Hello from the Caribbean!

We were leaving Cape Town. After a day of departure paperwork involving only five visits to officials in distant corners of the city, we were permitted to depart. The weather forecast looked excellent as we sailed out in a benign Cape Doctor zephyr; just 38 knots on the anemometer—calm compared with the usual 50 or 60. The weather was slow to warm with the frigid north-flowing Benguela current keeping pace beneath us. Ten days out of Cape Town, the first flying fish began to crash into the cabin and we shed our jackets. As we crossed the Prime Meridian, the wind settled to ten knots from the ESE, where it stayed for the next four weeks. Feeling strong, we blew by Saint Helena, a spire of volcanic stone in the middle of the South Atlantic made famous as the place of Napoleon's exile in the late 1800's.

black triggerfish on Ascension

Four weeks out of Cape Town, Ascension Island appeard on the horizon. Despite the lofty name, the island is more of the desolate-pile-of-rubble variety. A small USAF base maintains an airstrip for refueling fighter jets on trans-Atlantic missions and serves double-duty as emergency landing for troubled commercial airliners. The millitary also runs a desailinization plant to generate fresh water for the soldiers, which we had hopes of sharing. After nearly a month at sea, we had used 27 gallons of water, exactly half our supply. Even so, before leaving Cape Town, we'd contacted the authorities on the island asking permission to stop for 30 gallons of fresh water. We submitted our information for the required background checks and were eventually given the green light. We would be allowed up to three days on the island but only between 8 am and 9 pm each day.

We anchored in the dubious protection of the tiny island, next to a floating pipeline for transfering jet fuel ashore. Big eight foot swells rose under the boat and crashed onto the jagged lava coast. Orca rolled mightily. We'd only been settled for a few minutes when we discovered that A.I has, essentially, a one-species ecosystem. The situation is natural and was recorded in journals by square-riggers hundreds of years ago. Regardless, Orca was quickly, entirely, surrounded by a sea of six-to-eight inch triggerfish—only the black variety. We launched the dingy and began the long trek ashore. Rowing through the triggerfish was like rowing through watery soup.

Not sure what would happen if you got tangled up in this big guy...

A beach landing was obviously out of the question; the shorebreak was a raging caldron of sandy spume. The only jetty on the island was a twenty-five foot high brick of concrete poured onto a shelf of black lava. We left the dingy on a string of dilapidated local skiffs tied like Christmas lights to a line anchored about 30-feet off the jetty. After swimming to the pier, a timely surge allows a desperate grab at a knotted rope hanging down the concrete face and slippery climb to a staircase. Once ashore, we were confronted not with the high-security military situation we expected, but with a cadre of dock-workers lounging in the shade of a gutted bunker drinking beer at 10 am on a Monday morning. They offered us a beer but we declined, conserving our wits for a possible millitiary interrogation. We reported our presence to the local authorites—a cherub faced officer who was delighted to see fresh faces and sincerely apologetic about the port, immigration, light, and water fees we were going to have to pay for even our short stop. He was a fount of island information and was so excited that it was impossible to be angry.

black triggerfish following the dingy

We followed his advice and watched the sunset from the beach that evening. As the sun flashed green at the horizon, a dozen giant green sea turtles began to climb laboriously from the ocean. Keeping very still, we let the 550 lb behemoths climb around us to dig their egg holes. They left tracks in the sand like 8-foot wide tractor tires and, stumbling back in the dark, Kara nearly dissapeard into a nest hole. The next morining began early with a startling banging on the hull. I thought perhaps we'd come adrift and Orca was on the lava but investigation revealed 1,200 pounds of oblivious mating sea turtle, their shells bumping the hull. The turtles were friendly and curious, hovering around the boat most of the day. They added a new thrill to snorkeling; they preferred to inspect swimmers at about a six inch distance. We would have prefered ten feet or more.

