Close-hauled good sailing, closing up to the African coast.

Weather-wise, a very different situation than yesterday, when we dealt with wind shifts and passing fronts under the rain. Being not very busy with the sail handling, there is time for continuing with the upkeep of the rig while we are gradually closing up to the African coast.

The very same waters that have seen European sailors trying to find a way around the continent’s southernmost point since the mid-14 hundreds. Even before Spain was busy crossing westwards over the Atlantic, Portugal was in a quest to find a route around Africa to the East Indies. The list of Portuguese sailors who ventured along the African coast is long, starting with Gonzalo Cabral in 1432, and trip after trip other navigators made it gradually further south. Following this pursuit, Diogo Cão in 1485 made port all the way to the destination of our own trip, Walvis Bay. There he came up with the idea that Africa’s southernmost point could not be so far. With this in mind, two years later Bartolomeu Dias sailed with instructions to finally round the continent. He learned the hard way that along the coast, headwinds blew and currents ran against him, and just like many of the discoveries made by navigators, traders under sail, and explorers, it was a storm that blew him south for nearly two weeks past the tip of Africa for the first time, returning afterwards over the same route not much later. A prominent headland which he very appropriately named Stormy Cape — nowadays known as Cape Good Hope — because King John of Portugal renamed it, for its discovery greatly increased the grounds for optimism in finding a sea route to the East.

1497 was the year of his departure, Vasco da Gama the man. On his way south from Portugal, he routed his voyage further west into the Atlantic Ocean to avoid what Bartolomeu Dias had reported — the newly found southeasterly trade winds and the nowadays-called Benguela Current flowing northwards along the African coast. His fleet rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 22 November and sailed into the Indian Ocean. Here they faced unexplored seashores, new seas, and surprising ocean features, such as the strong currents around eddies and swirls and the variable water flows of the Agulhas Current close to South Africa. But they made it all the way to Calicut, India, where they arrived on the 21st of May 1498. He had just opened the long-desired direct sea route to the rich countries of the East.

Almost 530 years have passed since his feat, and now the Europa in all likelihood deals with similar southeasterlies, probably comparable weather conditions, and an ocean behaving in a similar manner. Currents, countercurrents, and strong swirls from the interaction between the predominant westerly flow behind us, Benguela ahead and to the north, and Agulhas trying to round South Africa but turning back around into the Indian Ocean.