Zac's arrival

Today it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. We’ve been following Zac’s journey since we had the heads-up a few months ago from my cousin who subsequently interviewed him in Cape Town, so were pretty excited to meet him today. We heard that he would be coming in some time between 12 and 1, so went down to the docks after lunch to see what the progress was. He hadn’t arrived yet and was apparently ‘just around the corner’ which I suspect actually meant just around the corner of the earth, i.e. just beyond the horizon, about 8 miles out. While waiting we chatted with the three other people present who were from the yacht club and part of the welcoming/arrival process. The casual chat resulted in us being invited to go out on the boat with them – Zac was needing a bit of a tow into the anchorage. The boat ride out to the yacht was hairy…none of us had life-jackets which wasn’t so much of a problem as we can all swim, but I must confess to being concerned about the safety of the camera on this very little boat. The end of it was happy to scoop up water as it bobbed and dipped on the rough sea. Hmm. But we reached the Intrepid without incident, where Jen (who follows Zac from port to port as the official photographer) was on another dinghy which was already alongside. Nick, the boys and I had to transfer to the dingy as the ferry would have been too heavy with us all on it for the towing. It was good to meet Jen, especially as I had nosed about her blog looking at all her beautiful photos, so had a few questions to ask! Then it was the slow process of sorting out ropes and things and trailing while the other boat did the towing. Oh, we had a bit of a speed boat experience though as someone else on the dinghy needed to get off, so Paul whizzed him back to the landing steps at high speed. I had to resist the urge to whoop! Paul eventually dropped us off again – there was nothing more to do or see while Zac waited for port authorities and customs etc. Nick and Aaron had a swim; Caleb nearly had a swim but backed out and swung on the ropes instead. It wasn’t long before Paul brought in Zac, Jen, Gary from Radio St Helena and another yachtie who goes by the name of Dice (apparently his next stop in the world is determined by the throw of a dice). My actual meeting of Zac was limited to a handshake and brief introduction – he hadn’t slept in 56 hours! Jen was going to take him to Anne’s Place for some food.