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American Spirit II - Day 315; Jeremy Flies Home, GRIB Meeting at 4:00 PM & Bradley B-Day Party at Dros Restaurant; Sunday, November 16, 2914



Jeremy is up at 6:00 AM. His last 'getting up' on the boat. I'm up at 6:40 AM. Joel is last.

At 9:00 AM I host the Rally net and update the fleet on the Boingo Alive crew member who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance (Dominick?) with a back problem; when boats are starting to leave (Tuesday and Friday); and that a velvet monkey troop was moving in column formation along the marina shoreline yesterday at 6:10 AM.

Breakfast consists of bacon, potato, eggs, chilled fruit cocktail and banana bread.

After breakfast Jeremy finishes up packing and is ready, even anxious, to go home to Heather.

I go to Nexus around 10:00 AM to have a weather meeting. On the way I see two velvet monkeys running down the boat yard and then one climbs up on to a boast under repair. These monkeys are really cute and small.

At noon Jeremy heads off to the airport with Joel. As the luggage is off loaded from our boat Jeremy's small bag almost ends up in the water. I won't say who made the fumble, but it wasn't Jeremy or myself. No surprise there. Once they get to the airport, they find that everything is closed. It opens up later and Jeremy is off to Johannesburg on a turbo prop, then a wide body to Washington D.C., with a refueling stop along the way, just north of the Ebola capital of the world. Hopefully his plane won't take on any passengers during the re-fueling stop. Joel is back at the boat by 2:00 PM.

At 4:00 PM we, Boingo Alive, Nexus, Merlyn of Pool, Saphir, Alpheratz, Adela, Free&BrEasy, Ghost and I'm sure a couple more boats meet in the upstairs yacht club bar to talk about the weather and compare GRIB files. The consensus is that there is a small weather window Tuesday afternoon and a large one Friday. Some boats, like us and Saphir, are going Tuesday 85 miles to Durban. Others are going Friday because they don't want the hassle of clearing into and out of Durban; and because Friday is a larger weather window.

At 6:00 PM about 20 of us head off in taxi cabs to the Dros restaurant, 7 minutes away, to celebrate Bradley, from Alpheratz, birthday. Bradley is 25 today. Tommy from Alpheratz is there, along with Gro, Meme, Meme's boyfriend and Erling from Saphir; Russ, Laurie, Jeanine and Charles from Nexus; Tim, Clare, Penny and her husband (I can't remember his name) from Ghost; Jon, Dominick and Marcus from Boingo Alive; Edward from Adela; and a couple of others. At the end of dinner we sing Happy Birthday for Bradley, as he's given a small cake with one candle and a blue balloon.

During dinner Jeremy calls me on his South African SIM card phone and tells me that his plane is getting ready to take off. I'd asked him to call just before take off. Thanks for the call Jeremy. I'm glad he's getting out of Johannesburg safely. Maybe South Africa's most dangerous city.

We're back at the boat at 9:20 PM, where Joel goes right to bed. I watch most of a movie, 'Bullet to the Head' starring Sylvester Stalone. Sylvester has obviously had some plastic work done on his face and he looked kind of weird. The movie wasn't that good, and I went to bed before finishing it at 10:30 PM. It was really cold, so I was wearing pants and a shirt. Unusual for me, where I usually just wear my underwear and a pair of shorts. I even had to cove up with a sheet and blanket. Joel told me the next day that he was wearing his thermal long underwear, blue jean pants and two blankets. November 16 in South Africa is equivilent to

Brian Fox

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