene and Lars. It was really good although I needed some extra air since I was using mine to fast. All four dives we were down for more or less 60 minutes which I don’t think I ever done before so not strange that my air finished. Went in some caves which was fantastic, saw turtles,scorpion fish, Nemo,huge yellow moray eel and lots more.

On my next visit to this island I would definitely plan some hiking. The scenery my friends have shown me me was fantastic. Once again our bikes came out. It was a long way in to town to go food shopping and hard to get a cab. On the prize giving we got first prize to be the last boat in our group. We got a new handicap after adding an new sail which we never used and probably will not in the future either. Maybe that’s why or that several slower boats started earlier and was not part of the ”race”! Hahaha!

On our last night we went out to eat and this town is strange after 5 there is not many restaurants open but we found one where we had some tapas and house wine. Checking out the next morning and we are good to go and do the last crossing of the Indian Ocean

Hugs Eva

Mauritius

After 15 days at sea it feels so good to have land under your feet and that the rolling has stop for now. Extra happy are we that the temporary mending on the stay held. Now we look forward to get it fix here.

We spend the two first days to fix things on the boat, cleaning, washing, filter changing, oil check and make sure that Magnus our crew have a cabin to sleep in. It needed to be emptied a bit.

After the two days working on the boat we cheek in to hotel for some nights. What a treat, a huge bed that is not moving and lots of space over our head, bathtub, breakfast served, a pool to hang by. We enjoy every minute of it. We even spoil us with some massage and pedicure. And if Edgar is worried about Saphir he can just look out the window to see her. One of the evenings we have a fantastic dinner with Karen and Chris at the Japanese fusion restaurant in the hotel

Together with the hole fleet and yellow shirts we had a great day visiting the botanical garden, a suger factory and a lovely lunch with a guided tour around the Manor House

It is nice to be moored in the city center. Here you have a lot in a walking distance as the market, supermarket, shopping areas and restaurants.

Magnus arrives with sparparts which is the engine mounts, yarn and some Swedish candies. The mechanic comes and installs them but they could only change two so the other two we hope to get fixed in Reunion. The stay got fixed and the main sails furling, although not with the spare part since it was sent back to Netherlands. Some miss communication grrr. We are not happy about that. Even this time dynema is a saver. Now we can use our main sail again.

A week can feel very long and that you have plenty of time to do things but swish and it is time for next leg and sail to Reunion.

Hugs Eva

The second half crossing Indian Ocean

We continue sailing in this rolling sea. Our mending on the stay is still working. Which is a big relief. We had to tighten it once with some duck tape. So happy I have already prepared some dinners although I need to boil the pasta which is a bit scary when the stoves swings a lot.

We have some more days to pass before we are in Mauritius. I continue knitting and a day before our arrival the jumper is done. So what will I do know??? Luckily Magnus who is joining us in Mauritius will have some more yarn with him for my next projects.

The sea is getting calmer but still enough waves to get some dolphins playing around the boat.

I do have to show you some sunrises and sunsets. They do look different every time.

We can finally see the lights from Mauritius . The benefit arriving in the night you spot the island earlier than daytime if there is light on the island of course.

We cross the finish line at 01.39 on the 22of October. Now we have a few more hours motoring down to Port Louis. Early morning we drop anchor and gets a few hours sleep before we can enter the harbour.

We had a very nice welcome from the fleet when we came in. We are so happy to be here and relived that our stay hold the hole way. Now we will have a week to fix things, relax , explore the island and enjoy the company of all our sailing friends

Hugs Eva

Crossing Indian Ocean.

Tjoho we are half way after a week sailing.

The start was on the 7th October at 11.00 we left Cocos Keeling to sail 2300 NM to Mauritius. It will take us 14-16 days .

The weather prediction tells us that we will have quite rough/rolling sailing with waves up to 4m. Our scopoderm plaster is on to avoid seasickness.

The first hours we had good wind and calm sea, After passed Cocos Keeling the waves came and we started to roll. This time it was quite okay but the dipping is not fun.

Tuesday morning we hear a huge bang on the boat. What was that and where?? I saw that our stay on starboard side was leaning forward.. It was broken. This “stay” goes up to the first spreader.Out of all stays this is the less worst to break. First Edgar hoped to use our kick . That means someone “me”- has to get in to our lasarett in the cockpit. And of course it is in the box furtherest in. Sadly it was to long. Next up is dynema. Back in the lasarett in the cockpit to get the kick back in the box and also find the dynema and schakles. So with dynema, metal stick and “schackel ’ we managed to strengthen up the “stay”. And to be more safe we also put an other stick in to the loop .