As we left Ascension Island, I did some mental math; I just couldn't help myself. All told, we had payed almost $3-a-gallon for fresh water. Kara reminded me that, during the next 3,200 miles of sailing into the remotest parts of the Atlantic's watery desert, we might find ourselves willing to pay many times that. We decided to cut Kara's luxurious hair off to save water on the this long passage; we estimated we could save up to 250ml per shower this way.

smooth sailing in the South Atlantic

We quickly picked up the 10-knot SE trades again, and ticked off the next thousand miles to the equator. 900 miles west of Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, we left Africa's newest pirate problems well to starboard. In the center of nowhere, flashing schools of mahi mahi rode the bow wave for hundreds of miles, catching the flying fish Orca spooked. We dried salted tuna strips from the rigging. Eventually, all of our fishing lures were destroyed, the hooks all straightened, the plastics and wood all mangled, the reels all spooled. A blue marlin the size of a canoe followed us for hours. We sailed through zooplankton blooms that tinted the ocean a cloudy salmon color. Neon pink man-of-war jellyfish the size of corn tortillas drifted past. Pilot whales and vast dolphin schools visited; sea life was unabashedly vibrant.

Then we reached the doldrums, the area just north of the equator where the north and south Atlantic trade winds collide and spiral vertically in an area of dark, brooding, sweltering and windless weather with towering castles and battlements of purple cumulonimbus, thunder, lightening, and rain. Torrential, biblical rain. We were battered by enough marble-sized raindrops to fill the tanks every minute. An innocuous fold in the mainsail instantly filled with 20 gallons. The scuppers were overrun, Kara panicked—she couldn't breath on deck. The surface of the ocean seemed to be reaching up to the clouds. Lightening flashed so bright it didn't matter if our eyes were open or closed—we only saw red.

In a way, the heavy rain helped us through. The friction of big raindrops through the atmosphere causes cold downdrafts below each thunderhead. When these hit the ocean's surface, they spread out as weak breezes which we used to pick our way through the doldrums. After only a single night of light air, we ghosted into the north Atlantic trades and blasted off towards the Caribbean, closing the Brazillian coast as we put six consecutive 145 mile days in the bank. Even so, it took us over a day to pass the 175-mile wide mouth of the Amazon river.

exiting the doldrums

Twenty-seven days out of Ascension island, we anchored behind St Lucia in the Caribbean. We had two Cape Town onions, an orange, and an African pumpkin remaining. The water tanks, thanks to the rainy doldrums, were full. The bow and stern, where our sailing wake rode up the hull above the antifoul, were crusted with three-inch gooseneck barnacles, but a few coats of varnish, and some elbow grease should put Orca back in top form.

Hello from Cape Town!

With the boat safely parked in Zululand, we set out to explore the bush. Well—not really. The surrounding landscape is a rolling, green and lush, and completley tame. Every square inch is covered in eucalyptus timber farms, cow paddocks, and villages—but we were heading for the famous Hluhluwe and uMflozi game reserves. These reserves, along with Kruger, are Zululand's main tourist attractions; essentually large areas partolled by anti-poaching squads where the natural ecosystem is allowed to function free of human influence. The rangers don't give non-poaching visitors much thought—a small sign at the entrance depicts an elephant overturning a car, but this warning leaves you totally unprepared for the reality of the self-service, self-drive, unfenced, and unsupervised park.

As we rumbled over ten feet of electrical fencing laid across the road—to keep the lions from raiding livestock outside the park—a marvelous transformation took place. Instead of a biological landscape entirely composed of cattle and people, we found ourselves in an area of incredible density and diversity. In the first kilometer we saw a flock of playful yellow weaver birds, a herd of nervous impalas, a troupe of mischevious baboons, a hungry warthog, two grumpy white rhinos, a herd of watchful buffalo, and an arrogant elephant. Life was really happening here and the environment man had created for himself outside the park suddenly seemed sterile, depleted, and monochromatic.

