When we sailed from Richards Bay the weather guessers got it all wrong. Instead of 15-20 knots we found our selves in 35-45 for the first 36 hours. At least they had the wind direction right! The wind against the current made for some very impressive waves. Meggi swears that during her watch the waves were taller than the mast. Vega comported her self well slogging along in her usual stately manner at 7-8 knots.

Meggi, who had been worried how she would handle rough weather, had a good dose of it and came out stronger than ever.  She says she isn’t worried any more. In fact I'm getting worried that she actually likes it.

After that the weather calmed down so we could get on with the work of learning the boat and fine-tuning her rigging. This being the cyclone season the weather gods didn’t let us down. One started down the west coast of Madagascar just as we were going north. That kept us hard against the coast on the East African side, and in the (censored, censored, censored) current most of the time.

The good news was we managed to ride the winds around the storm and up the coast. The bad news was the current ate deeply into our modest fuel supply.  Being in a rush to get out of the channel, anytime we dropped below about 5 knots over the ground, the engine went on. It was a slow trip although the boat averaged 6-7 knots through the water.

Vega sails well and thinks 6 knots is her basic minimum. She is very stable, rarely having more than 5 degrees of heel (and that in 30 knots with all working sail up). Although Pieter swears that when he went aloft to tend the square top sails she heels about 45 degrees in every direction at once. 

Now for the adventures. Somewhere about 18 S and 37 E we hit something in the water. What ever it was broke the new steering system exactly at the threaded end of the piston ram. Whoops! Turn the wheel all you like the rudder would go happily it’s own way. That wouldn’t have been too bad if we hadn’t had about 30 knots hooting from almost directly astern.

It was good to see how the whole crew pulled together in an emergency. Within 3 minutes we had emergency steering and within 10 minutes we had relieving tackles rigged, a hand compass down below, and were steering a true (more or less) coarse. Within the hour we had the steering compass rigged below and could steer properly.

The closest harbor was on a river with a tricky entrance. We chose to continue on for another day and a half to Isle Mozambique. It has a simple entrance if not the best anchorage. So on the morning of February 1st about 1AM we dropped anchor there. If you think steering in the open ocean by calling down coarses to some poor soul hauling on the relieving tackles is easy try the turns and twists of an entrance channel and anchoring in unknown waters on a moonless night some time.

Isle Mozambique is a sleepy island steeped in history, with friendly people, and is amazingly clean. If you pass this way and miss it you will have missed a wonderful stop over. On the first day we met Antoine, who is single handedly restoring the islands historical buildings and who owns a lovely small hotel. We also met Jhans who is bringing new life to the local fishing fleet.

Thanks to their assistance the steering was repaired (better than before), several of our systems improved, we all gained several kilos thanks to the lovely meals, while in general enjoying  the pleasure of new friends. Peter and Wile loved escaping to shore at every opportunity returning full of stories and adventures. So far we have had some beautiful days of sailing, the crew is shaping up well, and Vega is proving to be a marvelous, comfortable, boat to sail on.