Day 10 – a figure in a snow covered wilderness

Day 10 sees a wanderer arrive.

Or is he travelling. Where is he headed ? Is it even a male wanderer under that garb and mask ? Does their species even have male and female ?

So many assumptions, so many questions.

It’s snowing here at the moment. Actually coming down reasonably snowy but the ground is far too wet for it to stick. Could be an icy walk to the bus stop tomorrow and I’ll have to make a sleepy assessment as to whether I walk over there in my boots or normal shoes. It’s turning to something closer to icy rain at the moment. Not too good to be out in, it’s weather to guarantee misery and wet.

My work shoes are fairly decent for grip on the soles, now that I’ve mostly worn them flat. That was odd … when I got them, the grips were uneven, it felt like half the sole was a few millimeters different from the rest, which was leading to odd balancing being needed. Apart from that, I like these shoes. My ankles normally get shredded by new shoes, these have been ok and my ankles have been allowed to continue healing. There’s still damage to repair though.

Today will be another day of chilling out and occasionally looking out the window to see if things have gone white yet. Other parts of the country have had serious snowfall. I’ve seen a pic of a place near where my sister lives and it’s a traffic pile up on one of the major roads. It never usually gets that bad here.

But there is a group of intrepid sailors who are sailing into even worse conditions :

This is from the inshore leg as the fleet was leaving Cape Town this morning. Fairly close racing but I suspect they didn’t want to get too crazy considering that they’ll be heading for the Southern Ocean where there is no land mass to act as a break on the seas down there. Reports are of 12m waves, which will dwarf these racing yachts. And …

That’s where they’re headed and that angry red circle of a weather depression will lead to very challenging conditions.

I’ll be following the racing again and two boats in particular. Turn The Tide On Plastic (TTOP) is skippered by Dee Caffari who I was listening to for the start of the last Vendee Globe and she had a gift there of explaining everything that was going on in a style that made it easy for this novice to understand. And the other boat I’m following is Scallywag (SHKS) skippered by another Brit.

May the Brits rule the waves again !