Winter in the Southern Hemisphere?

It's been a while since I wrote. Life can be easy in the Argentine capital and the days can slip endlessly away, under blue skies and occasional breezes. My strange period of transience has passed and I have arrived now, no longer seeing the ghosts of the past but making a new trail leaving new footprints in a new past. Sitting down town in a cafe, escaping the heat, sipping cortado jarrito, in contemplative mood. Earlier this week my mind was a whirl, grappling with decisions about what to do and where next to go. Aisling lies in the marina in Salvador, I fly back to Brazil on Friday morning. My main preoccupation has been my schedule of sailing. I look regularly at the weather on the 40th parallel and it leaves me apprehensive. I have little experience of big seas and storms, the southern ocean would promise both at this time of year. As summer unceasingly marches towards autumn, I am certain it will get nothing but wilder. I am left with an overall sensation that the schedule is too tight, the window of opportunity too rushed, to make a passage to Africa. After far too much mental proliferation I decided that enough was enough and made the decision to put it all down for some days as it was disturbing my peace of mind greatly. Upon the cessation of my cerebral unrest, an inescapable factor has emerged. Even if I manage to make the next passage to Capetown, the next leg to New Zealand would have me in the high southern latitudes in the autumn and winter of the Southern Hemisphere. The inescapable fact is that I am here too late in the season and I therefore must wait for more favourable conditions before I can head east. Roughly translated this means perhaps a nine month wait either in South America or South Africa. The safest and easiest option being to stay here in Argentina. This development was definitely not in my plan but I have to remain flexible and cannot fight circumstances that are bigger than I am. I am left feeling slightly disconcerted but there seems little other choice if I am to stay with my boat. I have been checking out local places to moor and live and some of the options look favourable. I will have the chance to make some necessary repairs and renovations to the boat, and perhaps to myself!