Voyage Recap 1: Departure Day
Note: This is the first of a series recapping Sage’s crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. During the crossing we kept an almost daily blog via our satellite link, which you can see over at our PredictWind Tracker site.
I arrived in Cape Town on June 13th 2022, expecting the boat to launch in early July and to be ready to sail away in early August. As with any complex project, the timelines were optimistic, and because we are only the second Balance 442, and each of these boats is essentially a custom project at this point in the production run, there were lots of little things needing attention. Eventually we launched, but still, many things were still under review before I could take ownership. It was frustrating, but also very educational, to have to work through delays. I learned a lot about the systems and construction as I worked closely with Balance Cape Town’s final assembly and handover team leader, Mark. He’s an incredibly knowledgeable and hard working guy, and we worked well together and eventually all the issues were worked out and we were able to take ownership of the boat and get ready to leave.
I had gotten a professional skipper and two friends to help with the delivery. Emmy is a skipper I had met in the Canary Islands after I sailed on a Lagoon 40 from Spain. Ed was an old friend from Apple, who sails on Lake Travis in Texas, and manages the ASA sailing school there. Mark was recommended as a good sailor, but I’d never actually met him. In conversation before the trip we’d hit it off and I knew he is a good sailor because he races his Express 37 in a very competitive fleet. With me, a crew of four.
Of the four of us, only Emmy had crossed oceans before, though never on this route. I had done the Spain to Canaries trip (7 days), Ed had a lot of Charter experience in the Caribbean, and Mark had delivery crew experience in the South Pacific on a monohull in addition to his racing background. So we were seasoned sailors, but Emmy would lead the preparation as she had the best knowledge of what’s essential and how to make the most of it.
Provisioning in Cape Town was a bit haphazard, everyone had a few favorite things and we had to guess at how long we’d be offshore. I let the crew shop at the Checkers Supermarket, which we were told was the best place to do the major shopping. 10 shopping carts, and two Uber’s later we were piling things into freezers and lockers. arranging snacks for easy access and hiding cans and dry goods under bunks. We had lots of frozen meats and chicken and some fish. We were hoping to catch some fish, so why buy it?
We missed our original target date of 7th September due to some last minute rework by the balance team, but on the morning of September 9th we fired up the engines, called Cape Town Port Control for clearance to leave, then the bridge operator to request an opening, and cast off the lines. As usual we had to wait a bit for the old bascule to open. The crew of Sea Life, Jono, Helga, Kai, and Ballie, waved goodbye to us as we motored past on our way out, and we were on our way.
Ballie and mentioned that his father was catching bluefin off of Dassen Island the day before, so we decided to head up that way before we went offshore, hoping we could get there before sundown and set a line out. This meant staying inshore of the traffic separation zone and to the east of Robben Island, which we later learned from a skipper we met at St. Helena was not the usual way to leave Cape Town.