Richards Bay - Battlefields

Hi everyone,
Last Friday we collected a hire car and drove west to the town of Dundee.  We were in company with six other cruisers from Minnie B, Sea Bunny and Vulcan Spirit.  We stayed at a very nice B&B "Chez Nous" on Friday and Saturday nights.

On Saturday we went on a tour of three battlefields in the area with guide Paul.  We visited the sites of the battle of Blood River, the battle at Isandhlwana and the action at Rorke's Drift.  I won't go through the history here since I'll probably get some detail wrong.  Paul, on the other hand, knows his history very well and is a great story teller.

The battle of Blood River was fought between Voortrekkers and Zulus in 1838.

Original Blood River memorial with museum in background

New Blood River memorial featuring 64 bronze wagons

Isandhlwana was fought in January 1879 and was a heavy defeat for the British army.  The battlefield is strewn with cairns marking where the British dead were found and buried.  The cairns are scattered across the battlefield and extend towards the river where those who escaped fled.

One of the memorials with cairns in the background

Isandhlwana hill with cairns

The action at Rorke's Drift followed soon after Isandhlwana.  The small British garrison held off several thousand Zulus, earning 11 Victoria Crosses.  It was amazing to see just how small an area was successfully defended.  The contrast between the leadership displayed at Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift is abundantly clear when one visits the sites and hears descriptions of the actions.  It's one thing to read books and watch movies, and something altogether different to walk the ground.

View of the rebuilt mission building at Rorke's Drift

Paul recounting the story at Rorke's Drift

Memorial at Rorke's Drift

At Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift there were recently constructed memorials to the Zulus.  These memorials use as their theme the necklace awarded to Zulu warriors.  Sometimes a thorn bush is planted nearby.  Relatives of Zulu dead unable to return their bodies home would use twigs of local thorn bush to return their spirit home.

Zulu memorial at Isandhlwana

Somewhat fittingly, the day was miserably cold, windy and overcast.  None of us were dressed for it, so some of Paul's talks were done in his Land Rover.  It was a thoroughly interesting and very memorable day.

Richards Bay - Safari

Hi everyone,
For the last three days we have been "on safari" in the Hluhluwe/iMfolozi Game Reserves.  We had a fantastic time.

On Sunday we drove from Richards Bay to the Nyalazi Gate between the two Game Reserves.  We spent much of the day driving around the iMfolozi reserve and saw much more game than we expected.  Best was seeing an elephant and several giraffe up close, and seeing a pair of cheetahs at a distance.

They're not joking

Entrance signage in full

The region is suffering from a severe drought.  The rains which normally start in September or October haven't happened yet this year.  All the rivers are dry with only a few pools of water remaining.  Some of the animals dig in the dry river beds to find water which is about 0.5m down.  Apparently the rhinos are starting to fight each-other for territory near water.

View over the all-but dry Black Umfolozi River

On Sunday afternoon we checked-in at Hilltop Camp.  The camp itself is also suffering from a severe water shortage.  Instead of unlimited showers each couple received a 5 litre container of water per day for washing.  It was only a minor inconvenience to us "grotty yachties".  The meals at the camp were excellent and the rondavel we stayed in was neat and tidy.

Our Hilltop rondavel and car

On Monday morning we went on a guided morning walk.  The guide carried a rifle as we walked through the bush.  We encountered buffalo, nyala and zebra.  On a smaller scale we found a trapdoor spider and the guide showed us an array of animal tracks.

Trapdoor spider at home

For most of our stay we drove ourself around the Hluhluwe reserve, covering most of the roads over the three days.  Some of the hilly dirt roads were a challenge in our little hire car but she rose to the challenge gamely!  

We saw an array of antelope including impala, nyala, bush buck, water buck, duiker and wildebeest.

Impala

Adolescent male impala mock-fighting

Duiker?

Waterbuck

Blue Wildebeest

Male Nyala

Female Nyala

 The park has plenty of water buffalo.  Some of the herds we saw had well over 50 animals.

Water Buffalo

Water Buffalo

We saw a number of zebra.  Most seemed to be in family groups of 3 or 4.

Plains zebra

 We saw several groups of giraffe.  Most seemed to be in groups of three.  Beautiful animals.

Giraffe

Giraffes

 In the camp we saw vervet monkeys.  In the bush we saw several large troops of baboons.

Vervet monkey

Baboon

We saw both warthogs and bush pigs too.

