Having just rounded Cape of Good Hope, we thought we would be home-free to Cape Town. The morning was warming up, the coastal fog burning off, and the sun brightened to a blue day. Had we stopped in Hout Bay, we would have made it safe and sound with nary a harsh wind to blow. (Hout Bay is a beautiful little bay around the corner from Cape Town proper where many sailors post up and stay a while. It has a fun yacht club, great scuba diving, a beautiful beach, nice hiking, and you are in the thick of local South African life.) Fortunately or unfortunately, though, we had a Christmas day schedule planned at a marina located in the heart of Cape Town, and no time to stop and play in Hout Bay.
Sonrisa's light wind, relaxed morning pace had given way to a more brisk and fun sail. White water rolled off Sonrisa's bow, gurgling as it dissipated into foam in her wake. We sailed along side Perry, just behind us, making for fantastic pictures of the shoreline we admired the view of Cape Town's famous landscape: Table Mountain in the distance.
Table Mountain is an enormous and very scenic plateau, and Cape Town is built just at its foot. It offers beautiful hiking through narrow slot canyons and incredible 360 degree scenery once you reach the plateau. Flat as a pancake, in the summer especially, it gathers heat from the sun beating down on its surface. When cool wind starts to blow over this heated surface, the cold air condenses and starts to fall down the sides of the table creating a cloud locals call the “Table Cloth”. We could see the Table Mountain Table Cloth swirling and falling off the side of the table.
“Wow, look at that, it's beautiful!" we said.
This area is also known for what locals call the Katabatic Winds. Much like California’s Santa Anas, they are fierce land breezes that form during certain weather phenomena on land. They aren't included in the overall weather forecasts because they aren't a part of the overall area weather pattern. These are winds brought on by very localized weather patterns.
“I wonder exactly what weather patterns lead to Katabatic Winds," I say to Andrew, typing my question into the googlebox just as Andrew exclaims....“Whoa!" while looking sideboard. “What the heck?"
Perry had just picked up a lot of speed and was catching up to us like a runaway train. With both of us sailing almost a direct course down wind, we each had our sails out and set on poles and preventers in opposite directions. This caused the Perrys to overtake us on a converging course not easy or fast for either one of us to change course. I poke the autopilot “off” switch and grab Sonrisa’s helm to squeeze up as far as we can, causing our sails to flog and flap violently as Perry zooms past us, its own crew scurrying about on deck to get its own sails pointed to a different angle.
ZOOM!
Perry sails on into the distance and after getting their sails under control, radios back. “Wow, sorry! The wind has really picked up!"
“Yeah!" we agree, with Sonrisa now sailing under shortened sails. “That was a quick switch!"
I return to the googlebox, now a bit suspicious of what lies ahead for our fate. “Katabatic winds result from....” exactly the conditions we have here. A nice warm sunny day on land with cool sea breezes blowing over the table. They usually kick up right about noon. I note the time on my cell pone clock being....right about noon.
“Oh, here we go,” I say to Andrew explaining our predicament.
Up ahead, Perry is a tiny dot in the distance, probably flying a hull if I had to guess! The wind builds and huffs, waves start forming from the shore, creating wind-fetch giants like we’ve never seen before. We make Sonrisa's sails even smaller. Perry radios from up ahead: “We’ve taken in all sails. We keep getting gusts from 15 knots steady up to 45 knots...” there is a pause and crackle over the radio....”OH WOW! We just saw 59 knots!"
59 Knots! We've never seen over 45 in our entire circumnavigation ever, not even during the miserable storm days in the Maldives when the cyclone passed us in the Bay of Bengal. We consider rolling in our sails, too, to avoid ripping them to shreds when the wind takes its sudden course from not much at all (15 knots) to everything all at once (59 knots). But just as we turn on Sonrisa’s engine, we can see that we are heeling over so much (tipping to the side as sailboats are meant to do) the engine intake through hull is above the waterline and sucking air instead of water like it should. The engine promptly overheats.
Andrew goes down below to fix it.
