It's all about the People

Our dinner guests have just left.

We had the Bagshaws down for dinner. Like a final get-together for the two families.

And Jeremy and I had a look at the weather. A light wind start. Great! That will ease me into the trip without getting seasick. But its gonna make for a tricky first night of racing. If we can do it right on Wednesday night and early Thursday, I believe one can do a big getta way on the rest. Time will tell. But I think if you mess up, you are going to be stuck in some light winds for a day while the others get off to a flying start.

It has been a peacefull few days leading up to the start. It gave me time to reflect on how we got here and why do we sail. There are lots of reasons. You can write a book on it.

But one think is for sure...............It's all about the people.

So many people out there make this wonderfull game of sailing.

Like Mike Jones.

Mike is from Falmouth in England. He has stopped in Simonstown with his family, on their way to their new home in Freemantle Australia. Their boat is a sailor's dream boat. A steel sloop by Van de Stadt, 48 foot long, and fitted out for serious ocean sailing. A chatty fellow, I met him on our arrival at False Bay Yacht Club.

Yesterday afternoon Mike comes over to the Banjo. Says he is bringing me a present. Out comes a so-called series drogue. A piece of heavy weather equipment which is towed from astern in very heavy weather. Your life can be saved by that piece of equipment.

And Mike made it up for us as a gift. A piece of safety equipment. Hopefully we will never need it, but if we do, we will think of Mike Jones from the yacht AMOK.

Thanks Mike!

It's bed time now.

Hopefully Tanya will post something here while we are at sea.

Please follow our progress on www.thegovernorscup.co.za

We had tracking devises fitted today so our tracks will be on the race website.

Thanks for all the calls over the last few days.

Andre de Jager,

William Brooks who called and offered a lot of help.

Oom Ampie,

Kerri Smith,

Con Meyer,

My Mom,

Jana,

Hannes,

the Pennypinchers guys who are comming out to the start.

And, and and...............

Saturday in Simonstown

Saturday in Simonstown.

Start day is Wednesday, 5 days away.

This morning there was a little parade up the main street of Simonstown for all the race entries.

Rather nostalgic for me was that we started the proceedings at SAS Simonsberg which is where I was based when I did my national service in the Navy, way back in 1975/1976.

Anyway, Banjo was posted to walk right at the back. But just in front of two guys playing bagpipes. They, in turn were followed by a single bergie who just joined in and who was playing a pennywhistle. The folk at the front were lucky, they had some Capies playing jive music.

At the village square we had a ceremony and the "mixing of the waters". The Banjo poured it's St Francis Bay water into the inverted ship's bell with the waters of the other boats' home ports.

We were also handed our "permission to sail" certificates. The "ba" of Banjo put us first on the list. I felt so relieved. All the work, the expense, the dreams.......................

Afterwards we took Chris Lee, the Commodore of False Bay Y.C. for a sail. It was his first outing on a trimaran. He liked it very much. We also tried out the spinnaker which Andrew McKenzie is lending us. It worked beautifully. I think that's gonna be our working kite.

The weather is looking good for Wednesday.

A little bit Windy.

The South Easter has been blowing here. Non-stop since the weekend.

So what?

It's been blowing about 45 to 50 knots. That's what!
I took this picture earlier today. That is a waterfall behind Simonstown and the wind is driving the water UPWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the folk down here tells me it's gonna blow like that on start day too.



That means we are having it on the nose for the 18 mile beat out of Simonstown to Cape Point. Not the best way for me to start an ocean passage. Not with my leaning towards mal de mer, that's for shure.




The talk at the Club is all about the gales and how to get out of here if it blows on Wednesday. Jeremy and I have talked it through. Our strategy is going to be to just nurse the Banjo to Cape Point and to get out of False Bay in one piece. Double reefed and storm jib. Not to worry about what the others are doing. We will start racing once we have rounded the Point and we are aiming for St Helena.




But deep down I believe it's going to be nice weather on start day.




