STINGO IS A 38 FT MAXIM CAT - THE SKIPPER AND OWNER IS JOHN PERRY
A note to say that I am back ,had a wonderful time but four weeks on a boat is a week too long! Thanks to those of you who followed Stingo's progress on the blog and on google earth. St Helena is well worth a visit ,Salvador was very third world but still enjoyable.
The trip took 27 days including 9 hrs spent at St Helena. We logged 3776 nautical miles at a average speed of 5.8kts.The highest recorded speed was 15 kts (surfing a swell) and we had a few days in the 3 to 2 kt range when we normally gave up sailing and put the motor on (we were allowed 500 miles of motoring) one motor at 2000 revs gave us 4.5 kts but we only used 250 litres of diesel so that worked out well.
Our catering arrangements were well planned, we had at least one hot meal every day.Fresh tomatoes up until the 25th day ,apples and oranges for three weeks and enough onions to last John for the next six weeks! (green apples last better than the sweet red ones)
My one criticism was that we did not carry our drinking water in separate containers.The luxury of a water maker, with on tap water leads to a lack of discipline. Thank goodness the water maker only packed up two days before we reached Salvador when one of the high pressure hoses sprang a leak.
We caught lots of fish but only ate two and released the rest.The lines got broken up twice with either sharks or very big fish.
A highlight for all of us was when Voortrekker 1 came flying up behind us and overtook us with her South African flag pattern spinnaker pulling her along at 10 kts (the racing yachts started a week later).
The grand old lady is forty years old and still going strong. Bertie Reed would have been proud to see her so well handled by a crew of development sailors.We made contact by radio and asked them to pass us as close as possible.John was able to get some really good photos.After she passed us her skipper called us up and told us that he had dropped a bottle with a book on the history of Voortrekker in it. This we were lucky enough to pick up and it is now one of John's proudest possessions.
The only drama we had was when our spinnaker burst after a hectic night of strong wind and unruly swell.
Luckily John had a sewing machine on board and after 3 hours we had repaired it and our speed was back up to 7 kts.
Hats off to Eric Wells and his team of organizers from Cape Town who did a superb job of looking after us.
The prize giving in Salvador was an awesome affair.Bahia province put over 1.5 million rand sponsorship into the race.Free moorings,hotels for the officials and a top class prize giving . Rolex could not have done a better job!
Admiral Koos Louw is an outstanding servant to sailing in South Africa.His speech in fluent Portuguese at the prize giving and the way he handled the Izivunguvungu academy students in Salvador make him my nominee for sailor of the month!
kind regards peter (alias Goble Warming!)
