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.