Thursday was an other rainy day. With confusing wind and waves from different angel. We were not feeling comfortable to go up in deck to put out the bom out so we changed the course instead. When the sea was a bit less rolling we went up and took the bom out on starboard side and we are back on right course.

Found an other window that is leaking. Puah!!! Not as bad as the kitchen window but still making a little pool under the window….. Good that we have more of the window sealing. Hard part is to reach it since our bunk bed is filled with a sail and other things.

I am knitting and make mistakes so need to take it up a bit make it right until I see a new mistake. Hope to have the jumper done before we are in Mauritius..

Can’t get enough of sunrise and sunset

Hugs Eva

Sailing and rolling to Cocos Keeling

So finally we are of. The wind is great but the waves… they are all over and high. The sailing is good and rolling is okay and then suddenly the waves smash in to each other and we dip so we get water on the portside deck.

This time knitting is not working very well since I need to hold on with one hand. Good to have books in the ear to listen to. Our blue canopy went up to protect us from the wind and rain in our cockpit. That was a great plan since two minutes later it was raining heavily good to get some salt of the boat. Ha ha not for long since a big wave came over the boat and luckily most was stop by the canopy but some came in to the cockpit. I got a bit wet but not to bad.

I will admit that I thought after being on the sea so long I thought I had sea legs but sadly not. The first day I was fine but on the second and third I felt very tired and going in to the boat was not fun. On top of that our kitchen window started to leak a lot. After every big waves on the side we had to dry the shelf’s under the window. Something must be done to get less water in. A huge plastic bag and silver lots of silver tape helped to 80 procent but still we were getting some water on the shelf’s but not as much as before. One more thing to fix….

Almost there! After spent four nights on the sea it so nice to know that we soon will anchor. Next leg I will have my plaster on for seasickness for sure.

We are anchored at Direction island on Cocos Keeling. Here you have wave protection and bit of the wind. Home Island is where most of the inhabitants live and there is food store,hardware store, post office, pharmacy, two cafes,a museum and souvenir shop that was not open when we were there. Then there is West Island where the airport is some hotels.

First we had to check in on the island also this time easy and smooth with the police coming out to the island. Fantastic beach with lots of shelter to hangout and have BBQs

Time to look at the window. We changed the sealing and with the new sealing it was very hard to close so fingers crossed that this will be enough. The cleaning up was little more than I thought. The hole storage in the bench was also filled with water. All out and was and dry. Then the freezer got som water also so our ice cubs was very salty.

We have a few other things to fix as well. As filling hydraulic oil. Wish I had a photo of us doing this. The hydraulic tank is behind our shower. So Edgar is sitting in the shower and me on the floor in front of him holding the oil can while he is pumping in the oil with a handpump. I can tell you it was very hot. Edgar was dripping sweat on me. Ha ha ha!!

Next was taking out the madrases from the bed and fix a wire that had moved and then grease the rudder again. Doing som food preparing, baking, clothes washing, boat cleaning etc. All the things we normally do…

We went snorkelling on the rip where you jump in and just go with the current . Lots of fishes and lovely clams. Even went to a manta ray cleaning station but sadly no manta rays. The day before people had seen them there so probably only wrong timing. There was also a few reef sharks round the boat every day so have had my share of seeing fishes.

We have had great days with our fellow sailing friends. Been to home Island where we was told the history of the Island. One funny thing is that they all have different surnames. Good that it is only around five hundred people living there. We were showen how to weave baskets out of palm leaves.

We really have enjoyed the days here in Cocos Keeling at Distinction Island, with BBQ s in the evenings on the beach. The last day we had a potluck lunch where Swade and Andrew from Arc also joined. I even had a knitting lesson to learn out the basic. Let’s see how well they have done when I see them in Mauritius for the second lesson.

Me and Lorraine picking some branches to the fire.

After six days exploring Cocos Keeling it is time to leave. Won’t mind to have a day or to just relax but we have 2300 NM ahead of us to get to Mauritius. The weather conditions are so so.. wind okay but some big waves and those are the one I really don’t like. This time the scopoderm plaster is on so no seasickness I hope.

