We ended up in Walvis Bay, Namibia after our second attempt at reaching St Helena failed. Our backstay broke about two and a half days sailing from Luderitz towards St Helena, I’ll write another post about that. So we had to come here to fix the broken backstay as well as the kicker attachement to the boom which we broke in out first attempt to reach St Helena.
Walvis Bay is the biggest port in Namibia and as such has much more facilities than Luderitz. It is still a lot less than what we were used to in Cape Town but at least we could get the needed repairs done. We also lost our small 2.5 HP two stroke outboard engine in Luderitz and while here ordered a replacement: a new 4 stroke 6 HP Suzuki outboard.
The first evening we went on shore we met Garry who lives on Grace, a sailboat anchored in the bay in front of the waterfront and yacht club. He was super helpful in getting us in touch with the people who could help us with the repairs and outboard engine.
There are mooring balls available as well as a walk on mooring, although the latter has no facilities and is a bit of a walk away from the waterfront and the Walvis Bay Yacht Club. The yacht club manages both mooring balls and mooring and you have to become temporary member and pay a fee to use them. For that you get access to the showers, can use their dinghy jetty and get a discount at the restaurant.
Water is available at the yacht club, although the pressure often is very low. The mornings seem to be best for showers and filling water containers as the pressure is often better. For diesel you will have to go into town, there are communal taxies which cost 13 Namibian dollar per person to get to town and 26 to get back (the yacht club/water front is out of the way so you pay double fee).
For the repairs we needed we got Gert La Roux to do those, he was able to fix both our backstay and our boom and he seems to be a bit of a boating jack of all trades so he’s probably your man for most boat work. Here are his contact details:
Gert looked for a second hand outboard engine but couldn’t find one so we ordered a new on from Rob who is the local Suzuki Marine dealer. He was super helpful as well. Here are his contact details:
We accidentally inflated one of our PFDs earlier in our trip when it got wet on the floor of our dinghy so we needed to replace the CO2 cartridge. Place to be for that and for servicing life rafts and fire extinguishers is Benguella Enterprises. They also do International paints and other equipment, mainly for bigger boats but lots of thing handy for sailing yachts as well.
The closest to a chandlery for small boats is Eigelaars Marine Store. They seem to be geared mainly towards anglers and fishing but were very helpful and can order stuff from Cape Town if needed and if you have the time to wait for it to get to Walvis Bay. For ropes and more fishing and general boating stuff Marine Ropes around the corner from Eigelaars is the place to be.
Walvis Bay probably has more marine stores and service providers than anywhere else in Namibia, it being the largest port, but it is as I said earlier: compared to Cape Town there is not that much. Still it might be, as for us, your last chance to get things before crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
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