Cape of Storms or Fair Winds?

It was the explorer Bartholomew Diaz who christened the headland he rounded at the south westernmost tip of Africa in 1488 as the Cape of Storms.
Some hundred years later, Sir Francis Drake had a calmer passage and called it the "fairest Cape in the whole circumference of the Earth".

The Cape's reputation for wild weather is known to mariners ancient and modern.
Some twenty six shipwrecks have been identified off the shores of Cape Point alone.

But False Bay, mistaken by early seafarers for Table Bay, was accidentally found to provide a respite from the storms. It is protected from the north winds that batter Table Bay and, in times past, used to drive sailing ships off their anchors and wreck them onshore. This safe False Bay anchorage was the reason the Royal Navy chose Simon's Town - pictured here - for their South Atlantic naval base. Simon's Town later became the home of the South African navy.

Wind, whether it is the prevailing Southeasters in the summer or the eerie absence of the North winds in winter, defines much of life around the False Bay coast.
In my novel, The Girl from Simon's Bay, the heroine wonders when she will see her naval officer lover again. The war cuts short lives and loves. Nothing can ever be certain, no promise is forever.
I can't say when I'll be back, David said, taking my hand.
I know, I replied. We'll have to wait for a favourable wind.

Favourable winds to all my readers, and a happy Christmas!