With the wind piping and gusting, the autopilot doesn't know what to do with itself so I keep the helm. I tug in all sail except the smallest reefed in corner of the little staysail jib. Then, I ride it out. Every other moment, one of these waves hitting us side on jumps up and over Sonrisa's deck and into the cockpit splashing me square in the face. It's freezing cold, just as you might expect water sucked up from the Antarctic to be. The wind absolutely howls, and the solar panels questionably secured to the dodger roof hammer and clang, yank and slam as the wind squeezes between the small gaps of space below them and pulls them up and down, forward and back.
“Are we okay?” Andrew yells up, trying to switch the engine intake through hull to a through hull lower down that we usually use for our salt water washdown pump.
"We are…. fine," I say, pausing to be splashed square on again. “We don't need the engine right now," I say. Which is strictly true, Sonrisa was sailing fine, protecting us as she always does, heeling over in the big wind but generally acting just like a sailboat should. However, at some point, we'd be turning the corner into the harbor and then we would need an operable engine. Andrew pauses to take an amusing photo of me getting splashed in the face, then carried on with his repairs until he got things in working order.
He arrives on deck to test the suction on his new through hull and make sure cooling water is again flowing to the engine. Then, we sit together in the driest corner of the cockpit keeping our hand on the helm and hoping those solar panels do not start to function as Ninja Death Stars to fly around the cockpit and decapitate us in one fail swoop.
"So close, yet so far away,” Andrew yells above the din.
Land and safe harbor is JUUUUUUUST OVER THERE...we can literally smell it. But, we have a couple hours yet to crash through chaos.
The clouds fall off the table, steep downdrafts that as we are so much closer look as ominous as they are, rather than the beautiful fairy dust they imitated a few miles back.
"This is ridiculous,” I say, marveling at the ferocity of the weather contrasted with an otherwise sunny, blue day.
Eventually, we reach the mouth of the harbor, but to our chagrin, the 40 knots continues to blow even as we enter the breakwater. We roll in Sonrisa's sail and turn on the engine to circle in a tiny space cluttered with ships of all kinds loading and unloading cargo, fetching tourists insane enough to go out in weather like this, and fishing boats stinking like fish.
Still, two draw bridges block our direct path to the slip we have reserved and waiting for us at the V&A Waterfront Marina. We circle and wait, the wind howls, our foul weather gear drips with salt water having been doused by one hundred onboarding waves. The hair peeking out from under my hood is soaked and sticking to my skin.
A photo I took of the draw bridges from inside safe harbor, on a different day.
Finally, the bridges draw up and I navigate Sonrisa through the center while eyeing the bridge suspiciously. What could go wrong here? I think, Sonrisa's mast poking strght into the air and passing the more-narrow-than-I'd-prefer gap in the bridge sections. We arrive at the marina to slide into our slip across from Perry who beat us there, just to the left of Steel Sapphire, and squeezed between a throng of fellow sailors waiting on the docks to catch our lines. We get Sonrisa situated and look out at the waiting faces of our sailing compatriots: smiling, bone dry, some even wearing makeup, all wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flipflops.
I look down at my foul weather gear and around at the strangest harbor, flat calm and totally protected from the chaos that is boiling literally just a few yards outside those draw bridges. “I’m feeling a bit overdressed!" I say, and we all laugh. The Perrys had already filled everyone in on the weather that welcomed us to shore. 59 knots! We high-five the whole Perry Crew and laugh about the Perry Buzz-By. Mark and Susan on Erie Spirit avoided the whole fiasco, having powered through the night we sailed lazily through, making it to their slip just across the way early in the morning, before the Katabatic winds kicked up. The wisdom of their use of diesel fuel seemed well confirmed.
Pete and Jen gave us welcome-to-Cape Town hugs and cooked us dinner while we tidied Sonrisa up, had hot showers, and changed into land-people clothes. A glass of white wine, paired with fish and couscous and Jen's delicious yogurt sauce. It was a heavenly meal to set us right for our first sleep in Cape Town.
“You're going to love it here." They say.
The Safe Harbor of the V&A Waterfront Marina, Table Mountain in the background.