New sails and Geocaching
Well it’s the weekend! Time to relax and not have to do anything to anybody else’s schedule for the first time in a couple of months. This evening I’m going to cook myself a proper meal for the first time in months too. I’m totally fed up with eating snacks and restaurant food.
This week was mostly concerned with getting settled back into Cape Town life. Finding the best route for the morning drive to work; which I still haven’t found as each time I have tried a potentially new track the journey has been disrupted by an accident or something else slowing down the traffic. Probably better to stick to the main drags that I know fairly well even if a little longer.
Work on ‘Pelagic Australis’ is progressing well. We have Gamje’s team of painters at work preparing to re-spray the pilot house, the windlass is away getting new bearings, the Refleks heater has been taken out and given a new burner pot and coil, a lot of interior paintwork has been touched up, all the radiators have been taken out and cleaned out, a chest freezer has been installed in the forepeak ready to contain some ice-cores from a project on South Georgia next season, the old Fleet 77 satellite comms antenna has been removed along with an old radar and a Sat C antenna to make way for the new FB 500 satellite antenna and Iridium OpenPort systems, the Bombard C4 tender that was eaten by a leopard seal last season has been to the inflatable boat doctor and declared a right-off so a replacement is on the way etc. etc. the list goes on.
I paid a visit to Quantum sails on Wednesday to discuss the requirements for the new sails for ‘Morgane’. Quantum’s Warren and I looked at the old sails, which had been brought over on ‘Pelagic Australis’ and discussed a few slight modifications and finalised the choice of cloth, batten pockets, slide system, reef points etc.. Work has already started on the new Main sail and the two headsails that I am having made will follow.
This afternoon I decided to have a look at what geocaches might be located around Cape Town, that I could visit. I found four on Table Mountain withing a 500m radius of my apartment so went out and found two of those this afternoon. If you are a hiker or otherwise out and about, wherever you are, and have not discovered the activity of Geocaching yet check it out. It can add an extra dimension to an afternoons hike or actually give you a reason to go somewhere new. There are many types of caches to look for some are easy to find, some have cryptic clues, earth caches will teach you something about the environment you are in.
Geocatching sounds interesting but what are you supposed to find?