Bound for the Cape

After a very pleasant stay in La Reunion, a French Island east of Madagascar in this South Indian Ocean, the Picton Castle and her adventurous crew are back at sea. After days and days of sunny dry weather, we had a few days of rain and squalls while in port, these being the trailings of a long gone cyclone. The crew made many expeditions into the remote mountains and up to the volcano, then it was time for last minute shopping for coffee, baguettes, fruit and potatoes, and rushing about before setting off for the passage.

We made jaunts ashore to our favorite shore spots, even the simple trailer cafe a short walk from the ship called The Blue Marlin, so frequented by our gang that soon we were given local prices. The cold drinks, salads and sandwiches were as delightful there as anywhere, so why go futher? Tammy and Annie found all sorts of beautiful baskets and crafts for our chandlery ashore as well as for our ship’s boutique on this coming summer’s voyage to the Great Lakes where we are joining other tall ships in a Tall Ships Challenge tour from June through August.

But it was surely time to go. Pilot aboard, engine rumbling, Tammy steered the ship confidently out of the narrow basin into the next small basin to the fuel dock where we turned the ship around and backed into a corner to take on eight tons of diesel fuel. About 1100 the pilot returned to ship and off we were into a gray and hot lumpy sea with little wind. This morning we shut down the main engine and set all sail as the wind picked up. Winds look fair for the next few days as far as we can see into the future with our weather forcasting.

We sailed from Reunion yesterday and now we have a fresh wind on the port beam and some pretty large seas. Must be a storm way down south, far away to make these three to five-meter seas. We are bound for the Cape of Good Hope. This is a passage of about 2,000 miles. We sail about 600 miles from Reunion to pass under the southern tip of Madagascar. Then it’s about another 800 miles to the coast of South Africa in the vicinity of Durban. We close with the coast there to catch the Agulhas Current, the east African analogue to the Gulf Stream which passes by swiftly near the coast. Like the Gulf Stream which is the outlet for all that hot water piled up in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico from easterly Atlantic tradewinds and shoots it away from the low latitudes, so the Agulhas is the outlet for the hot Indian Ocean water piled up on Africa from an ocean full of easterly trade winds. All this water has to go somewhere. So it gathers and makes a strong current along the coast and heads south at 2-4 knots right along the wall of the continental shelf and the 100-fathom curve. Right nearby Durban I expect to hook onto this current for a boost in speed.

Some time tomorrow the Picton Castle will cross the Tropic of Capricorn at 23 degrees, 26 minutes South and pass out of the tropics for the first time since last May. We will not really notice this but weather will be increasingly prone to changing in ways we have not seen for a long time. Going around southern Africa we will sail as far south as maybe 36 degrees south latitude, much the equivalent of Cape Hatteras in the northern hemisphere. But the Cape of Good Hope stands out into what was once called in the age of sail the “Great Southern Ocean”, the bottom of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans all around Antarctica, an area that has no land blocking the winds all around the southern world thus providing an unhindered path for wind and storms. It could get rough. But then that is why we make every effort to sail around here in the summertime when storms are least frequent around the Cape. And why we prepare and put extra lashings everywhere.

From southern Madagascar to Durban is about 800 miles followed by another 800 miles around the corner to Cape Town, Tavern Of The Seas.