I had earlier spent the day fiddling around with the two solar panels and fitting some plastic bushes to their mountings. Just to make it smoother to adjust their orientation to the sun.




Late this afternoon Jeremy brought our 50 litres of bottled water. We stowed most of it in the lockers under the saloon bunks. The rest will go behind the backrests of the bunks and under the cockpit floor.




On Monday we will purchase our food and get that stashed away too. I have never been so ready to set sail.

Pennypinchers

Pennypinchers.........................it envelopes our lives.

I just can't get rid of them. Well the mannetjie is going to St Helena too. Pennypinchers (thanks Theodore and Johan) has given us a few Bucks. Not much, but is all helps.

We have spent it on a video cam to shoot footage for the guys making a movie on the Race (Supersport Feb next year). Also on some branded Banjo clothes and the rest was used to buy airtime for the Satphone. Now THAT was expensive! We had to buy a minimum amount.......a lot more than we need. We only needed enough to put a daily call through to report our position, but was forced to buy a lot more.

So I am now making arrangements to put a call through to Eben Human at Die Burger to give him a daily update.

Jeremy reckons we can exchange the rest of the airtime at St Helena for beers and meals. I.e. we go to a pub, ask another competitor if he would like to phone home and if yes, he can buy us a beer or a meal in exchange for using our phone.

I think it is a brilliant idea. The more they talk, the more we can eat and drink.

7 Days to Go!

It is now just 7 days to go.

Hard to imagine that it was way back in March that I took the bold (for me!) step and entered the Banjo in the race. And now the start date is here. It's seven days to go.

We are all but done. We had the race safety inspection done yesterday morning and I am pleased to say that we passed without any problems.

What remains to be done now is to put the water and provisions onboard. That we will do Monday when Tanya arrives.

We must still do the radio checks with the race organisers and clear customs. That's it.

All the late nights and hard work over the last 9 months have paid dividents. And that is how I had wanted it to be. I wanted the Banjo to arrive at the start running, ready to go.

Thanks to all those who had helped us so far.

Tanya, my sailing life manager, Patrick our butler who helped me launch boats and step masts, the Pennypinchers staff in Humansdorp for their support, Graham for the spinnaker and liferaft, the Bagshaws here in Simonstown, the False Bay Club folk, Andrew McKenzie for lending us some more spinnakers. I can carry on...................

But we have won the race to the start line.

The Gov Cup is going to be the easy bit!

The Banjo Makes It

The Banjo Makes It.





The old sea dog "Just Nuisance", the Banjo, the Navy Dockyard, ships. We're in Simonstown!





The Banjo had left St Francis Bay on Sunday morning for a brisk, wet, bumpy, FAST sail down the coats to Simonstown. Yours truly suffered from a bit of mal de mer and that left Jeremy to do a bit of singlehanded sailing. I did make a good autopilot though. I just shut my mouth and steered. Jerry made the sail changes and the meals.
Well done Jeremy!





The trip proved the Banjo to be all sound and capable of the long trek to St Helena. And it showed the boat to be fast.

The distance from St Francis to Simonstown is 350 miles and we did it at an average of 8.5 knots. That's good going for a little 9.5 meter boat and makes me feel buoyant about our chances in the race.
Weather wise we had a mixed bag of following winds, ranging from light to fresh, to very strong at the end as we ran up False Bay in the pitch black of Tuesday morning. On Monday night Anita had phoned to warn of 45 kt breeze in False Bay and we changed down to storm jib for the final run to Simonstown.





All in all a good passage. We set a new top speed for the Banjo, 20 kts. The boat performed well in the following seas and showed no tendency to put the bows under...........very important, no leaks, but VERY wet on deck wen the speed was up.





We are ready for scrutineering. We need to provision, get water onboard, fetch as sail from the sailmakers and buy a chart of the South Atlantic.





I believe that we have won the race to the Start Line.




Thanks to all who have helped us get here.

