Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

[MicHughV]

Have to throw in one more factoid.

"Windhoek Lager" goes best with " Biltong". "Biltong" is the African version of American beef jerky, but once you've had biltong, you will never go back to eating jerky again. It is simply spiced dried meat, it is not cooked, just dried. It's not possible to eat only one piece. Once you have one piece, you'll keep going until the bag is empty.

Game watching with an ice cold Windhoek lager in one hand and a bag of biltong in the other....life doesn't get much better

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Jdege

Delos spent some time in the Namib.

People slag off Delos but they have made some amazing videos in amazing places. Nambia was one. The landscape was unreal. Doubt we would ever be able to go there like Delos did but I was danged nervous at some of the anchorages they used.

Later,
Dan

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by mako

Just the word Africa has a aura about it, especially for all of us westerners growing up with Tarzan shows and tales from Roosevelt. However in general it certainly is not the same place as it was back in the early 1900's.

I quite like what I have seen of Africa. Spent several months volunteering in fairly remote parts of Lesotho after retirement. It was neat being the only white person within 20 km or so. Also learning that you could live quite simply and really enjoy it.

One of the highlights of our circumnavigation was 'finding' Africa after a challenging passage from Mauritius. I came on watch at 0300 with winds steady in the low 40's, waves probably 7 m and pitch black. Had a large chunk of the Indian Ocean land in my lap about 10 minutes after getting on watch - and the weather gear">foul weather gear had totally crapped out, but at least the water was warm (Agulhas Current). I thought I would sell the boat very cheaply at that moment if the sale included an immediate helicopter lift. Anyway felt sorry for myself for a couple of hours but as the sun came up the wind dropped into the mid-20s, humpbacks were jumping and there were lots of what appeared to be small whales basking on the surface (turned out they were great white sharks!). The shore appeared out of the gloom and I had a wondrous reaction to the landfall that I had on no other occasion. I remember thinking that I was looking at somewhere that had lions and elephants - and this turned out to be the case since it was a national park. Eight hours after we got into Richard's Bay it was blowing 50 knots into the current. Don't know how big the waves would have been but the cruising guide said waves to 20 m happen in the winter in these conditions.

[Wander4Wonder]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

Have to throw in one more factoid.

"Windhoek Lager" goes best with " Biltong". "Biltong" is the African version of American beef jerky, but once you've had biltong, you will never go back to eating jerky again. It is simply spiced dried meat, it is not cooked, just dried. It's not possible to eat only one piece. Once you have one piece, you'll keep going until the bag is empty.

Game watching with an ice cold Windhoek lager in one hand and a bag of biltong in the other....life doesn't get much better

I live in the Washington D.C. area and once called the Namibian embassy hoping they had the scoop on any place that imported Windhoek. They started laughing and said "no, we sometimes bring it back ourselves but let us know if you find a place that imports it"

haha.

Another time I was in Tanzania overlanding on the beach and ran into a couple from Namibia and sharing stories and I remarked how much I loved Windhoek and was able to find two bottles in Kenya but sadly that was it. A little while later the husband comes back from his RV with a 2 six packs and we shared those that night. "He said no Namibian leaves home without it!" haha.

Good memories, good people.

[BigNut]

"Biltong" is the African version of American beef jerky"

Bwahahaha! Nope. Biltong is uniquely African. Jerky is South American. Other than both being meat, the difference is stark.

All said with a smile.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by AiniA

Only been to Luderitz in southern Namibia on our way north from Cape Town before heading off to St Helena. We were there in summer so sailing was fine and it is a good harbour. The town is safe and has decent provisioning and there are interesting things to see like a ghost town with sand dunes blowing into the buildings of what was a centre for diamonds until the 1930s. Luderitz is still a diamond mining centre. I say 'mining' advisedly because these are placer diamonds that are on the surface. You are not allowed off the roads (see sign below) because you can just pick up diamonds with no digging. This is easiest at night with a full moon because the diamonds have a unique reflection apparently. Today diamonds are recovered from shallow areas of the sea by ships with divers using giant vacuum cleaners that bring up diamonds and lots and lots of gravel.

