We arrived safely in South Africa almost two weeks ago and what a couple of weeks it has been. Our weather window from Mozambique looked tight when we left, but this time we found the elusive Agulhas Current and spent hours going 10-12 knots with the boost. We thought we would arrive in the early morning hours after one more night at sea, instead we made it in and tied up by 9:30 pm.

The arrival to Richard’s Bay, South Africa couldn’t have been more welcoming. Any cruisers coming here dock at Zululand Yacht Club, the only place to stay in the area. The members of ZYC pride themselves on welcoming international sailors, to the point where they temporarily move their boats from slips to mooring balls to make room for us. On Monday nights, the club is closed, but staff fire up the BBQs at 5 pm and invite everyone to bring their own meat to grill: the popular Bring & Braai. Each week, on Wednesdays after racing concludes, international sailors are invited to attend the beer prize giving, receive a welcoming bottle of champagne, and share their stories. It felt like a little bit of home that night, hanging out in the bar with a bunch of Wednesday night racers—sailors are the same the world over!

As an added bonus, we arrived with our kid boat buddies on Magic Dragon, and other familiar faces continued to show up throughout our stay, including more kid boat friends on Ayla. There’s something incredibly comforting about seeing these boats we know and met along the way either in SE Asia or across the Indian Ocean, as we all start coming together again and moving towards Cape Town. This has meant 10 days of great socializing, including with local kid boat liveaboards here at ZYC. The kids have played hard every afternoon as soon as school has concluded, while we’ve tackled boat projects to get us ready for the next eight months and our Atlantic crossing.

We took advantage of the location to also visit a world class nature reserve just an hour from ZYC. It is one of the oldest and largest parks in South Africa, and is known as a good place to see the big five. We spent three days and two nights doing game drives, a night drive, and a visit to a cat rehabilitation center, where we saw cheetahs. We had an amazing experience—finding elephants, rhinos (de-horned to protect them from poachers), giraffes, zebras, African buffalo, baboons, African wild dogs, implala, warthogs, and more. We just wish we had more time to stay and do a few more drives.

Unfortunately, we can’t stay here forever though. We still have 850 miles to get to Cape Town, and short windows that pop up allowing us to run from port to port. We’re leaving shortly to sprint 350 miles along the way, sadly without our buddy boats who are on a slower schedule. We say a sad, wistful goodbye to ZYC and our friends, but take amazing memories with us and look forward to making more once we get to Cape Town.