Another Detour

For the better part of this year so far the plan has been to complete our circumnavigation in 2016, by crossing both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The Pacific crossing was a peaceful time of reflection with little distraction - 5 weeks of thinking, dreaming and talking at length about what we want out of life, both together and individually, as well as our immediate and long term plans.

One afternoon in the cockpit, during one of these discussions, I asked Rufus “What would you do if, when we arrive in Marquises, we get an email with our dream job offer? Would you take it?” His immediate response was “No. We are committed to completing this circumnavigation this year. Absolutely not.” I then replied “Good, because that was a test and you passed with flying colours!”

To give you a bit of background, it was more my idea to complete the circumnavigation this year and it took months of convincing to get Rufus on board (excuse the pun). As a sailor and master of your own small, older, basic vessel with limited funds it is a daunting task facing a long crossing like the one we just did and then the trans-Indian which is known as the worst, most uncomfortable, leg for 99% of circumnavigators. During the Pacific crossing this changed and Rufus finally came round and started getting really excited about my plan.

Rufus and I had made sure that we had enough in our kitty to complete the trip this year and also time each leg it so that we would be in the right places in the right seasons for the right winds to get us where we need to be.

If you know us at all you will know that there seems to always be a big difference between what we plan and what we end up doing. In the big scheme of things though, we keep going in the same general direction even though there are quite a few detours and, to be honest, we enjoy the surprise turns in the road because it keeps things interesting and we enjoy change.

So to cut a long story short, when we arrived in Marquises we opened our mail boxes to find the email we never thought we would receive at this stage of our journey: our dream job offer. And to our surprise and delight we accepted! We learned a lot from our last working experience on a super yacht and so we would not go lightly into a decision like this. Thankfully this literally ticked pretty much all our boxes for the perfect job:

-       Great owner(s) who we know, have mutual respect and get on well with. Working for and with good people is probably the biggest factor for us.

-       A boat that we can run just the two of us, no other crew dynamics to deal with.

-       An active international itinerary. 

-     A brand new build sailboat, and a design we know and love.

-       And the list goes on!

So with great excitement we accepted the new positions and within a week we had put Melody on the hard in Hiva-Oa, winterised her and booked our tickets back to SA (we wanted to see family and had to get new passports as we had run out of space for visas and literally could not travel anymore!). After a month, mostly with family and doing admin for our next adventure, we flew to Ft Lauderdale and joined our new boat at the start of July, a 2016 58ft Leopard catamaran!

kayaking on our last sailing weekend with Melody

view from the deserted little beach we anchored off

Rufus putting his gymnastic training to good use

coconut water goodness!

our FAVOURITE fruit - pamplemousse (grapefruit) which grows everywhere on the islands

driving to the farm on a winter's weekend, one of our first destinations during our SA trip

the family farm on the West Coast

view from our stoep

packing up all our personal belognings stored in our tiny farm cottage, where we fell in love and where Rufus proposed more than 8yrs ago

family dinner with Rufus' dad, Boris, and Cherie at Myoga Restaurant

our unfaltering ever supportive dream team: Shawn and Karien

coffee break in Woodstock at Tribe

reunited with our old Melody crew :) Photo credit Vivian Botha

Betty's Bay with our dear friends Sonet & Arnold

one of the views from the beautiful new home of our talented friends Evi & Jochem

Evi's outdoor artwork

Rufus and Jochem relaxing in front of the fire, overlooking Yzerfontein beach

our gorgeous room in the guest wing of the house

reunited with  our baby boy Jack for the first time since Zambia!!

delicious traditional Peruvian dishes at Charango Grill and Bar in Cape Town

my best friend Diana's BEAUTIFUL healthy baby boy, Axel. 

Vivian's article on our team's journey with Melody in the first edition of  Ambassadeur Joernaal (more info in a future post)

family farewell at the airport with Cherie

brand new MAXI passport for all the many countries we will continue to travel to!

Hamad Int Airport in Qatar

flying over the ice lakes of Southern Greenland

testing the massive new sails

finally at our destination: Ft Lauderdale, Florida and our shiny new catamaran!

