HOW IT ALL STARTED – NEW YEARS DAY….
9:00 am, in the lounge: Let’s celebrate! Start of the great Atlantic adventure, etc. Glass of bubbly? Another?
11:00 am, on the plane: Glass of Champagne before take-off, sir? Why certainly! A little top up sir?
11:30 am: Your pre-lunch drink order sir? Hmmmm – Bloody Mary, thanks.
12:30 pm: Wine with your lunch sir? Why, certainly. That red looks lovely, but let’s start with the white shall we?…
1:00 pm Port with your cheese, sir?
….and so on…

STILL NEW YEARS DAY…
Feeling shabby in Cape Town, now 10:30 pm, we drag our bags along the marina, Ressie in sight finally. But as we walk past Paradise Found, there is Mary Beth, all ready to let out a Glenda-quality scream. Mike! Andrew! (that girl does her homework!). Come on Board! Have a drink! Bags get dropped there and then. A lot of hugs and squeals. More hugs. More squeals. At 1:00 am (i.e. after 25 hours of drinking), we find our way back to Ressie. Welcome to 2017!

AND THERE IS MORE
5 days more, actually. 5 days of glorious South African wines, lovely meals, a trip to the vineyards, a dinner in one of the townships. And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, there were shots. Let’s just say after 5 days it was time to leave town.

AND SO WE DID…..
Leave town. Ressie left the Waterfront marina in company with Carango, FireFly and Mearra Nieida, the ‘race’ starting just outside the harbour, with Table Mountain shrouded in cloud, Ressie’s motley crew shrouded in hangover. Time for REHAB!

WHATS THIS?…….SHOPPING FOR A DRY BOAT?!

RESSIE REHAB?

AND SO WE DID…

Leave town.. Ressie left the Waterfront marina in company with Carango, FireFly and Mearra Nieida, the ‘race’ starting just outside the harbour, with Table Mountain shrouded in cloud, Ressie’s motley crew shrouded in hangover. Time for REHAB!

Hard to believe. I’m struggling to even type it. The start of the Great Atlantic Rehab Tour. What? Why? Don’t ask that please. We’re talking no booze; daily workouts; snacking with guilt.

Mike (aka Serena) Williams, our butt-obsessed instructor, has stretched our gluts, smashed our groins, and sent us crawling for coffee, crap, I mean HERBAL TEA.. Andrew (aka Gordon Ramsay), meanwhile, delivers the detox delights with nutritional nastiness.

A DAY IN RESSIE REHAB
…starts with grape fruit, of course. I HATE grape fruit. Then there is Serena’s frigging rolled oats. If we’re lucky, a piece of toast, NO BUTTER, with tomato. That’s it folks.

..by mid morning, Serena is parading around in her lycra, wiggling her buttocks to a boatshed playlist. Crap. Nowhere to hide. Its all on GoPro folks (another of Gordon’s obsessions). I mean, who watches that stuff? We have work stations, weights, and various bits of rubber that stretch us.

Soon after, Gordon vanishes to his gourmet galley and emerges with a provedore’s platter, a healthy herbivore’s delight. Sashimi makes a guest appearance after we hook a Bluefin tuna.

Serena and Gordon spend most of the afternoon playing with their toys. Yep. We’re talking fishing here. Its basically war. Ressie verses Paradise Found. Goal: catch more bloody fish. Prize: eat more bloody fish, and I mean bloody. Anyway, the point here is Paradise Found has 6 rods, most with lots of gold trimmings. Meanwhile Gordon has a handline, with a 1 ton breaking strain and 4,000 miles of failure. Score so far: zero fish, caught, 3 lures lost. Interesting.   Luckily, Serena’s equipment is highly strung, and has put a few in the net. Its 2-all with a day to go before St Helena.

And then there’s sunset. There we are, in the Chairman’s lounge, sitting on our tight toots, watching the miracle of a sunset at sea drinking our Hendricks Mocktail (lime cordial and soda), and eating our celery sticks. What is wrong with this picture?

Compliance is an interesting thing. Where did the ginger cookies go (looking at you Serena). And what about the emergency chocolate supplies (Gordon, midnight is NOT an emergency). Its tough in rehab.

MEANWHILE..
We’re actually sailing, as I keep reminding the boys. The start was glorious, and we headed for Luderitz, in Namibia, to see what we could see. Our brand new burnt orange and black kite went up. Oh joy. Soon we’re surfing – the ipad recorded 23.5 knots on one wave. And then it started to blow. In an instant we had 35 knots and rising.

Despite the efforts of the fearless crew…. well, it is not a pretty story.. the leach and foot were torn out of the kite as we dropped it. As we retrieved it out of the water,with the boat hove-to, the kite shute line managed to wrap itself around the port rudder, making steering difficult.

“GO PRO” REVEALS ALL

In three metre waves and 40 knots, swimming was not an option, so we limped to Diaz Point, hoping to find shelter so we could sort out the steering before entering Luderitz harbour. As we arrived the wind peaked. We saw 55 knots true, with spray lifting off the water. Clearly not a good time for anchoring or swimming. In the end the only safe option was to get sea room, so we turned and sailed under staysail, bound for St Helena.

The next day the wind finally abated, and we sent Serena swimming. All untangled, we turned again for St Helena, job done. Back to rehab then!

St Helena is now in our sights. Apparently there are two pubs….