A good days work.

After putting in two gallons of bleach into the water tanks and leaving it for a couple of days we managed to get it all cleaned out today. This involved removing parts of the boat, like fridges and flooring to get access to the tanks and then pumping out 1000 liters of chlorine treated water, then scrubbing the sides with a broom brush and spraying high pressure water all around the tanks. After that we filled the tanks with 1000 liters of fresh water and then pumped all that out as well. Our friend, Gordon on s/v Mantra, had a submersible pump that made an otherwise awful job ok. We now have refilled the tanks and have 1000 liters of fresh clean water on board.

The weather here is varied with the winds blowing from the north at 30k this morning and a temperature of 30C. In thirty minutes around two this afternoon the wind switched to the south at 30k and the temperature dropped to 20C. An interesting weather phenomenon which makes sailing down to Cape Town a little stressful. Well we will worry about that in a few weeks.

we came across about 30 and spent an hour just watching and being watchedAdd caption

Zebra on a hill

Yellow bird making a nest
 

Marian's favorite animal

giraffes in the trees.

male Nyala

Africa

Cape Buffalo

Hippos cavorting

our first sighting of a Giraffe

This huge guy was coming right at us and we had to back up about 500 meters to avoid being crushed!!!



Rino and babe having lunch with bird watching

We have been having a great time enjoying the land versus the ocean which we have seen too much of in the last few months. Our friends off Mantra, ( Gordon and Helen) have been touring around the countryside with us for the last week. We have been to the game park in St Lucia for an over night and then up to the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park where we stayed at the Hill Top Lodge for a couple of nights and enjoyed the sights of most all the animals in the park which is large and would take many more days than we had to see it all. The beauty of all this is that these two parks are just an hour or so from the marina and there are many more so we will probably be doing lots more of this over the next few weeks, maybe even taking in a drive up to Kurger Park  which is a good days drive away. We still have not seen any lions, leopards, or  cheetahs so will look forward to seeing them over the next while.
On the boat front we have been doing little other than today where we fixed a few small problems, Up the mast to replace a flood light bulb that came crashing down when we hit one big wave on the way here plus a new halyard for the courtesy flag plus some engine room maintenance and then starting on the bigger job of cleaning the water tanks on the boat which is a real pain in the ass. Also had a new mother board put into the wind speed and direction gauge which seems to have fixed the problem with that so all in all a pretty good day.

 We have been eating out most all the time as the prices here are great and wine in the shops run from $2.50 to tops around $10. mind you I'm sure you can pay much more but for us this will do just fine.
We have no plans right now of when we will move on as the marinas south of here down to the Cape are very full right now and are not answering the emails we sent requesting moorage so we are happy to hang out here and wait. The weather will be getting hotter and the seas calmer as we move into summer down here mind you the winds around the Cape of Africa are ferocious and one has to be very careful sailing in this part of the world. It still is amazing to us that we are here in Africa. It is something that we never really planned for but are very happy to be here.

You need to double click on the pictures. Don't know what I did wrong but enjoy.