Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We couldn't believe our good luck and took down all the relevant names and details of the
club. We were very encouraged and inspired to pack up and get the show on the road to
Cape Town.
“Hooray!” yelled Jude. “We're going to Cape Town!”
“Yah!” I sang back to her. “Let's get going! Cape Town, here we come!”
Mr. Timberhorne also had a work contact for me in Cape Town in a boatyard for a well
known, up and coming young boatbuilder who was reputed to be a genius with racing boat
designs. I was to contact a Mr. Lex Raas of Ton Cup Yachts and a few telephone calls later
secured me a job in his factory in the Cape. All I had to do now was to get there!
Cape Town is about a thousand miles southwest of Johannesburg, and it is a long drive by
car on the old highway. Today they have modern two lane freeways, but in 1980 when I
drove down, it was quite a different story. It was decided that Jude would stay on in Jo'burg
for a couple of months, winding up her job, and I would travel down to the Cape to secure
my job and find a place to live.
At that stage we had hauled Déjà vu up on Dick Manten's slip, cleaned and painted her,
and parked her out on a field near the service road on a wooden frame awaiting a truck to
transport her down to the Cape. Her mast had been taken down and lashed securely to the
deck. Jude was going to take care of the transport details after I had checked out the pro-
spects and made sure Cape Town was the place for us.
It would be here, in the great False Bay of the Cape, that we would learn how to really sail
the boat and to come to learn that Déjà vu was just not quite ready to be a cruising boat
without some radical design changes. This ocean, actually still the Indian Ocean, was the
Real McCoy and no placid, little, freshwater lake on the planes of the highveld.
