Capetown, South Africa - May'02

May 01 to May 27, 2002
Waiting for our ship to sail

The harbour in Knysna was very nice. That's Sue on the pier, and from this angle you can see the 2 large masts of our Staysail Schooner. Ferdi's email to us had described the ship like this: Good News is a 65 ft Aluminium Staysail Schooner, built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Every single system om board is being double checked at the moment and she is in excellent condition. She is overdesigned in all respects as she was built for latitudes 40 to 50 degrees South. She has every luxury on board. Comms: In addition to normal VHF radio, we have a long distance SSB and Ham radios with basically unlimited range (depending on time of day). The radios are linked to e-mail on board as well as an Autolink controller which patches the radio through to the normal telephone network. So e-mail and phone calls are no problem. She is equipped with a satellite receiver which receives synoptic weather faxes 3-4 times a day as well as Navtex written weather broadcasts. Navigation: 3 GPS receivers (1 with chartplotter) and sextant.