Fuc**** forecasts

Hi guys

Heading back towards Cape Town is as predicted awesome hard. Literally it's 1000 nautical miles (1900 km) upwind beating trough the South Atlantic. The first (and always most difficult) 3 days the headwind was between 22 and 32 knots (true wind speed) which means 28 to 38 knots apparent wind, with big swell beating against everything. The boat is hitting the waves every few seconds, huge sprays, huge heel - living on board is almost impossible. To be honest this is the worst possible start into a sailing trip, my stomach is really strong but under such circumstances I also develop some wired feelings in this area - resulting in a lack of eating and drinking (I'd experience a similar situation already when I left Cartagena in Spain and crossed Gibraltar). To make a long story short - it's shit. Right now we crossed the virtual border between Namibia and South Africa - still in the upwind mode. Since Yesterday evening the wind calmed down which allowed me to have a decent dinner and a shower and gave me the opportunity to watch a James Bond as dessert.

In the night from Wednesday to Thursday I lost the hydro generator support...which is a pity but at least I rescued the hydro generator. The support broke away - the price of upwind bashing. Shortly after that I intended to produce water and started the water maker - no pressure (77 psi instead of 90 psi) ...fuck the technique. However I started at 2 am to change the prefilter - no change - finally I start calculating how I can deal with the remaining amount of water until Cape Town, the conclusion was : no showers and save water all over. Next day I was start thinking where the problem could be, finally I ended up with the diagnosis that air must be in the system. Bleeding a water maker ?? Other possible reason might be a partly blocked inlet. After watching the boat for several hours I decided that probably due of the big waves the water maker inlet is when Lifgun is jumping over the waves out of the water and the whole system is sucking air.....yesterday evening under normal conditions the water maker was working again without any complains. What a relieve !

Right now we should have 27 knots of headwind (according to all weather models) - in real we sail with 12 knots comfortable upwind. The models predict 35 knots until Sunday noon - what the fuck should I believe now. It's somehow strange how this forecast's are.

So ... ETA in Cape Town should be Tuesday 4 am.....

Nice Weekend to all from aboard Lifgun. March 18, 2017 / 06.22 UTC / 29.25.849 S 15.44.686 E