Rufus and the owner enjoying the view from the flybridge on our first sea trial

Road Trip

We spend most of our time outside of South Africa but, whenever we go home, we are always blown away by it's beauty. The Western Cape is especially beautiful for me, because of the diversity of the landscape and how quickly you can get from white sandy beaches to tropical forests to fynbos covered mountains or snow capped peaks overlooking perfectly manicured vineyard valleys.

Diana, my ridiculously generous best friend, loaned me her car for our entire three month stay, no strings attached. SERIOUSLY. I cannot begin to explain what a blessing that was and I don't know how I will ever thank her. When I returned it to her just before we left, she told me that she and Anton believed it was "going to a better home" where it would be "taken care of". Haha! I almost sprayed my coffee through my nose... I hope we did just that. Thank you, lady. x

We took a few days off from building Rufus' dad's house to visit friends up the coast and these are a few shots from the car on our way up to Mossel Bay.

Anne en Francoin Trou

One of the many positives about being back in SA was the opportunity to celebrate love and life with our friends. We had originally declined wedding invitations when we thought that we wouldn't be in the country but, as soon as we returned, we were quickly welcomed back onto the various guest lists. 

The first of these celebrations was Anne and Francoin's wedding. This was a very special one for us because it was a rare occasion where we could see almost all of our nearest and dearest friends under one roof. These days it is hard to get so many good friends together, with everyone travelling or working in different provinces/countries. It was also special because although Rufus and Anne have been friends for years, the first time I met her was exactly 7 years before on our wedding day, which is the day after theirs!

We enjoyed some of the best wedding speeches we have heard in a long time, a phenomenal steak dinner, enough beautifully hand crafted deserts to send Rufus into a food coma and more laughter and dancing than we could physically handle. We camped at the venue that night and our wake up call was from Ross and Margot, who deposited their eternally happy baby girl, Anya, into our bed. It was like having a smiley baby bear to snuggle with, wearing her fuzzy bear eared onesie. We woke up with joy and laughter, no better way to start our seven year wedding anniversary!

Annie, we wish you and Francoin all the joy and laughter, love and happiness you can imagine together, and MORE! Married life really does keep getting better as the years roll by. Hard times are unavoidable but they are valuable in the sense of glueing you tighter together, strengthening your relationship and allowing you to appreciate the good times that much more. You two are truly blessed and so is your life together. Thank you for including us in your celebration and we are honoured to be part of your life and witness your journey. We love you!

Anne, the beautiful bride, and her groom, Francoin!

The happy couple, Mr & Mrs Visser!

Rufus and Claude reunited after a year

Left: mooiste Margot, one of Anne's bridesmaids.  Top: Rufus and I waiting to throw rose petals at the newlyweds.

my favourite, relaxing under the trees while the wedding photos were being snapped

Above: the evening's most eligible bachelors ;)  Right: the lovely Marelize, and Rufus

My face hurt by the end of the afternoon, from all the laughter and smiles

Linka joined our group, playing games on the lawn

table details

Annie en Francoin gave us each a pouch filled with indigenous wildflower seeds as gifts to take with us.

TTSA 2014: Part 3 - Die Plaas

We have a dream... another one. Our dream is to have a farm/piece of land one day. We discovered one particular piece of property near the area that Rufus' father's family comes from, the Sandveld. Directly translated it means "Sand Field" and that's exactly what it is - a large area of sandy ground. A lot of farming takes place in this district, mostly wheat, potatoes and livestock.

The weekend we took this trip, we went to stay on Carla's family plaas (farm) and to visit our little plaashuisie (shepherds cottage). We have an agreement with her father, Oom Karel, that we can use the house for free as long as we take care of it "en niks afbreek nie" (and not break anything down).  We didn't spend much time there as we usually do though. Instead we took day trips out to see the surrounding towns and more specifically, the piece of land Rufus had set his heart on. This was the second time we had visited the property. The first was 4 years ago, before we sold our house and bought Melody to sail the world. It took me a while to be completely convinced about this specific piece of land but, in the year that has passed since our last visit, our sights have turned to Central America to settle (at this stage in our lives).

This area still holds a special place in our hearts - it's where we fell in love and where Rufus proposed, it's where special friends and family live and it holds some of our most precious memories. We will always be drawn back there, even if we never settle in South Africa again.