Warthog

The reserves are famous for their rhinoceros.  Every white rhinoceros on Earth is descended from the 20 last animals which survived in this reserve in the 1960s.  There are over 500 in the reserve now and hundreds more distributed all around the world by Operation Rhino.

White rhinoceros

White rhinoceros

Two week old baby rhinoceros

We saw several solitary elephants and herd of over a dozen.

Lone elephant

Lone bull elephant

Herd of female and young elephants

Sadly we didn't see lion or leopard, but we did see two cheetahs.  They were about 200m away but we could see them clearly in the binoculars.  The telephoto lens wasn't really up to the job but we did get pictures.  We were very lucky since there are apparently about 30 cheetahs in the two reserves while there are over 100 lions.

Spot the cheetah

The birds in the reserve were amazing - very, very colourful.  They are tough to photograph but we did manage to get a good shot of one.

Cape Glossy Starling

On Tuesday afternoon we did a sunset drive with a guide.  He found a lot of rhino and the herd of elephant before dark.  After dark we drove through the bush shining lights to spot animals.  We found an owl, a bush baby, a genet and several chameleon in addition to various antelope.

African Sunset

These three days have certainly been one of the highlights of our year.  There's something special about having sailed here to see it all too.

Richards Bay Day 6

Hi everyone,
Our first week in South Africa has been exciting and busy.  The former has been to do with southerly busters and broken marinas, but also to do with just being in Africa.  The latter has been to do with getting boat jobs done.

On Wednesday and Thursday the marina jetty was hauled back into its correct location, new mooring chains fitted and the walkway reassembled.  The SA Police did the diving work.

Concertina'd jetty before the move

Hawser from jetty to tug (view from Zen Again)

Jetty back "on station"

Divers preparing to refloat sunken walkway section

A number of boats suffered scratching and gouging.  Considering the situation we all got off lightly - it could have been so much worse.

The marina is now more-or-less back to normal.  One wonders whether any further work on the marina will be carried out.  With the urgency now removed I suspect any work done will be in very slow time.

Meanwhile we've been busy on Zen Again working through our to-do list.  We prefer to do the boat work before touring ashore since that allows time for dealing with "gotchas".  Here's what we've been up to.

• Electrical:
• Unsuccessfully attempted to service autopilot rams - needs a work bench
• Arranged for local Raymarine agent to service the autopilot rams
• Confirmed Raymarine E85001 NMEA/SeaTalk1 Interface destroyed by lightning
• Rewired SeaTalk1 and NMEA systems using autopilot as SeaTalk/NMEA translator
• Engine:
• Serviced engine (oil, oil filter, fuel filters and fresh water coolant)
• Replaced engine heat exchanger to vented loop to exhaust mixer hoses with helisteel
• Extracted lost impeller fins from hose between raw water pump and heat exchanger
• Filled diesel tanks
• General:
• Gave the boat a good clean and airing - on deck, below deck and cockpit lockers
• Checked the cabin bilge which was dry and dusty
• Filled water tanks
• Domestic:
• Full audit of foodstuffs followed by minor restocking at Richards Bay's excellent mall
• Laundry
• Baked a Christmas Cake!

Using the autopilot course computer hasn't fully restored our SeaTalk1 / NMEA bridging but we've got most of what we had previously.  The autopilot accepts and displays SeaTalk1 data from our ST40 log/depth instrument, but does not appear to translate it to NMEA.  So we are not seeing boatspeed, depth etc on our WiFi NMEA network.  More importantly though, the autopilots are seeing NMEA data from the GPS so can display position, COG, SOG etc.

We are finding Richards Bay has most services needed by yachties.  There is a chandlery near the Zululand Yacht Club.  The light industrial area has a wide range of services and supplies available.  The Boardwalk shopping mall has good supermarkets and a wide array of retail shops.  We even managed to swap our SodaStream cartridges!

We have visited Zululand Yacht Club twice so far.  It is a very nice club with very cheap drinks and even cheaper (and good) food.  One of our visits was for a talk on sailing from Richards Bay to Cape Town.  Very good talk which confirmed our previous research and gave a few extra tips.  The World ARC fleet is arriving at ZYC right now so I expect the club will be busy.

With most boat jobs completed we will soon be heading off "on safari".  We'll be spending a few days at Hulhluwe-Imfolosi park and then a couple of days on a tour of several historic battlefields here in KwaZulu Natal province.