Sunday 7th June 2015
9pm 34°55'S, 20°58'E
Well we are well and truly back out here again, I'm on watch and have been for a few hours, there is a ship just passing us, on our port side, and about 6 more on the AIS, yeap it sure will be an interesting watch.
We made it through the heads at Knysna at around 4.45pm yesterday, man was it scary, it was still touch and go to wether we would get out or not, and it really was a case of getting up close to the heads and making the call once we had seen it, we did have a backup plan, and if it was too bad we would have just turned around and gone back a little way and anchored for the night and tried again in the morning.
There is a track that you follow out on the chart plotter as you have cliffs on both sides and one side is quite shallow with a lot of washed rocks.
So we get up close and decided its a go, there are waves crashing on both sides, but if we went a little bit off the track we would have no breaking waves, just big waves and man were they big.
The Captain ups the reves and off we go, oh man it was horrible, massive waves, and not just little massive, these guys were huge momma's, I was so scared, and crying a little. The Captain was as pale as a ghost, there was absolutely no room for error.
Clive our new best friend who built our bench out back, told us he was going up to the top of the cliffs and would wave as we went through, so he was my distraction, I could see him way up top, so I just kept watching him and some of his friends.
I'm really not sure how long it took us to get through, 10mins, 5mins, no idea it felt like hours, once we cleared the last washed rocks. I was happy.
Clive calls on the phone, sounding all excited that we made it and he said that they were all feeling seasick watching us....they should of been on here and seen how we were feeling, man that was just horrible, but we made it out, into one very choppy rough ocean, this is so much fun....not.
But today has been nice, the ocean has settled done to a steady roll, we have no wind to speak of, and only got the Yankee sail ( little front one) out this afternoon, and have been motoring the whole time.
In the early hours of this morning just before the moon came out, I was getting a lovely show of phoropherence, I just love it, and could watch it for hours on end, we had a few hours of dead calm, and there was just ribbons of phoropherence floating past from our boat, I so wish I could get a pic of it and trust me I have tried hundreds of times, and the stars oh man they are lovely out here, it's moments like this that I know I'm in the right place, there is something so special about being on the ocean at nighttime, it sure is in my blood, until it starts getting rough that is.....haha and I know The Captain feels the same, every now and than he gets a little smile on his face and you realise this is where we are both meant to be.
It's been a very active day out here though, we have had heaps of ships go past, watched two tugs pulling a oil rig, which we came close to being part of the convoy, what we didn't realise until we got closer, that there were actually two tugs pulling it, at first it looked like only one and we were going to go through the middle as the other one only looked like it was just following them, but thank god we decided that is was safer to go around them, I would hate to think what damage it would of done if we hit the cable pulling them.
Also we have been keeping a close watch on the water as we were told there has been a lot of orca sightings, we saw something in the water early in the day and for the life of us we could not make out what it was at first we thought whale, than maybe a tree branch, I was pushing toward a giant octopus....hahaha
But later we realised it was seals, enjoying themselves in the sun, they kinda lay in pairs with there fins out of the water just getting warmth I guess, we also had a seal swim beside us for hours, and he just knew that I was trying to get a pic of him, every time I put the camera down he would surface.....haha
Well that's enough writing for now I have so many ships on the radar, one is looking like it may just get too close for comfort, I really should get back to my watch.
Well tomorrow is another day.