To the Cape of Good Hope, Day 48
Only once in the past week has the actual wind not matched the forecast. They promised 20 knots last night; 30 came galloping in and frolicked until morning. We jumped up for an all-hands call to take down the mainsail. I won’t put on a hat, I thought. And then, out on deck, I realised that now the hat isn’t for warmth but to keep my head from getting soaked in salt water. So much for my hair, freshly washed the day before. From now on, I’ll wear a hat for deck work again.
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It seems warm already, but crack open a hatch somewhere and it’s cold. The sun is baking, but the air is brisk; most of us still spend our days in sweaters. Our floating reading room is running without interruption. In a month, Nastya has devoured all four volumes of War and Peace, History of Biology, Singlehanded Sailing, and half of the COLREGs. Our young sailor is reading the eighth volume about Irka Khortytsia, the super-witch—stories about the lives of wizards on the banks of the Dnieper. She has become an expert on traditional Slavic fortune-telling, love spells and unbinding spells, and has learned Ukrainian. Now she calls me, “Klychu mamu!”
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I immediately remembered my grandmother and her, “Marinok, sho ty robysh?”
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I’m doing maths with our young sailor, and we’re learning Russian grammar rules. And the other day Lada prepared a report on types of volcanoes. We were delighted to discover that she has a systematic mind: she drew diagrams on the whiteboard in marker, made an outline—the whole works. Maybe she really will grow up to be some kind of “ologist.” That’s how she puts it: “I want to be some kind of ologist—a biologist, archaeologist or oceanologist, for example. Mum, what’s an anthropologist again? I’ve forgotten.”
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Meanwhile, Nastya is thinking of attending a sailing school in Cape Town and getting her skipper’s licence. Then we’ll have two skippers aboard, and where will that leave me, the lone first mate, with the pair of them?
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Mindful of last night’s increase in wind, the captain conservatively left only a tiny scrap of genoa up overnight, and we crawled along at 2–3 knots. I’ve shaken out the reefs and am sitting here drinking tea while everyone sleeps. Mornings are my personal time. No lessons to deal with, no teas and plates, no scrubbing the walls. I can just write and read. The sea is relatively calm, but with the wind almost dead astern, for some reason the waves keep thumping into our beam. Yesterday morning it was thoroughly unpleasant: the yacht lurched along, scooping up the sea first over the starboard side and then over the port. Through the wheelhouse window you can see either water or sky; the amplitude of the rolling seems simply dizzying. Everything goes flying; whoever is on galley duty either cuts or burns themselves. Life is duller in seas like these, because the range of things you can do shrinks to the bare minimum, and anything beyond that is pure acrobatics.
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Today is Tuesday, and we need to arrive in Cape Town on Monday. We’ll have to slow down by at least a day. We’re already slowing down. When you’ve been dreaming of land so desperately after a month and a half, that prospect is slightly demoralising. And when the captain tells you the prices for a berth in the marina there, you immediately want to anchor out or set off on another long-distance passage for a couple of months. That’s how high the prices are. So we’ll spend no more than a few days in central Cape Town, then move to a marina about 50 miles to the north. Of course, they have prices there too. But they don’t bite quite so hard. Anchoring isn’t an option for now; some of the repairs have to be done ashore. We need to replace all the rigging—we are, after all, sailing with one broken shroud. A second has started to part as well. The captain will tell you all about the repairs in a separate post later. And I’m off to put the kettle on. It’s time, my friend, it’s time—we haven’t eaten in ages. There are still mountains of biscuits and chocolate tucked away in the lockers; we must save them from going unwanted and let them fulfil their purpose too. Wishing everyone delicious tea and heart-to-heart conversations! Thank you for being there for us.
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We thank our shore team for the letters and for boosting the crew’s morale through Paypal.Me/TravelyFamily and Yasobe.ru/na/TravelyFamily! A huge thank-you from all five hearts aboard: the captain’s, mine, Nastya’s, little Lada’s and Lady Mary’s!
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Sent via satellite. You can follow the progress of the First Russian Round-the-World Expedition, Three Great Capes with Children, on our website under the Route tab, where the IRIDIUM track is displayed. The same map with the track and weather is available at bit.ly/iridium360