Two Up

With Jeremy and Anita in Buenos Aires, en route to Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.

I first met Jeremy, my co skipper, navigator and weather router (one person) way back in the early 1980's at what was then the University of Port Elizabeth. At the Law faculty! Yep, the Law faculty. We both studied law. With various degrees of success.

Luckily for the legal profession, neither of us became attorneys, although that is what I was aiming for at the time. Or magistrates like my late dad. Or took on some other stuffy legal tipe job.

We both raced a few seasons with the Port Elizabeth legend, Rod van der Weele on his boat Wings. And then raced the 1985 South Atlantic Race, Cape Town to Punta Del Este in Uruguay with Rod and Arthur Clayton. It was an epic ocean race and Wings was right up there with the leaders most of the way. The press referred to us as "the joker in the pack" because we were really rattling the big boys.

Afterwards the two of us and one other chap sailed Wings back across the South Atlantic to Port Elizabeth for her owners.

In 2007 we travelled to Tiera del Fuego to join Skip Novak's Pelagic Australis for a cruise down the Patagonian channels to Cape Horn.

And now we are going to give it a go and see if we can be first boat in at St Helena.

Time to Go

"All my bags are packed I'm ready to go", sang who? I think it was a band called Peter, Paul and Mary.





I'm packed. All the extra gear are in plastic bins, ready to go onboard this weekend. The two ships batteries are waiting for collection in Humansdorp. I have to drop off some forms at the bank to get the boat cleared for foreign exchange regulations, the second fuel tank needs topping up.





The weather forecast for Sunday, Monday and the rest of next week looks good. Easterlies all the way to Cape Point. Jeremy and Anita are on their way to St Francis and should be here Saturday morning.





I had lunch with my Mom at her home in Jeffrey's Bay this afternoon. Thanks Mom! And she gave me our fruitcake for the voyage. And the pre-cooked meals for the sail to Simonstown. Like she used to do 25 years (plus) ago when I sailed up and down the coast more often than I can remember.





It is Time to Go.

Like I said right at the beginning, the most difficult ocean race to win, is the race to the start line.

Far from the Sea

Only in Africa.........




En route to the Cockscomb some years ago.
A dusty road in the Karoo. The Mountain . Dusty children. Not a soul in sight.

Mr B.

Mr B, Benna, or just Ben.

Last week I had to make a call to our medical aid provider. We needed to provide proof of medical insurance in order to travel to St Helena. The family needed the cover for the ship, and I needed the cover to race.

A very capable Discovery staff member took my call.

"so Mr Loots, who are all travelling? Is your wife Tanya going?"

"Yes, My wife is going, so is Francis Kendle Loots (Rosie), and James Kenneth"

"What about Ben? Is Ben not going" She asks. She was obviously checking the beneficiaries list on the other side.

"No, I'm afraid Ben is not going with", I respond.

"Why is Ben not going?", she asks.

"Why is Ben not going?"

The short answer is because Ben, our eldest child is a severely mentally handicapped boy. Travelling over such a distance and time with Ben would be very difficult and trying for all involved, not least for Ben.

Ben entered this world 15 years ago. He arrived 3 months premature following an emergency op because his mom's life was being threatened by the continuing pregnancy. At birth Ben weighed in at a mere 710 gram. The pediatrician gave Ben a 50% chance to survive the first night. History will tell us the Ben did survive.

But somehow, all was not to be with Ben's development. But for us, Ben is Ben. While still at the ICU where he spent the first three months of his life, the sisters started to call him Mr B.

That name stuck. Later, his late grampa Ben's friends called him Ou Benna.

Whatever we call him, Ben is our special boy. Everybody loves Ben. And Ben loves everybody.

Ben especially loves blonds with nice big boobs and lots of cleavage. I get quite envious when I see him make a beeline for some blond woman and he just buries his head right in there and it's all smiles. Big grin on his face.

Ben will not be going to St Helena with Tanya and Jamie and Rosie (Francis Kendle on her passport).