Will see if I will do any updates on the crossing otherwise I will be back in little more than 2 weeks

Hugs Eva

Christmas Island

After a hole night sleep we are ready to get checked in in Australia again. It was very quick and smooth check in. Now we have less than 48 hours to fix things before we have leave again. Next up is filling diesel and see if we can join any tours. Filling diesel can be easy and it is in generally but when you are on a buoy it is a harder. First of all you need a few jerry cans which we don’t have on our boat but luckily our friends are happy to lend us 8 jerrycans. Then you have to get to the gas station to fill them up get them back to the boat in our dinghy fill up and then one more tour and we are done…

The tour was fully booked so no tour for us but I hade some really nice snorkling in the bay. Manage to do some grocery shopping and got us Christmas Island T-shirts. In the evening we had great a bbq with the fleet that was arranged by the Arc .

Next morning it was time for us to leave. We decided to leave after lunch to reach Cocos Keeling in daylight. Great then I had time for doing one laundry.

When we are using the washing machine or the stove we turn on our generator so our batteries won’t go empty. This time the generator didn’t want to start. With help from yellow shirts we got two mechanic to have a look. The fuel pump was broken and luckily they had to spare that we bought. The new was in and the generator was on. Edgar drives the mechanic back to land and five minutes later the generator stops. Edgar tries to start it again but it dint work. Back with the mechanic and have a look. The mechanic found out that the “reducer” from 24v-12v for the fuel pump was broken. We didn’t have that part nighter did they so they decided to run the cables directly to the battery. This means we have two switches on the fuel pump and then the generator instead of just starting the generator. Since it was very late afternoon and it would take them a few hours to fix this we had stay the night.

Kaos all is out under the sofa since the batteries are there

Next morning at 7.30 the mechanics arrives and fixes the last things. I take a walk and tries to see some of thes red crabs that there is a lot of on this island. I saw one. It is not really season for them.

The generator is working , washing mashing is on and our batteries is getting charged. They were almost empty and we like to have them filled up since we are going to sail all the way. At 13.30 we leave the bouy and hoist our Genua and head out. Crossing the start line at 14.45 on the 28th September. 520 Nm to sail

Hugs Eva

On our way to Christmas Island ut

Half the fleet are gathering at the start line and all are using engine. Not really a sailing rally but what to do when there is no wind and then when it comes it is straight in our nose.

After a few hours we are getting in to a very current area. First we have it with us and then against us and then chaos. The current is all over and the sea looks like it is boiling. We are motoring which normally is a speed of 6-7 knots know we are doing 0.9-1.5. On top of that the gps on the plotter has gone bananas… Good that it is daytime and we can see land on both sides so we know where we are going. In the middle of this chaos there was some calm areas where we saw fins that we think was shark that was eating and also saw some bigger dolphins.

Well out of that chaos we hoist our mainsail and then we hear a klonk on the deck. We found some hard plastic things that are supposed to be on the top of the mast… during the day we found some more. New spare part is ordered and we will get it in Mauritius. This means that we probably can’t use our mainsail over the Indian ocean. Let’s see, we will get one crew from an other boat going up to the mast to have a look. Very happy for that. I am a bit frightened of heights. The next breaking was the hook on our little boom that holds the boom onto the mast.

This 620 Nm has continued being challenging with not much wind, current with and against and waves that are rolling the boat. This rolling ended up with water again in the kitchen. Time to fix new sealing strip around the window . The Blue water runner came up which took us an hour with all the booms and lines to realise that the wind dropped. We keept it up so we could use it an other time which we did but the waves made it hard to keep the wind in the sail.

One of the days we hade really nice current. It gave us between 1.5-2 kn extra speed. During this four days we have sailed maybe one third.

On Tuesday morning when we were sailing we saw a huge amount of dolphins coming towards us. They stayed and played around the bow for 10 minutes. They always give me a big smile.

Every morning and evening we have roll calls over the SSB where we tell each other how the night and day been. Rest of the time we take turns to sleep and have watch. Breakfast and dinner we have together lunch sometimes. I am knitting and listening to books , Edgar sits and thinks a lot or do a sudoko. This leg we have also taken a lot of showers.. it has been so hot not complaining but being on deck where there is some wind but full sun we are sweeting as soon as we work with the sails. Comparing with sailing back home in Sweden with full gear on I rather do this. We did have one rain shower for two minutes in the night. We did se it coming on the radar and avoided the worst part.

We can see land, it’s only 22 Nm left until we are in a buoy. To be on the buoy before the sun is down we turn on the engine. We pass the finish line at 18.44 Lombok time. Lots of motoring hours so we will need around 400l diesel. That will be tomorrows work tonight we are just happy to lay on a buoy and to get a hole night sleep in our own bed and not on the sofa in the salon.