Away for the Weekend

Kate arrived on Wednesday evening from Zambia and Vivian finished her last day of work on Friday afternoon, so from Monday we will all be putting hands to work on Melody to get her ready for our great departure in May...but before we change gears, we had the awesome opportunity to break away for the weekend to both sides of our coastlines. Viv and Wilhelm are away with family to the Atlantic West coast and Kate and myself went away to Kleinmond on the Indian Ocean side. This is a lovely time for us to get refreshed to hit the last push for everything to get done in time...

In January we all had a great weekend away together and here is a short vid to show what we were up to...

Ruf

First published on offtheline.co.za


Chasing the Sun

Friday afternoon couldn't have come any sooner. After waiting all week we made our way out of Harbour Island, feathered Melody into the light breeze and pulled up some canvas.  

Initially there wasn’t much wind which gave us some time to get a fire started and crack open a few cold ones. As the sun lowered behind Cape Point, the breeze suddenly started filling in from the West. Excitement all round as we shut down the motor and allowed the wind to take over.  An experience shared with friends that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

After 14 months of lying bare pole, our sailboat is finally sailing.

It’s happening!

Wil

First published on offtheline.co.za


Enjoying Our Boat Through the Graft

It's been a while since the last post, but we've been so busy...and time flies by with incredible pace. The mission at the moment is to get Melody ready to sail to Simonstown to take her out of the water. We want to replace anodes, clean her bottom and add a couple of extra seacocks, which will be quite handy. Hopefully we can make the trip in 3weeks time.

In the last week I fitted our 'braai' on the pushpit. For our international readers, 'braai' means barbeque over here in South Africa. I made some chicken on the braai on Saterday and it was wonderful having the smell of 'rooikrans' wood fill the moorings. In a very traditional South African braai setup, chicken will and can be considered a vegetable, as we are very fond of our red meat. Willhelm brought some fresh rolls and then we had lovely veggie-chicken rolls on our new cockpit benches, before commencing with our graft. Living it up.

ps: a walkthrough video of our awesome melody coming soon...

Ruf

First published on offtheline.co.za

Wet Boat, Dry Boat

There is nothing worse than a leaky boat. On my first crossing, my cabins' portlights leaked and on Will's crossing the same thing happened. This time we are making sure that we have a dry boat. The old acrylic portlight windows was cracked and not sealed properly anymore, so we ordered new polycarbonate ones from Maizeys Plastics and fitted it with the most expensive, but most proper product on the market - Sikaflex. ( ps:Thanks Jean for the half bottle of 'activater', that was quite a cost saver...)

One more thing to tick off the list...

Ruf 

First published on offtheline.co.za