Nearly there!

We have motored steadily under completely clear skies for 24 hours, with a wind too light to be useful, and a long high swell rolling in from the old storms in the south raising us high and then taking us down into deep valleys. Our companion yacht, Cesarina, is about 12 miles north of us and we chat occasionally with Dietmar on the VHF. Then last night the wind picked up from the north as predicted, and we are now roaring along on a broad reach at 7.5 knots expecting to arrive in Richard's Bay at noon tomorrow, on Monday 20th November 2017.

Looking at the weather forecasts for the coming week I can see that I will have to spend a couple of days in Richard's Bay before grabbing a weather window for the 90 miles to Durban. Here we will have to wait 4 days for the next weather window, which I hope will be long enough to get to East London or Port Elizabeth. After that it's going to be the same pattern I suspect, hiding in port until the southerly gale blows through, nipping out behind it to push on to whatever shelter we can find along the coast before the next depression comes through a day or so later. It's the most difficult and stressful section of our voyage, and I will be exceedingly glad to get safely to Cape Town!

Our distressing current leakage has stopped, and the terrifying flicker of red lights on the current detector, checked and logged every hour, have suddenly gone a reassuring green. I have been unable to work out what is causing this yet, but must do so, somehow, once in port. Visions of the hull fizzing and dissolving inhabit my uneasy dreams at night.

Since leaving Madagascar I have been ardently reading books about South Africa before we arrive, starting with James Michener's "The Covenant" which shows how the original Dutch settlers, devout Calvinists, interpreted the Old Testament as a direct message from God that South Africa was the promised land and that they were the chosen ones, the new Israelites. The awful conflicts with England in the Boer War and with the Zulus and others on whose lands they encroached are vividly populated by several well drawn families. What is new to me is how the intense hatred of the English by the Afrikaner has been held close and fostered and grown from generation to generation, founded on the intense belief that they are God's chosen race. That each town has monuments to battles by perhaps thirty brave locals in the Anglo-Boer war and that the great injustices were constantly referred to by the Church kept alive that resentment. Somewhere along the way interpretations of the Old Testament were used to justify the, ever more repressive, separation of races until the full horror of apartheid was instituted. It's at this point that Michener ends, before the great hopeful era of Mandela arose, and so it is to him I have turned next, reading avidly through his "Long Walk to Freedom". 

I find it very humbling to discover how little I know of these times and struggles, and rather urgently need to revisit my first attempt at a novel set in South Africa, "Black Sugar", for criticism of which I already owe much to a true South African, Robert McAdie, and to Rebecca (not enough sex!) However ten potential publishers didn't want it, so if I want to get the story to work I must obviously do several rewrites..........or did they just miss one of the great novels of our time??! Anyway next on my reading list is "Cry, The Beloved Country", and I need to revisit JM Coetzee, read long ago.

Now the real South Africa awaits us!