There was only one other cruiser there and we got to spend some time with him, Peter Smith, the guy who invented the Rocna anchor. Interesting guy but very much in the iconoclast category. Doesn't like sailing in warm places and wintered numerous times in the Falklands and southern Patagonia. Didn't appear all the much into people either. He was in Namibia on his way from Cape Town to Greenland. His boat is a 53' aluminum cutter named Kiwi Roa, that he built himself. It may be the most impressive cruising boat I have ever seen.

I buddy boated with Kiwi Roa across the South Pacific, so Peter has done warm places too. He is a bit crusty. Was he singlehanding?

[Gerrit Coetzee]

Originally Posted by simonkaplan

In the winter it's a lee shore, with very strong NW storms. Ships used to just get pushed ashore, and because its so inhospitable the results were not great for the crews and vessel even if they did managed to get ashore.

The Benguela current brings very cold water north from the Antarctic, and that inhibits precipitation along the coast - the western shore of South Africa is also dry (although not as dry as the Namib desert).

(At least, this is what I was taught at school... hopefully its accurate enough)

Your teachers and school did well.

1000 miles south is Cape of Storms - both are areas that encompasses my notion that the seas are a place of beauty in good weather, and a monster of the worst kind when met in anger.

Catch her in bad weather and you will wish you had never set foot on a boat.

[Gerrit Coetzee]

Originally Posted by AiniA

Only been to Luderitz in southern Namibia on our way north from Cape Town before heading off to St Helena. We were there in summer so sailing was fine and it is a good harbour. The town is safe and has decent provisioning and there are interesting things to see like a ghost town with sand dunes blowing into the buildings of what was a centre for diamonds until the 1930s. Luderitz is still a diamond mining centre. I say 'mining' advisedly because these are placer diamonds that are on the surface. You are not allowed off the roads (see sign below) because you can just pick up diamonds with no digging. This is easiest at night with a full moon because the diamonds have a unique reflection apparently. Today diamonds are recovered from shallow areas of the sea by ships with divers using giant vacuum cleaners that bring up diamonds and lots and lots of gravel.

There was only one other cruiser there and we got to spend some time with him, Peter Smith, the guy who invented the Rocna anchor. Interesting guy but very much in the iconoclast category. Doesn't like sailing in warm places and wintered numerous times in the Falklands and southern Patagonia. Didn't appear all the much into people either. He was in Namibia on his way from Cape Town to Greenland. His boat is a 53' aluminum cutter named Kiwi Roa, that he built himself. It may be the most impressive cruising boat I have ever seen.

Hahaha, funny, but no pick up diamonds. Not for decades. If anyone believes that, I have a diamond dredger boat laying off Luderitz for sale, ready to help one and all gathering the diamonds.

Very good rich fishing seas, but the government revoked all private fishing licenses for locals and issued stringent quotas, but the Chinese are fishing the waters and exports all the supreme cuts. Namibians would never eat frozen fish because of its abundance. Kabeljou fillets 1m in length was not uncommon and 10 people would not finish it. Some of the best fish around.
Now, with China ripping things apart, getting a whole Kabeljou one foot in length is king's treasure.
But that was five years ago. Maybe things are better now.

[Gerrit Coetzee]

Originally Posted by BigNut

"Biltong" is the African version of American beef jerky"

Bwahahaha! Nope. Biltong is uniquely African. Jerky is South American. Other than both being meat, the difference is stark.

All said with a smile.

Agreed! But South African (!), not African.

In St.Thomas, customs confiscated our jerky. I could not think of a better way to get rid of it.

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I buddy boated with Kiwi Roa across the South Pacific, so Peter has done warm places too. He is a bit crusty. Was he singlehanding?

No, with his girlfriend whose name I have forgotten. Last I heard of him he did the NW Passage in 2020 or 21 in contravention of Canadian COVID restrictions. He is indeed CRUSTY.