10 January Passage to East London

We left Durban at midday as the southerly was fading and forecast to to turn east and then north east. On this passage we had a strong south setting current and winds up to 30 knots. It took only 32 hours to cover 263nm. However, we missed arriving at East London in daylight by one hour. At 8pm we surfed up the entrance channel with 30 knots behind us and a 2m swell. The channel lights all work and although we called harbour control for permission to enter they had gone home for the evening. It's a quiet port and the only river port in South Africa.

Coming in in the dark wasn't a problem, plenty of depth of water. The only issue was when we were in a trough the land lights went out! Two other yachts had reached harbour before us, one was on the yacht club dock, the other was anchored. We anchored too in 13m, centre of the river in front of the fore and aft moored boats.

East London looking up river