The limited size of the game reserve can support only a handful of apex predators—the lions. We didn't spot any in the big park, so we decided to cheat a little. A lion breeding program nearby keeps a dozen lions in a smaller paddock, enclosed by what seems like a ludicrisly high electrified fence. The ranch makes limited money selling cubs to zoos, so, to suppliment the beer fund, the rangers let tourists drive into the lion cage. Again, a small sign warned "No soft-top vehicles. Close all windows, lock all doors. Keep moving." The implication that the lions might rip the top off the car, or that they knew how to open unlocked doors to reach the tasty morsels within, was not lost on us. Once inside, the restive lions came to investigate the car and we realized the 30-foot high electric fence and warning signs were not ridiculious at all. Their paws were the size of dinner plates and they could go from a lazy sprawl to a light-footed 30 mile-an-hour lope instantly.
After two days in the game parks, we drove back to the boat. South Africa is the only place we've been where one can watch hundreds of white people drive Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, and Maseratiis past millions of black people living in self-built mud huts. After we sailed from Richard's Bay, we entered a stretch of coast torn by poverty and racism. The only 'white-safe' places to stop were the yacht clubs, the last bastions of apartheid. The first club we stopped at huddled behind fencing installed by their friendly neighbors—a Mercedes Benz factory—and the last club had three sequential security gates with 24 hour gaurds walking the dock. The occasional white-affluent neighborhoods are embroiled in a have-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses arms race of towering walls, rows of barbed wire, coils of razor wire, electric fencing, steel spikes, cameras, and motion sensors. The safest neighborhoods are protected by a communal system of 20-foot electrified steel fences, high-tech motion detectors, and special-forces army vetrans. "Its so safe, kids can even play on the street here," one South African boasted to us. The fact is, the tiny white minority feels like it's in hostile territory and with the huge economic disparity, the advent of democratic elections, and their past abuses of the native Africans, they probably are. South Africa is a raw place, but its not all bad. With the new black government still finding its footing among the huge socioeconomic and racial issues, there hasn't been time for the lawmakers and court systems to litligiously excise the ideas of common sense and personal responsibility. Its only in a country like S.A. that one is allowed to drive their Avis rental into a lion cage.

We arrived in Simon's Town for Chirstmas. This little port huddles in a tide pool just twelve miles from the Cape of Good Hope in some of the most consistently blustery condions we've seen. The docks, which drift around alarmingly, are losely chained to granite bolders which seem able to hold the hundreds of sailboats in the consistent 45 knot winds. Miraculously, it was calm on Christmas morning. Santa brought a big sack of dried raw antelope meat--billtong—and an anti-baboon slingshot, which you definitely need. There are bands of maurauding monkeys living in caves on the cliffs behind town. Originally, they only harassed hikers and picknickers, but recently they've started breaking into the mansions to raid for candy bars. In response, homeowners hired guards with paintball guns to patroll the streets and drive the monkeys back into the hills. The smart—and now very angry—baboons now retaliate by throwing rocks, and the resulting pitched battles are a common hazard along the hiking trails.

Kara, of course, was dead set to go for her family's traditional Christmas hike—which was why she'd sprung for the slingshot. We set off, up a trail into the towering cliffs above town and soon wandered deep into a box canyon terminated by a waterfall. It was a lovely spot, with not a baboon in sight. We were feeling pretty comfortable after an undisturbed hour when the snap of a twig echoed down the cliffs. Kara's head snapped upward, quickly followed by her drawn weapon. A half-dozen surprisingly large baboons were creeping down the cliffs around us. It was a coordinated ambush, designed to drive us from our picnic. The chief monkey's yellow eyes flashed agressivly and he let out a powerful rumbling bellow, displaying yellowed fangs. Kara loosed her rock and tossed the slingshot to me, asking for covering fire while she gathered our things. The baboons returned fire and we beat a hasty retreat under a withering hail of rocks, with the monkeys following along the canyon's rim just out of slingshot range. Our cowardly run back to the the boat was only slightly delayed by a five-foot cobra crossing our path, at which point we briefly considered a retreat back to the baboons. Safely back at the boat, we decided to put the traditional hike on hold until next year.

Orca is sitting low in the water. We're looking at 55 days to the Caribbean, with little or no opportunity to ressuply en-route. Among other things, 60 cans of tomatoes, 50 packages of noodles, 12 bottles of rum, 10 pounds of cheese, 30 pounds of potatoes, and 60 gallons of water will sustain us over the next 5,500 miles of sailing. Leaving now, we expect to arrive sometime in March.