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American Joe Harris along with Roger Junet are competing in the Globe40, a multi-leg doublehanded round the world race in Class40s. The second leg started July 17, taking the five-boat fleet from Cape Verde Islands to Mauritius. Harris expects the 7000nm course will take 35 days to complete… here’s his update from GryphonSolo2 on August 15, 2022:
Today’s update revolves around two events – dodging a major gale and getting through the Agulhas Current.
First, the gale was forecast to be coming from the West and packing 40 knot winds and big seas. We had just sailed past the longitude of Cape Agulhas, the official marker of the Cape of Good Hope, while being about 30 miles south and knew that we had to get in close to the mainland to miss the worst of the NW wind.
It was a race against time and we were sailing in light winds, so we lost the battle when the first squall hit us with 35 knot gusts, sheeting rain and lightning! The lightning kinda freaked us out, and while we had been on the fence about whether to stop at Mossel Bay (which we had identified as a safe haven), both Roger and I felt we should seek refuge for about 12 hours and let the worst of the storm blow past.
So about 0430 Sunday morning (August 14) we dropped the sails and motored in to the harbor. We took a couple of laps to determine the best place to dock, and while preparing the fenders and dock lines in advance of the concrete pier to tie up, the engine suddenly quit…
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